24. Sunshine
24
SUNSHINE
KYLE
I wasn’t surprised to see Caleb leaning on his bike outside Anna’s house. He hadn’t missed a day to show up on her porch and wait for her. I was glad that Anna had rejected him as well but kept up with our weekly family dinner.
Unfortunately, my grandma was getting worried about Caleb.
That morning, I was eating cereals when my grandma sat across me, a frown on her face.
“Is everything okay?” I asked her after swallowing the food in my mouth.
“No,” she said with a look that made me sit on the edge. It was the same look she gave me when I didn’t finish the veggies in my lunchbox. “When are you going to date Anna?”
I sputtered, thankful that I didn’t have anything in my mouth. Before I could recover and reply with heated cheeks, she continued.
“You’ve liked her since we moved here! I was over the moon when she divorced her lazy husband, and I started babysitting Alice.” She was moving her hands in the air, and I had never seen my sweet, old grandmother be so animated. “It’s been five years and now that handsome, young man will steal her from you if you don’t do anything!”
I pursed my lips and straightened my shoulders. “What do you mean, grandma?”
She glared at me making me raise my brows. “Men are so foolish. Your grandpa took?—”
“Three years to realize he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you. I know, grandma. You’ve only told me your love story a billion times—ow!”
She pinched my arm. I pouted rubbing the skin.
“If you don’t talk to her, he will start dating her, and you’ll stay with your old grandma until you get wrinkles!” she stood up and waved her hands. “That poor boy has been waiting for her for weeks! And what are you doing? Men, I swear to God.” She mumbled underneath her breath, walking away to the living room to watch her favorite soap opera while I stared at the soggy cereals in the milk.
I had just come back from my run, drank my electrolytes but didn’t have the appetite to finish the breakfast thinking about what my grandmother had said. She didn’t know I wanted to date Caleb as much as Anna.
That’s why, after getting dressed for the day, I was going to talk to him.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped out of the house and walked towards him. Weather was warm in the middle of September, and seeing him in a thin white tee with his muscles and tattoos on display made me hate him even more.
No one should be legally allowed to look that hot and annoying. Especially with his dark, shiny hair and inked skin.
“Hi,” I said, keeping my voice even and not to show any annoyance.
“Hi there, sunshine.” Caleb smirked looking at me, clearly seeing the indignation on my face and waved, “What’s up?”
You can do it, Kyle. You don’t want to upset grandma Jem .
If it wasn’t for her, I would go alone and ignore him.
“She won’t go on a date.” I nodded at my hot neighbor’s house. “Especially not today.”
When he frowned, I continued, “She spends time with her kids on weekends.”
“I have noticed that since the past three weeks I’ve been waiting for her,” the hot jerk replied with a sly smile.
“That’s called stalking, Caleb.” I crossed my arms. I didn’t know why talking to him made me feel so on edge. I could feel the tension brimming in the air between us.
He shrugged, running a hand through his hair. The fabric of his tee stretched over his taut muscles, making my eyes wander. The vee of his tee was low enough to see the black tattoo on his chest.
I swallowed, looking away.
“I would stop if she told me not to wait for her, but I bet she enjoys being chased by a handsome young man like me.” Caleb winked at me, making me shake my head.
“Don’t you have work or other priorities? I can look after Anna.”
“Sure, pretty boy. You can keep looking after her as her neighbor when I’ll become her hot boyfriend.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, my hands feeling clammy. He was right, and I hated that. I had always kept the boundary of being her neighbor as a gentleman and never crossing it. Even when I should have, when she was going through the divorce, should have asked her out on a date and be more than her neighbor.
“Do you want to come to the library with me?” I asked, checking the time on my watch. It was half-past one in the afternoon, and I’d have ample time to finish volunteering, take a long drive back home, since Jem was going out with her friends, and cook something before retiring to bed early.
Jesus. My grandma did more socializing than me .
I ignored that thought and looked at Caleb, who was staring at me intently. His eyes were black, but under the sunlight, they gleamed like burning coal. They were very pretty, with long lashes that would make any women jealous.
They made me jealous.
“Why library?”
“I like to volunteer there sometimes.”
He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Of course, you do, Mister Uptight.”
“I’m not uptight.”
He checked me out, from my khakis to a light blue ironed shirt. His gaze lingered on my bare forearms. I had rolled my sleeves, and my neck felt warm under his gaze.
“Could’ve fooled me,” he muttered and surprised me by pulling me closer to him and fixing the collar before unbuttoning the top button, his ringed knuckles brushing against my skin, making me feel hot. “ There . Much better.”
He ruffled my hair, moving strands of my short blond hair as he liked, and I was surprised by myself that I let him. I blinked. His lips were perfect, like everything about him. Cute cupid bow with plump bottom lip. No wonder he looked hot whenever he pouted. It made me want to tease him more and follow his every command.
