Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Cody
H alfway home, I pull over. Goddammit. I left Ari with no key and an unlocked arena. Fuck. I don’t want to go back. How can I look at him ever again? What kind of grown adult flips out over a raccoon?
… being in his arms was a little too comfortable.
I lock the doors, turn the car off, and place my sweaty palms flat on my thighs, rubbing back and forth over the rough denim.
This is so fucking embarrassing. He’s going to regret ever liking me. At first, I thought he was fucking with me. I only asked Mom to give him the job because I’d feel awful if his family didn’t have a turkey. Mom only said yes because—bless her—she’s a meddling mother and she picked up on the fact that Ari might be into me.
Mom’s so intuitive that it’s annoying sometimes. I told her that he’s probably just doing it as a bet to entertain his asshole friends. There’s that, too. On the long list of why it would never work between us, how would I hang out with him and his friends?
But the more we worked together, the more I got to know him, and the more I wanted him. I see the way everyone looks at him. And not just because he’s gorgeous. Ari has magnetic charisma. Everyone wants him. I thought he knew it, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t get that when he’s behind the till, we rake in the tips, everyone ready to splash the cash to impress him.
When people look at him, I want to rip their eyes out. And yeah, I know. So inappropriate, considering I’ve told him no every single time he’s tried to ask me out.
But I’ve … I’ve … I’ve come to like that while everyone has eyes for him, he doesn’t have eyes for anyone but me. The more I push him away, the more he does to show me he’s serious about us.
Us.
I love the sound of us.
I’m not a game-playing asshole, either. I don’t like what I’m doing. But I’m so fucking scared. I’m terrified that saying yes will ruin all this. That he only likes what he sees on the surface, and once he gets to know who I am—with all my weird-ass quirks—he’ll run the other way. I’d never get over it.
Never.
This feeling in my chest, the one that must be what it’s like to have a fifty-pound anvil compressing your ribcage, threatening a life without breathing the same ever again, would be my life without Ari in it. Dammit, I could kill him for this. I didn’t know what falling in love felt like, never thought I’d get to know. Because of Ari, I do and now I know what it would be like without him.
Even with my narrow experience with relationships, I know that’s not healthy. Maybe love isn’t?
But his cologne is here, and it does things to my insides, melting them. It only took a few short moments in his arms for the scent to cling to me, follow me home. Ari’s not in the car, but he’s in the car.
My fingers find my lips, still puffy from his teeth. That kiss. It ruined me forever. I’ll never be the same again and I wouldn’t want to be. Fairytale kisses aren’t supposed to exist, but somehow, I got one.
Fuck. Ari gave me a magic kiss, and I abandoned him at the ice arena.
What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
Drive back and tell him how I feel? I don’t know if I’m ready.
You don’t have to decide tonight, Cody.
True, but I also can’t keep stringing Ari along. I have to put a time cap on this. It’s a week until Thanksgiving. He’ll have his turkey by then, and he won’t need the extra job. He already works full-time as an apprentice house painter.
He already works full-time, and he opted to work more, mopping dirty floors just to be with you.
Fuck, yeah, okay. I’ve got to either commit or stop sending signals. Chasing off the people who ask for his number is definitely a particular kind of signal.
Mine.
You’re mine.
One week, then. But in the meantime, I pick up my phone. “Mom?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“I need a huge favor.”
M om promoted Ari to skate sharpener, and no that wasn’t the favor I asked of her. I asked her to lock up the rink so that Ari could go home, and this is my punishment. Mom wouldn’t call it that, she’d call it divine intervention.
And every time I say, “You’re not a god, Mom.”
She says, “A Mother is God in the eyes of her child.”
I’m not religious—and neither is she for that matter—but I can’t argue with her on that one. Maybe she’s annoying sometimes, but she really is the best. And she’s joking. Mostly.
But anyway, Ari’s all the way over at the skate sharpening station, and it’s consistently busy, which doesn’t allow opportunity for him to lounge around my concession stand. He’s also the kind of man who has to do a good job no matter what it is. So there he is, smiling at everyone, taking his time with their skates, sharpening them to perfection. And yeah. It’s just Mr. Jones and his two daughters, but he’s all the way over there and I’m all the way over here.
He's barely even looked this way. He apologized profusely to me when he got here—yeah, apologized to me for not locking the back door, even though I stranded him here—and then he got straight to work.
Maybe he’s hungry. I should bring him a hot dog. And a soda—he should get a soda today. He hasn’t had one in a while, surely his arteries won’t erode if he has one once in a while. Maybe the licorice, too.
It doesn’t seem real to be this fucking anxious over a small decision, but rejection anxiety is real.
He doesn’t want you bothering him. He’s finally realized what a loser you are. He’s stopped thinking you’re anything special.
The last one is the loudest because if I’m not special, why does he need me? He could be with anybody else. Special people. Ari is special and can have the special-est person.
What I can do is stop looking at him. Stop thinking about him. Forget this whole thing ever happened. That’s what I did before, when I’d fall too far down rabbit holes of obsessing over Ari.
