Chapter 9 #2
"I didn't want to kiss anyone," Angelo said. He lowered his eyes to mine, searching them. His thumb had found that seam on my back again and was grazing it softly back and forth. "Still don't."
"You should," I replied unconvincingly. Our legs notched even harder against each other. My attention fell to Angelo's mouth, his pretty lips, the trimmed yet full jaw of hair mere inches from mine.
Angelo shook his head, his gaze tracing the way I involuntarily wet my lips with my tongue like I was preparing for something I wasn't sure had even registered in my brain yet.
Everything was hazy again. Apparently, that effect I'd sworn was Vegas was actually just Angelo. It wasn't the lights or the drinks or the freedom. It was his proximity. His direct influence on my prefrontal cortex.
Suddenly, kissing him didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Suddenly, kissing him was the only thing I'd ever wanted.
Eric dropped two hot plates in front of us, and my spine straightened.
A deep breath I pulled through my nose ended up coughing out in a sigh of awkward relief as I turned toward our burgers on the wood bar top.
"Thank you, Eric!" He left the wings between us and came back with two more beers, a swath of napkins, and a basket to discard bones.
Angelo groaned, his hand squeezing in on itself and letting go like he was holding a stress ball. “Maybe Eric doesn't want to sleep with you, but he doesn't want anyone else to."
"Some things in life are best enjoyed hot," I explained. "The surfside burger is one of them."
"They should rename it the cockblock burger," he mused.
"It's worth it."
"I highly doubt that." Angelo picked up the burger, which somehow looked small in his hands despite being a pound of meat and condiments.
His first bite was messy and deliberate and I couldn't tear myself away from the show of it.
A trail of Mackerel sauce dribbled down his pinky finger and he ran it through the seam of his lips, sucking the mess clean off.
My throat dried, and my tongue was suddenly thick between my teeth. "Well?"
Angelo swallowed, followed it with half the beer in his bottle, and leaned back against the tall barstool with his hands resting against his stomach. "Fuck me," he mumbled.
"Told you." A broad smile tightened my cheeks; I was vindicated.
"I'm hard right now," he grumbled. "That burger is sexual. It's touching me in all the right places."
"You're a pig," I tossed out. "I told you so, though. It's like a God-tier food snob burger."
"The cheese…what is that cheese?"
I nodded. "Gouda."
"Jesus."
"And the bacon."
"It's like the mix of the crispy and the maple with a hint of spice…" He was now dissecting the layers of his burger, looking under the bun. "What is the sauce?"
"House secret." I shrugged. "Just gotta trust it."
"This was your big plan," Angelo said. "Distract me from the fact that you asked me on a date by getting me burger drunk."
A flimsy scoff left my throat. "This is the furthest thing from a date."
"How so?"
I picked up a chicken wing, smothered in a deep orange glaze, and tore the meat off it with my teeth. "For starters, I'm stuffing my face with chicken wings. If this were a date I would have ordered a salad, an appetizer at most, something I needed a fork for."
"You're comfortable with me," he decided.
"I just don't care what you think."
Angelo took another bite of his burger and, between swallows, said, "Even better."
"Is this what it's like to live life by the seat of your pants?" I asked. "Assuming only positivity until the narrative fits what you're going for?"
"So far it's worked out for me. I'm on a date with possibly the hottest girl I've ever seen, she's insulting me—badly, we're sharing a plate of chicken wings and drinking beer, and the band is playing The Cranberries. I don't see how living life that way has steered me wrong."
"It's not a date," I said again, even less convincingly than the first time, and took a bite of my burger.
"You let me buy you a drink," Angelo pointed out. "That's your criteria, isn't it?"
Worse than being attractive, and confident, and a righteous bastard with a smoky lilt to his syllables, he also listened. He was detail-oriented in all the ways that made it hard to ignore the fluttering in my chest.
"Maybe I'm just taking advantage of you," I said coyly. "You're clearly desperate and willing, and I'd be an idiot not to run up your bar tab. It's the least you could do after I brought you here."
"Can I ask you a question?" He pointed the fat end of a chicken drumstick at me, then dipped it into a saucer of ranch dressing. “And I want a real answer, not some bullshit, rehearsed, good girl answer.”
"Haven’t we been doing that?"
Angelo pulled some napkins out of the ramekin in front of us. "What's the worst that could happen?"