Once he was done, I took a step back and pushed my glasses.
“Why would I come with you to volunteer at the library?” He asked, leaning back on his bike.
I wished I could turn around, sit in my car and drive away instead of answering him, but I had promised grandma.
“Because you love my sunshine personality.”
He smiled, surprising me with the strange warm feeling spreading across my chest. “I didn’t know you could joke, Kyle.”
Kyle . He said my name.
I cleared my throat, averting my gaze from his annoyingly cute dimple and said, “Anna might come there, and we could have a chance.”
Caleb leaned closer. “A chance for what?”
From the look in his mischievous eyes, I could imagine what was going on in his dirty head. “A chance to ask her out. Together.”
See? I was friendly.
He thought about it, blinking at me, and sighed. “Fine. Let’s go?—”
We heard a small thud and looked for the source coming from Anna’s house. Her face scrunched up as she rubbed her forehead behind the window. I bit back my smile when she caught us staring and closed the curtain, hiding herself.
“God, she’s so fucking cute,” Caleb said with a small smile.
“Adorable,” I added.
After a moment of silence, Caleb asked me, “Are you sure about sharing her with me?”
This was the first time he had asked me outright about her. Telling him the truth about wanting them both felt too raw. Too sincere. And that he or she might not want the same thing would break me. It was too soon to feel like it, but I couldn’t help myself and my stupid heart. I didn’t want to confess now. Under the September sun, in front of Anna’s house, with him leaning casually on his bike, looking like a bad boy straight out of a teen romance movie.
But I didn’t want to be insincere about how I felt.
“I don’t want anyone else,” I said, my voice husky, holding eye contact with his intense gaze.
* * *
“And keep these books here,” I pointed out to Caleb, who followed me to the back room of the library with stacks of books in his arms.
It smelled like old books, worn out pages with a hint of musk. Since it was Saturday, people were huddled in the corners, queuing up at the reception to borrow books and running their hands through the cracked spines of various books.
I kept down my stack and started sorting them out with different categories. He was whistling as he followed suit, commenting on a few of the erotic and romance literature, making me give him a deadpan stare. He was twenty-four but acted like a horny teenager most of the time.
“What? Why are you acting like you have never read stuff like this or watched porn?”
I remained silent, going through the books. He slammed a book down, making me wince, and turned me around to face him, his hands on my shoulders.
“You’ve never watched porn?” His voice was whisper-quiet, and I was glad we were alone.
“I’m thirty, Caleb.” I rolled my eyes. “Of course, I’ve watched it. The most recent being your porn.”
He smirked, pocketing his hands in his jeans. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
“We are here to volunteer.”
“And we are having a friendly conversation while volunteering… have you read smut, though?”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling.
“Alright, alright, mister uptight. I won’t talk about smut and porn since it bothers you so much.”
Surprisingly, he was quiet after that. So, when I picked up a rom-com book, I stared at the pink cover and said, “It doesn’t bother me.”
“Whatever you say, mister uptight.”
“You don’t have any siblings?” I asked, wanting to make more conversation with him. Turns out that I enjoyed talking with him, even when we were not half-naked. He had a nice voice, not too deep but heavy. He could be a singer if he wanted with his melodious tone. He could be a rockstar, everyone going crazy over his flirty charm.
I was glad he was not a rockstar. I wanted him all to myself and Anna.
“Nope,” he said, going through the romance pile I had made, unaware of the thoughts running in my head to pin him on the table and kiss his pouty lips for being so troublesome. “I am an only child.”
I kept the book down and looked at him. “It doesn’t look that way.”
He met my eyes and said, “My dad was busy with his work, so my uncle and grandma parented me. I had to learn to make friends and keep them.”
Oh. His mom passed away and then his dad…
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard growing up.” My parents passed away in a cruise accident when I was young. I was only alive because I didn’t go with them in the end because I got sick, and my grandparents took care of me. My parents wanted to stay and miss the cruise that they had been planning for three years, and they only went because I forced them to have a vacation.
I wish I hadn’t .
It hadn’t felt real when the news came about missing passengers with my parents’ names on the list, but I learned to grow up without them, relying on my sweet grandparents. It was hard. I could only imagine how Caleb felt with his mother’s passing and workaholic dad.
“It’s alright.” Caleb smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and he shrugged. “Dad is making up for the time lost, and I’m happy where I am.”
I nodded. We had talked about his work on the way in my car. He told me he was an ethical hacker and got paid a lot for working in one of the many 500 fortune companies. I told him bits and pieces about my work in finance while I drove, and it was surprising to know that he had worked in the IT department of my company for his internship.
If he was good looking, hard-working, then…
“Then how come are you still single?” I asked.