Chapter 22
Jade
The cat didn’t come back. Girl was abandoning me with Alyssa and I knew damn well why, and as much as I wanted to complain, I knew I wouldn’t.
Not when Alyssa looked like this in my kitchen, her hair down and a little messy over her shoulders, wearing her chunky cable-knit sweater and soft makeup that made the damn blue of her eyes pop—that blue that was haunting my dreams as I tried desperately to color-match the dye of the candle.
Seeing her standing here in the low lights of my home, eyes sparkling as she laughed, I tried to tell myself it was limerence and nothing real, but I couldn’t help the way my heart ached when she was in front of me.
We’d kissed. Did it mean anything? What happened when she went back with Abby? I didn’t dare ask. So we talked about everything else—made small talk while I finished up the noodles, which conveniently went well with hot sauce.
True to her word, she could take a little heat.
Daniela’s sauce was a biohazard as far as I was concerned, and I loaded up Alyssa’s bowl to about the maximum I could handle, but Alyssa tasted it and went back for more hot sauce before she dug in happily, not even breaking a sweat.
I laughed incredulously when she went in for even more.
“If you just wanted to pepper-spray the inside of your mouth, that’s probably simpler than doing it with noodles.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I actually enjoy it more in a noodle dish than a crowd control weapon,” she said, settling in and sipping her broth with a contented noise. “It is a good sauce… Daniela really can make anything.”
My chest panged briefly. I wasn’t getting jealous of her with Abby and her with Daniela. She just liked Daniela’s food. And she also, importantly, was not mine to be jealous of in the first place. “She’s a damn good cook, I’ll give her that.”
“Right?” Her eyes sparkled as she looked at me, and I flashed back to our kiss.
To the way she’d moaned breathlessly when we moved together.
How was she carrying on normally like it never happened?
“I’ve been so spoiled living with her, I don’t know how I’ll handle leaving her house once I finally get a life. ”
“I’m sure you could drop by anytime you wanted. Hell, she’d probably trek cross-country to bring you more food. She’s like that.”
She flashed a small, insecure smile at me, and it made my chest tighten. “You two have a lot of history, huh?”
“Oh, er… I guess so. I mean, we’ve been friends for a while. As far as I do friends, anyway.”
She looked down, and my pulse quickened when she moved closer, putting her hand on the table close to mine. “Do you, er… you know… we talked before about whether you like her as more than a friend.”
I could not have this conversation with Alyssa fucking Taylor.
I tried to sound nonchalant even though I was really fucking chalant.
“Not really. I think I just… er… didn’t really know how to have a close friendship.
So when she came around and got really close to me, I think my feelings just got… confused.”
“Mm…” She folded her hands on the table, forcing a smile at me. “I think friendship is the foundation for any good relationship, though, isn’t it?”
Christ, she was sitting too close to me. Too far, at the same time. I was fucking obsessed with the timbre of her voice, and it was terrifying. “I guess,” I said. “But… doesn’t mean every good friendship is waiting to become a relationship.”
“Maybe not. I mean, you’d have to have a lot of relationships if that were a thing.”
“You’d have to. I don’t have that many friendships. You’d be surrounded like a sultan with his concubines.”
“Stop,” she laughed, swatting my arm lightly, playfully, but her hand lingered there, moving too slowly until it was more of a caress, and I felt like I’d break.
The slow, gentle movement of her fingers…
I had to pull my thoughts back together, just in time to realize we’d been there for too long.
Alyssa’s breathing came shallower, looking down at her hand on my arm, and slowly, achingly, she moved her hand again—not away from me like I needed her to, but slowly caressing up, and then down again, tracing small patterns on my arm.
I swallowed hard, and I felt dizzy when she moved closer still. “Jade…” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I think… you and Daniela would be good together,” she breathed. Still caressing me while she did. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore.
“Alyssa.”
“I think she really likes you.” Higher, up my arm, and then along to my back, feeling along my shoulder blade.
“Alyssa, for fuck’s sake,” I gasped, and she looked up at me with wide eyes, pulled out of a reverie. “Why are you doing this?”
