Aspen #2
“Thank you, BB. That was soo helpful,” Caelyx crowed, in the voice he reserved for when he was pretending to be me.
He loved to demonstrate these hypothetical conversations between himself and an imaginary version of me, usually when I hadn’t given him the answer he’d wanted.
“Oh, you’re welcome, Cupcake,” he switched back to his normal voice as he answered himself. “Your gratitude means so much to me.”
Inhaling deeply, I shot him a dry look. “The me in your head calls you baby?”
“BB,” he corrected, blinking his lashes at me.
He had a cluster of golden freckles concentrated just across the bridge of his nose, a perfect complement to the golden shade of his hair.
Couple that with his hollow cheeks and defined jaw, and he could easily be a model in some preppy, rich boy fashion magazine. “It stands for Best Boyfriend.”
“You’re unstable.”
“Stables are for cows.”
“Horses,” I corrected him, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose to ward off what was surely an impending headache. “Horses sleep in stables. Cows don’t.”
“Whatever,” he said, waving off my assertion. “Anyway, the you in my mind is a little ahead of the physical you in terms of processing your feelings for me,” he explained, without a hint of irony or humor in his voice. Psychopath.
“I’ve processed my feelings for you,” I assured him flatly. “We’d finish faster if you quit yapping.”
“I know, but I so cherish these moments between us,” he said, before giving a big dramatic sigh. “But if this isn’t enough for you and you just can’t wait to be in the car with me…”
Anytime we worked a shift together, he would grab a ride with me to and from the café.
His house was between my dorm and our work, so it wasn’t really any extra effort anyway.
If he wasn’t on shift with me, he walked, which still wasn’t too bad.
The neat little coastal town of Byron Bay was small and dense with shops and restaurants, very walkable.
The university we both attended was smack dab between that downtown district and a beach, with a big ass boardwalk always swarmed with tourists.
“Yeah, that’s it. You caught me.”
“I get it,” he said, easing past me to wipe up more surfaces. “It can be erotic, right? Crammed up in the car together. Barely any space between us, breathing each other in. Maybe we reach out to adjust the radio volume at the same time and our hands brush.”
“How about you walk home from now on,” I suggested, staring pointedly down at a grinder lid as I wiped coffee grounds off it. It was a bluff, and we both knew it. I wasn’t going to make him walk home.
Caelyx was from a rich family. Like, stupidly rich.
His family owned a multi-billion dollar company, Vane Corporation, an empire that branched out in all directions like retail and real estate and tech.
But after acting like a dipshit one too many times, Caelyx’s dad had ended up cutting him off and booting him off to college, telling him not to come back until he showed some initiative to prove he wouldn’t squander the family fortune.
That’s what Caelyx had explained to me when I’d finally asked, anyway.
I’d grown up in a trailer wearing thrifted clothes with half my meals coming from a local food bank and the other half purchased with the pathetic allowance of food stamps my single mom was granted by our state’s welfare system. He’d have died if he’d had to live my life.
I didn’t exactly feel sympathy for his situation, but being around him was kind of like watching a spoiled house cat who’d never had to hunt for his own food abandoned in the wild.
If I didn’t help, he’d slowly starve. I wasn’t a heartless asshole.
I wasn’t going to let some brainless cat starve to death just because no one had ever taught it how to be a cat before.
Even if it did happen to be the most deliberately irritating cat on the planet.
“Aw,” he whined, but it was the mocking whine of someone who already knew they weren’t in any real danger. “You’re not really going to make me walk, are you?”
“Don’t try me, Gucci boy.”
“If I’m Gucci boy, then you’re Goodwill boy,” he retorted easily.
“Why don’t you get one of your little girlfriends that hang around the store all day to drive you home?” I said, opening up the fridge to take note of the milks.
“Don’t get jealous, Cupcake. You know that’s just business.”
I snorted, rolling my eyes as I whirled around, ready to snap back about how he could only wish I would ever care enough to actually feel jealousy over his horde of pathetic admirers.