But it’s not as easy to do those things as it was two weeks ago before he loitered in front of my concession stand when he was supposed to be mopping. Before he leaned against the counter watching me work. Before he smiled at me like I was the world and he was just living in it. Before I knew what it felt like to be in his arms.
The kiss that lives rent-free in my head.
Fuck. I’m fucked.
I guess.
Well, I guess.
I guess I have nothing to lose by bringing him a hot dog. There’s always a lull in business once people have made their way onto the ice, so I put up my “back in twenty minutes” sign and head to Ari, bearing food, drinks, and snacks.
The last person makes their way onto the ice as I let myself into Ari’s booth. He jumps.
“Gah, didn’t see you behind me. What’s all this?”
“Uh, thought you might be hungry?”
“Hungry? I’m starving! I get soda and licorice? What did I do to deserve all this?”
What hasn’t he done? He deserves everything, and I’m the worst. “Thanks for the raccoon thing,” I half mumble. “It was kind of heroic.”
That’s when it happens. The smile. Not just any smile, but the one he smiles for me. Rays of sunshine bust through the dark forest of my insides, unearthing things like hope and optimism that have been buried for years.
He doesn’t smile at the people who try to flirt with him like that. He definitely doesn’t smile at his asshole friends like that.
Just me.
My lips twitch at the corners. I look away briefly but force myself to meet his gaze again. I don’t want to miss that smile for anything. “Here.”
I hand him the goods. His knuckles brush mine, sending fizzy electricity through my hand. He pauses—did he notice that too?—and licks his lips. I don’t think he’s thinking about hot dogs.
Or well, not the kind you eat.
Oh. God. Fuck. Why does my brain have to be so fucking dirty?
I drop the damn soda, and it explodes on the worn rubber flooring. We don’t replace the flooring in here as often, and it’s hard enough to crack the can. Grape fizz sprays from the small can like rocket fire.
“I’m sorry! Fuck, I ruin everything.” I turn to run.
“Oh no you don’t. Not this time.” He grips my wrist, and it’s not just his strength holding me here—though there is that—but my lack of desire to leave. My skin burns under those fingers, but I want to burn with him. My heart beats so fast I might die. Still holding the hot dog in one hand, he spins me toward him, making me face him. “Please don’t leave. I don’t care about spilled soda.”
I’m in his arms again. I like being right here. Taking a shallow breath, I nod. I’m in this now, with everything to lose.
Bubbly fizz leaks from the busted can as the whine of carbonation hisses in the air. Ari laughs, but I’m gonna need to pick that up. Sticky soda’s gonna be everywhere. It’s a dilemma—I don’t wanna go anywhere, but my damn fingers itch.
“You wanna pick that up, don’t you?”
“How did you know that?”
“You’re as stiff as a two-by-four. Here, I’ll grab it.”
I’m forced to let him go as he bends for the soda. It’s spraying like a compressed garden hose. “Here, you need to…” I help him crack the can open to release the pressure, grape soda soaks my hand.
His palm cups mine and assists with a toss into the garbage that I never would have landed without him. I don’t have that kind of hand-eye coordination.
It hits the bottom with a thud, and he stares at the space over the trash can.
“Me and that soda are simply not meant to be. C’mere.”
He sits and pulls me into his lap. The long pieces of his caramel hair fall into his cornflower blues, and it’s instinct for me to push them out of the way. But shit, my fingers are sticky with soda. He’s still beaming, and I’m biting my lip.
“Sorry. I don’t think I got any in your hair.”
“But just in case,” he says and proceeds to lick my hand, sucking the stickiest finger into his mouth. I die inside. My palm burns from the base to the tips of each finger. He sets the hot dog down so he can use one of the towels meant for wiping off ice slush from used skates to dry my hand.
“This one’s clean,” he assures me.
But my hand’s not. It’s dirty. So, so, so dirty. The good kind of dirty.
“I’m, uh, it’s fine,” I murmur.
He brings the knuckles to his chapped lips, pressing a chaste kiss there that’s a sharp contrast to the way he inhaled my finger. A sight that’s on repeat, but my imagination’s got him swallowing a very different digit. My cock strains behind the zipper of my jeans.
This is how I die.
“Now, I’m gonna eat this here hot dog, and you’re gonna tell me about you. Or you can just watch me, if you prefer. Fair warning, you’re going to have dirty thoughts.”
Too late. I’ve already had several dirty thoughts.
He’s so ridiculous, though. I almost laugh. I take option two—watch him—but it’s not long before the nerves and the little critical voice return, reminding me of all the things I could be doing to make him stop liking me.
You don’t want to look too interested—that gives desperate. But you need to appear interested enough, or you’re just a cardboard cutout in his lap. Oh, God. You’re too rigid. Do something. You’re bad at this.
I just want to be a quarter as cool as he is. What will you do when you’re his boyfriend and he wants to have sex with you? You’re gonna be so awkward and foolish.
Boyfriend? Whoa. Way ahead of yourself, Cody. We haven’t been on a date yet. This doesn’t mean anything.
But also.
Yes, it does.
To me it does.