“I just—” She pulled her hand away, her face red. “I just thought you would be good together, and I heard all about how inseparable you two always were, and I wanted Daniela to be happy—I mean, Jesus, obviously, I want you to be happy, too, I’m not saying you should do it just for Daniela’s sake—”
“Alyssa—”
“Do you want me to go? I’m so sorry. I’m running my mouth again.”
“No—don’t you dare go,” I blurted. “You cannot keep doing this. You can’t keep flirting with Abby like this and telling me to go hook up with Daniela while you’re… you’re…” I raked my hand back through my hair, groaning. “You know how I feel. Let’s not drag it out and make me feel stupid.”
She stared at me for a long time before, quietly, she said, “How you… feel?”
“What, are you serious?” I dropped my hands by my side.
“For Christ’s sake, I thought all the touchy-feely…
flirting… whatever you were doing with Abby was because you knew and you were trying to push me away.
I—” I didn’t know how the hell to put it into words.
My face felt hot, and I moved my hands in what I think were normal, natural gestures.
“I think you’re… I mean, I’m really attracted to you.
” Great. That didn’t sound like an alien said it on their first day on earth.
Alyssa looked at me incredulously, lips parted.
“You… really?”
“Jesus Christ, woman, what did you think the kiss was about?” I looked away, suddenly awkward in every part of my body.
“Honestly, I’ve been trying to figure it out and I am… not… sure.”
I cleared my throat. “Do you do that with a lot of people you feel neutrally about?”
“I didn’t know if… I don’t know,” she said, and I could hear in her voice even without looking at her how hunched up she was. “I thought maybe you were just… pent-up and… I don’t know.”
“You thought I was horny and just went for a quick fuck against the wall with a random person who was conveniently close by.”
“Well, Jesus, I don’t mean it like that, just—I thought maybe it was just physical. You didn’t even let me…”
I groaned, standing up, my hand over my face. “It’s—I didn’t want to—”
“You don’t need to justify it, I just didn’t think—”
“I don’t want to fall for you,” I blurted, my heart racing.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, not when I was thinking like this, not when I couldn’t turn her way without wanting to kiss her again.
“You know it doesn’t make sense. For a million reasons.
But just—for fuck’s sake, Alyssa, you just wander in and uproot my whole life, you see me when nobody else does, you make me feel safe enough to share things I can’t with anybody else, you listen to me and give me space when I’m my worst, and you just keep smiling and laughing through everything like it’s such a gift for you to be here, of course I’m going to start feeling like that too.
Like it is a fucking miracle that you’re here.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for one minute.
And if we… if I were to… if we did that, I’d start seriously falling for you, and that’s not something either of us can handle right now.
” I groaned, slumping back against the table, settling in the quiet of the room—still except for my pounding heart, my shaking hands.
The colors in the room felt like they stood out like I’d never seen them before.
I was probably forming one of those memories where I’d still remember every inch of the room around me twenty years from now.
Memories that were going to be filled with Alyssa. Dammit.
“Jade…” she said behind me, her voice a breathless whisper, before quietly, incredulously, she laughed. “I slapped you in the face. You still have the scar.”
“And yet.” I made a mistake—I turned back to her, and the sight of her eyes, wide and quivering with that look of disbelief—that I could possibly feel this way about her, as if she didn’t have people lining up around every block to be around her—it made my heart pound harder.
Suddenly anything other than kissing her felt unimaginable, impossible. “I know… it’s not exactly convenient.”
“No. It’s not.” She hunched her shoulders, looking down. “I don’t want to hurt you. Or myself.”
“I get that. I mean, likewise.” So I said, but it felt catastrophically sad, like I was saying goodbye to her right now and I wanted to hold onto her and never let her go. Slowly, I sank back into the seat. “I probably shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”
She laughed halfheartedly, kicking the floor. “I definitely shouldn’t have danced with Abby just to get your attention.”
Something jumped in my chest, and I faked being cool about it. “So that is what you were doing.”