Chapter 26 Confession
Chapter twenty-six
Confession
After work, Angel and I made dinner at his place, and for dessert, I fed him some of my leftover cake on the couch.
“Thanks again for being so good about meeting my mom,” I said.
“It was fun. And I got a generous tip,” he said, licking his lips. “We can put it toward our first real date.”
“Aw, you’re sweet.” I kissed the corner of his mouth. “But you don’t need to take me out. I know you’re busy.”
“Not too busy for you. Besides, I want to.” He yawned and stretched.
He wanted a date with me over more sleep? Maybe he cared deeper than either of us would admit to.
“What do you wanna do?” I asked, nonchalantly dragging my fork through the frosting.
He nudged my foot with his. “I’d like to take you dancing.”
“Like at a club?”
He laughed and caressed the side of my face. “I was thinking more like a piano bar—somewhere with live music.”
“That might be nice.” Depending on the genre and decibel level.
He inspected me with mild amusement. “Have you ever been to a club?”
“No. I’ve never really danced in public. Not unless you count that time I met you at the bar.”
“Ah, yes, but that was a mating call,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “A what?”
“A mating call to get my attention. Like birds do.” He wiggled his shoulders in a dramatic swoop.
I laughed and playfully pushed his shoulder. “I did not dance like that.” Especially not when I was mirroring Kat.
“I think you did. After all, you got my attention.” He clasped my chin and tried to pull me in for a kiss.
I wriggled out of his grasp. “But you kept chatting up that curly-haired woman.”
He sighed fondly and leaned back on the couch, casually spreading his limbs. “She trapped me in a conversation—and you seemed to enjoy hanging out with your sister. Truthfully, I think you wanted me to watch you from afar.”
I rolled my eyes and bent over to set my leftovers on the coffee table. “You misread my dance then. I was saying ‘come and get it.’” I wiggled my booty in front of him for emphasis.
“Oh, you’d better show me those moves again. I don’t wanna misinterpret.” He turned on some music, then smacked my butt.
Scandalized, I held my stinging cheek and gaped at him.
Did he expect me to dance on demand?
His wide grin indicated he did.
Well. I wasn’t going to try to be sexy about it.
“You want the moves?” I rolled my hips as if I was about to give him a lap dance, then quickly spun out of his eager reach to dramatically raise my arms alternately in a move reminiscent of go-go dancers from the 60’s. “I’ve got the moves.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he teased.
“You might’ve needed to teach me a few things, but dancing is not one of them.” I did a loose interpretation of a lava lamp move mostly with wiggly arms.
His laughter chirped through the room. “You’re barely even moving your lower half. You’re just squatting and stepping.”
“I’m dancing. This is what you wanted to do with me. Now you get a preview for free.”
I slowly flapped my arms like a swan princess, tapping my feet in a dramatic shuffle across the living room.
Amusement curled the side of his mouth. “Where are you going?”
“My moves said, ‘come and get it,’” I reminded him. “Or do you only approach me when I throw underwear at your head?”
He snorted a laugh. “You’re too cute to be without a partner.” He hopped over the couch and joined my dramatic dance and pacing, though his vibe was more peacock mixed with matador. He knew how to roll his hips properly.
“What are we doing?” I giggled, circling closer to him.
“Courting.” He flicked open his cuffs and collar, his eyes alight with the glow of candles and wall sconces.
This felt more like falling deeper in love.
We pranced throughout the house, grabbing each other to rock in sync. Dopamine flooded my brain to make me forget about my nerves and aching feet.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, my heart overflowing. “Angel?”
“Yes, pigeon?”
“I wanted to tell you something.”
“Is it that you like my dancing?”
“No.” I giggled.
“No?” He scoffed, all dramatics as he hoisted me over the edge of the couch.
“Ah, Angel, no,” I cried as we tumbled onto the cushions together.
Our laughter drowned out the music.
“I prefer when you say, ‘Angel, yes,’ he teased, kissing down my neck.
I stroked his silky, white-streaked hair and moaned theatrically. “Oh, Angel, yes.”
He sucked the skin.
I gasped, tightening my legs around his. “Oh, yes.”
He smirked and propped himself up. “That’s more like it, pidge.”
I giggled, basking in his gaze.
His confident smile, the drape of his soft, white hair with the golden arrow ear piercing poking through, and the adoration swimming in his bright eyes emboldened me to caress his face and say what I’d been holding in for weeks:
“Angel, I love you.”