But when I turned, I collided with him, smacking into his body with mine.
I scrambled back, startled, into the solid surface of the refrigerator, my heart racing in my chest. He was warm and sculpted with lean muscles.
If he had been anyone else, I might have lingered on him just a little bit to enjoy the feel, and maybe even commented on it to flirt a little, but he wasn’t someone else. He was Caelyx fucking Vane.
“Careful,” he suggested, obviously amused by my reaction. Heat rose up to the surface of my cheeks at his expression, and I shoved at him again, only managing to move him back a few inches. But that was enough to let me breathe, at least.
“Have I mentioned that I hate you?”
“You know, they say there’s a fine line between love and hate.”
His tone was light, but the general smugness in his expression was irritating as always.
“Hate and love are on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum,” I retorted. “They’re nowhere near the same.”
He tilted his head, watching me closely for just a bit too long before speaking again.
“Two sides of the same coin. It’s easier to confuse them than you might think.”
“Can you go do something useful?” I snapped, pretending like I needed to wipe down the counter again just so I could turn away from him. His eyes made me feel too exposed, and I wasn’t interested in debating semantics.
“Everything’s done,” he said.
“Go bag up the pastries that are left,” I said, barely able to keep from gritting my teeth in annoyance. There weren’t many, but there was no point in throwing them away. “And put that vegan one in a separate bag for Che.”
He didn’t argue, and the moment he left the little kitchen area, I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face to try and clear my head.
I’d actually, for a split second, felt a bloom of attraction swelling up inside me for him.
Pressing my fingertips to my closed eyes, I forced myself to remember how absolutely fucking stupid that was, even if he had great shoulders and a cute face.
And a firm chest that tapered down perfectly into a trim waist.
Guys like him weren’t my type. I hated smug arrogance.
I hated rich, spoiled assholes who didn’t have a clue of how harsh the world could be, and never would know, because they were tucked safe in their glitzy bubbles with their mansions and trust funds and nepotism.
So what if his dad was making him get a degree before he had full access to that stuff?
He still had it better than the rest of us.
I was obviously just horny. The fact that I’d been too busy lately for any real action was clearly starting to affect my brain.
And even though Caelyx was easy to look at, I would never be able to understand his perspective on life, and he’d never be able to understand mine.
I couldn’t imagine pushing those differences aside, even if it was only long enough for a quick and meaningless hookup.
I wasn’t looking for anything serious, but I still had standards.
When he returned to me with two bags in hand, one with the handful of regular pastries that had been left on the glass display shelves, and one with the single vegan pastry, I gave him a quick nod.
“Turn off the lights.”
“You just love bossing me around, don’t you?
” He mused, but did as I asked, passing by me to smack down the switches along the wall.
I knew what he was implying. He was trying to feel out whether I’d want to boss him around in the bedroom.
I could never tell if he was seriously trying to talk me into fucking him, or if he just thought it was funny to pretend like he’d actually screw around with someone like me.
“In a general sense,” I answered, because I knew if I waited too long to respond, he’d think I was actually imagining us doing stuff together. We grabbed our jackets from the little room in the back, slipping them on before heading toward the front door. I opened it and waved him through.
“Well, let me know if you ever want to try it in a more intimate sense,” he offered, tilting his head and staring at me when I was done locking up.
A shiver ran through me, but it wasn’t because of his invitation. It was because it was fucking October and it was cold outside.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I muttered, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans as I moved past him to my car.
He followed closely behind, the sound of our footsteps echoing in the quiet air.
I wrenched open the door of my beat-up old sedan, jamming the key into the ignition and starting it up while he piled into the passenger seat.
Through my peripherals, I could see him staring at me curiously, the corner of his lips perked up just enough to show he was still amused about something.
I didn’t say anything as I pulled out of the lot, but I decided that if he reached out to brush my hand while I was adjusting the heat or the radio, I’d break his fingers.