Chapter 14
There were voices down the hall, then Jasmine opened my door. She shot me a suggestive smile.
“There’s someone for you.”
Before I could ask, she went back and Danté walked in. My eyebrows went up as he got in. My room wasn’t as tidy as it generally was. Since the wedding a week ago, I hadn’t found the courage to do my laundry or dust anything off. Even I got lazy sometimes. We had been home so late from the wedding, and the next days, I had needed to rest, my feet hurting. After that, I had been plain lazy. It could’ve been worse, but compared to Danté’s place, this was a mess.
“You’re back!” I said as I got up from my desk.
“I came back yesterday.”
I waited for him to continue. It was the first time we saw each other since the wedding, life having gone back to normal as it always would on my part, and Danté being in Greece. All that was left of that wonderful night were my memories, and a selfie of us, where we were both breathless and beet red, but all smiles. And yes, I had looked at that picture too many times for it to be sane. Whatever. Danté grabbed something from the front pocket of his jeans and gave it to me. The earrings I had worn that evening.
“You left those in my car. I hope you didn’t need them because I only noticed it today.”
I rubbed my neck. I could vaguely remember taking them off and throwing them somewhere in his car.
“Honestly, I hadn’t even noticed I didn’t have them.”
After the party, I had been too tired to care. And after having been carried like a princess, those earrings hadn’t been on my mind at all.
Danté was having a staring contest with the Taylor Swift poster that hung on the wall, above a little shelf where I kept all my CDs. He made a face the longer he watched the picture. If he was going to comment on my full collection of her CDs, I was going to strangle him. I didn’t care how cute he was.
“The fact that she looks straight at the camera makes it very creepy.”
“It’s just a poster.”
He moved to and fro, never looking away from it. Had this dude never seen a poster in his life? I was a hundred percent convinced that he had posters of almost naked ladies lying on cars when he was a teenager. My cousins sure had.
“A poster that looks at me all the time, no matter what I do.”
“Awww. Don’t worry. We can turn the lights off if necessary.”
Danté choked on his saliva, and I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
I laid a hand on his arm. “Everything okay there?”
He finally turned to me. “Yeah. Sometimes I forget you have such dirty humour.”
My debatable humour was my most charming trait. At least, I liked to imagine that it was.
“Who said I was joking?”
His smile fell. “This isn’t funny.”
Danté rubbed the palms of his hands on his faded jeans. A pretty pink crept up his neck and dusted his cheekbones.
“Are you blushing?” I asked, taking his face in my hands.
Was it weird to find him so endearing?
Danté jumped back, holding me at arm’s-length. “What? No way!”
I cackled. His face kept getting redder and redder. Unable to help myself, I pinched his cheek, and he batted my hand away.
“You definitely are. Why? You are used to this.”
“Not with you, Squirrel.”
I froze over, my arms hanging loosely against my sides. It had been clear from the start that I didn’t fit his type. Never had Danté brought someone home who looked the slightest bit like me; not the girls who were here for sex, nor the ones he had dated.
“Am I that unattractive that you don’t see me as anything other than the silly girl who wore a squirrel onesie?”
His face became serious. “First of all, that onesie is adorable.”
And a great contraceptive, apparently. Had I known this, I wouldn’t have worn it in the first place. It made me loathe that stupid nickname.
“And second of all, I’m not going to have sex with you.”
Well, wasn’t that just great? At least he couldn’t be clearer than that. I just couldn’t make him see that his words actually felt like a stab wound. I straightened my spine and leaned against my desk for support.
“Woah. I never said I wanted to have sex with you. I just asked you if you found me unattractive. At least now I’m fixed.”
As if I were exaggerating, Danté rolled his eyes. Could this moment become even more awkward than it already was? Instead of telling me to shut up, Danté sighed.
“You are anything but unattractive, Evelyn.”
“But?”
My fingers tapped nervously against the wood of my desk. A movement that caught Danté’s attention. His gaze softened.
“But you are my friend. And I don’t do friends with benefits.”
That was a nice way of being put in the friend zone, I suppose. I frowned at that. Had I really been the only one to think that after spending the night dancing together, things would change? Apparently.
“Well then, friend, I thank you for bringing back my earrings.”
The tone of my voice was sharper than what I had wanted it to be. Danté’s eyes widened, but he didn’t make a comment.
“I’ll see you around, Squirrel.”
“Sure.”
And then he was gone, leaving my high hopes in shambles.