Say the Word(20)

It wasn’t hard to guess where he was headed.

I rolled my eyes after catching sight of Ms. Ingraham, who was still staring at Sebastian in a bewildered stupor. I couldn’t really blame her — the boy was good looking, and all the teachers had been thrilled beyond measure when the senator they’d elected chose to put his son in the public school system, rather than shipping him off to private school. But…seriously? Had we learned nothing from the Mary Kay Letourneau’s of the world? Despite my best intentions, a mutinous giggle escaped my lips.

Sebastian heard my choked laugh and his eyes darted to mine as he entered the classroom and walked toward his friends with confident, self-assured strides. His lips lifted in a half-grin and he winked — yes, winked — at me, which only made it harder to control the escaping giggles. In hindsight, my mounting hysteria was probably a byproduct of the fact that Sebastian hadn’t ignored me, as I’d assumed he would, but had seemed friendly.

Heck, he’d smiled at me. Winked at me.

A flurry of butterflies simultaneously burst from their cocoons inside my stomach, and I quickly slanted my face down toward my desk to hide the dopey grin spreading across my lips.

The smile quickly faded when I heard Nicole’s whisper echo across the room.

“Ohmigod, Amber! Sebastian totally bought you a coffee. He’s so gonna ask you out.”

Amber’s answering giggle was enough to instantly kill the swarm of butterflies. They dropped, mid-flight, to the bottom of my stomach where their once-beautiful papery wings were immediately incinerated by food-digesting acids.

“Oh my god,” Nicole whispered. “Oh… my… god.”

I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see the look on Amber’s face when Sebastian handed her that freaking coffee. I hoped it was some gross flavor like crème br?lée or blueberry. It would serve her right.

My gaze downcast, I didn’t notice him until he’d come to a full stop next to my desk, his form hovering at the edge of my peripherals.

“Here,” he said quietly, sliding the foam coffee cup onto the corner of my desk. My wide, disbelieving eyes watched the cup’s movement, captivated by the sight of his strong calloused fingers gripped lightly around its circumference. “Figured you could use this to get through seven hundred Latin verb conjugations.”

He’d brought me coffee.

He’d somehow known I’d be yawning my way through final period — which meant maybe, just maybe, he’d paid me more attention in the past than I ever could’ve guessed.

I tipped my head back to meet his eyes, but he’d already moved beyond my chair. Frozen, I stared at the cup sitting in front of me and listened to the sound of Sebastian settling into the desk directly behind mine. A slow smile crept across my face and a furious blush spilled over my cheekbones. Shaking my head in disbelief, I accidentally locked eyes with Amber, who’d turned fully around in her desk to watch Sebastian’s surprise delivery. Her furious brown eyes were narrowed in a glare that threatened to burn a hole straight through me.

Jeeze, it was just a coffee. No need to give herself a coronary.

Laughing lightly, I winked at her — at which point her face turned a dangerous shade of red — before reaching forward and taking hold of my cup. Raising it to my lips, I took a sip of liquid heaven and sighed contentedly. I’d say one thing for the boy: he’d certainly found the way to this caffeine-junkie’s heart.

Turning my head so Sebastian could see my face only in profile, as I was far too nervous to make direct eye contact with him, I whispered a quiet, “Thank you,” over my shoulder.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered back.

I didn’t even bother attempting to listen to Ms. Ingraham’s lesson that day. My attentions were elsewhere.





Chapter Eight





Now


I swung the door open with a forceful bump of my hip and fell through the entryway, my bag-laden arms aching for relief. Beelining for my apartment’s tiny excuse for a kitchen, I immediately dumped my wine and snack cargo before leaning back heavily against the counter’s edge.

Priorities were simple: music on, heels off, pour wine, decompress in bubble bath. Not necessarily in that order.

I’d just popped the cork on my Merlot when the shrill ringing of my cellphone stilled my hand. With a trepidatious glance at the screen, I saw it was Fae and exhaled with relief. At least it wasn’t Jeanine.

“Hello?”

“Girl, where are you?” she whispered, a faint acoustic echo sounding in the background. She must’ve been in the bathroom at work, one of the few places at Luster that a NSFW call could be made. “I covered for you with Jeanine, told her you were out researching something for next month’s column. Are you okay?”

“I’m… I don’t know what I am, actually. It’s a long story.”

“I’ll be there after work.”

“Fae, I’m not really up for comp—”

“See you at six!” she interrupted, clicking off before I had a chance to protest.

Damn.

I turned to examine the small studio I called home. There were dirty coffee mugs piled in the sink and a basket’s worth of clean unfolded laundry lay in a tangled pile on the end of my low platform bed. My fluffy white down comforter was a knotted mess and there were enough high heeled shoes and boots spilling out of my closet and littering the hardwood floors to make Imelda Marcos envious.