His eyes widened. Pupils blew out.
For one heart-rending moment, my insides stretched like elastic just about to snap.
His lips parted, and he leaned closer. “You…”
Something creaked, then slammed.
He cursed and scrambled upright.
I tried to get out of his way without flopping onto the floor like a forgotten pancake. “Was that the door?” I asked.
“Yes,” he hissed, scrambling for the cake container.
“Helloooo,” a dulcet feminine voice with the faintest West Coast accent called. “We’re home.”
“Who’s ‘we?’” I whispered. His Mom and who else?
The woman in question headed through the living room into the kitchen wearing designer loungewear, a set of expensive sunglasses serving to keep her silky white-blonde hair out of her pretty face.
She looked almost the same as she did in the photograph in the hallway with her and Angel as a kid.
At the sight of our stuff out, she gasped.
“What's this?” she asked, though I wasn’t sure she’d even spotted me or Angel yet.
“Hey, Mom. You’re home early,” Angel said, swiping his hair back.
“Yes.” Her big eyes finally seemed to flit over us, and she gave me a friendly, if incredulous wave. “Hi.”
Angel gestured to me. “This is my girlfriend, Tori. We met in class.”
“Originally, yes.” I pulled down the hem of my shirt as I stood to shake her hand. “Hello Misses—”
“I’m not a misses,” she said firmly.
Oh, scrubs. This was not a great first impression. “N-nice to meet you, then, Miss…”
She turned to Angel and crossed her arms, already done with me. “I tried calling you,” she said.
“I was working. Why didn’t you leave a message?”
“I didn’t expect to come home to this.” She gestured around the kitchen. “You said you were busy all week. Is this what you’ve been doing? Throwing parties and—”
“This isn’t a party, it’s a date,” he said sharply, opening his palm to me as if to remind her of my presence.
“Oh, excuse me.” She pointed to the container in his other hand. “Were you eating on the white couch?”
He shrugged. “I was taking the food on a tour of the house.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Angel, baby, we talked about this.”
I shifted uneasily.
Did he do a lot of sleepovers or was this more about house rules and his penchant for breaking them? Had he even told her I was staying over this week? Or was it such a non-event that he didn’t bother mentioning it to her?
“What did he do now?” a masculine voice sounded from the hall.
“Nothing,” Angel’s mom called.
A relatively fit middle-aged man walked in, rubbing and snuffling at his nose. There was something slightly off about his appearance. Maybe it was the sunglasses indoors—at night too—and I doubted he had eye surgery recently if they just got off a plane.
The guy scoffed at us. “Oh, he was busy, huh.”
“We were just cleaning up,” Angel said, his jaw clenched as he dunked the container into the kitchen trash.
I hurried over to start the dishes, but his mom shooed me away from the sink.
“No, sweetie. Don’t worry, Angel will take care of everything. Why don’t you head home for tonight, and he’ll call you when he’s free?”
“But we—”
“He’s busy,” her boyfriend, or whatever he was, said sharply, and crossed his arms. “And he’s gonna be busy for the rest of the evening, so why don’t you leave, sweet cheeks?”
Angel stepped up to him. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
“Or what?”
“Or we’re going to have a real problem,” he said in a way that implied he knew how to sterilize the kitchen after a bloodbath.
“Okay, let’s take a breath,” the mom said, putting herself between them.
“Punk kid,” the boyfriend spat.
Angel flexed his shoulders, much tighter than I’d ever seen them, and flicked the underside of his lip. “Tori, would you mind waiting upstairs for me? I’ll just be a minute.”
He so rarely used my real name. This must be serious.
I wrung my hands.
Was this guy trying to pick a fight with him? If so, what could I do? Shine bright lights in their eyes? Interpretive dance again? Call Kat and her boyfriend to kick some butt for us?
“Go on, Tori,” Angel said.
“I’ll be in your room if you need anything,” I said, reluctantly making my retreat.
Halfway through my walk to the stairs, their voices rose.
Angel’s mom spoke loudly over her boyfriend, “I’ll talk to him. He’s my son. You don’t need to talk to him.”
Angel wasn’t kidding when he said he understood complicated family dynamics. And he’d been there for me, so I’d be there for him, even if that meant waiting in another room with my ear pressed to the door.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to strain as hard to get a response to my love confession. But maybe the chance of some magical moment had gone in the trash along with our leftover cake.