I averted my eyes, took another sloppy bite of my burger, and pretended it was easy to chew with an anxious lump crawling up my throat. "I don't know what you mean."
"Don't play stupid, Mia," he said directly, pushing my plate away from me. "We're past that by now. We're across the line."
I wedged my tongue into the soft inside of my cheek. "You're so full of yourself."
"You could be full of me, too."
A sharp, shocked laugh burst out of me, but the heat spinning a web in my stomach was starting to drip like honey, sending a rush of pressure to my core.
"See, this…this is what I mean," I stuttered. "The worst thing that could happen? Everything. There's not an upside to this, there's only wrong, and bad, and selfish. We don't…" I gestured wildly between us and Angelo caught my hand, laying it on the top of his thigh. "We…don't work."
"Plants in condos with no natural lighting don't work, but you find a way," he pushed.
My lips parted, then came back together like a fish looking for a drink of water. How dare he use my hobby against me? "If my plants die, it doesn't break up a family."
"If it makes you feel any better, I promise not to kill you."
"I can't say the same."
"I'm willing to die for it."
"I hate you," I said with anything other than hate in a cloyingly sweet voice.
"It's not hate, remember?" Angelo flexed his thigh beneath my hand, and the warmth through his jeans made me spread my fingers. His lips twitched and his gaze landed on the proximity of my touch to the zipper of his fly.
My elbow rested on the bar top, and I dropped my chin into the palm of my hand. Angelo leaned in again.
"You can't kick me out of this bar like you kicked me out of your place."
"Eric will do whatever I want," I whispered confidently. "You make one wrong move and the surfside burger will never be seen again."
"You move your hand one more inch to the left and I'll carry you out of here over my shoulder like a sheet of drywall."
There was a brief moment where I thought about testing that.
But it was squashed by my name being called through the hum of the crowd and the bass guitar solo.
I turned quickly, and saw Scott—lender Scott, Branting partner Scott—venturing toward our corner from the front of the bar. Of all places, of all people…
My stomach sank, and instantly a wall came up between Angelo and me.
I pulled my hand from his lap, straightened my back against the seat, and crossed my arms over my shoulderless top.
I wasn't at work, but I felt exposed as if I were. Like I’d been caught making out with a coworker in the break room.
It took Angelo a moment but he reluctantly shrank back into his own seat, as if being alone with him wasn’t damning enough. The air went cold around us.
"What are the odds?" Angelo growled.
"Don't be a dick," I hissed. Scott made his way to us, his smile flatlining into a dismal curve when he realized it was Angelo beside me in the dark restaurant.
This was why it would never work. My entire life was an appearance, even the small, secret corners of it.
We weren't supposed to be canoodling at the local dive on a Sunday night. I wasn’t embarrassed about Angelo, it was more than that.
It was something that had nothing to do with him but something inside myself that took years to get there and would probably take years to be unraveled. We didn't have that.
He was him, and I was me.
And in this moment, Mia Russo had been backed into a wall. And I didn't like that feeling.
"Little late for a home tour," Scott commented. "This is the, uh…" He pointed toward Angelo offhandedly, who had his jaw locked and his eyes narrowed. "The construction guy."
"Angelo," I confirmed nonchalantly. "Yeah, actually, our siblings are married, so…" I trailed off.
"So, you're suddenly not too busy." Scott shrugged, his nose wrinkled with distaste. "I'm surprised by you, Mia."
Angelo sat forward. "Why, because she's not interested in you?”
Scott sniffed out a lazy laugh and ignored him, resting his palm on the bar next to me. "I told you he would do this, didn't I? Blue-collar guys want one thing. I thought you were smarter than that."
"Back off, dickhead," Angelo said more sternly.
"I'm having dinner with a friend." I was flustered, and hurt, and defensive about my own autonomy. "This isn’t your business, anyway, Scott. It has nothing to do with you, or us."
"I mean, it kind of does.” He clicked his tongue.
"We work together on a lot of funding, and I don't know if your decision-making is at its best at the moment.
How do I know you're bringing in a client who can afford a loan and not just one you're fucking on the side? That's not a great partnership."
"That's low," I scoffed. "Don't stand here and insult me because you're hurt that I didn't give you a call back."
"Well, at least now I know why." Scott rapped his knuckles on the countertop and slid past my chair, stopping briefly next to Angelo. "Enjoy while you can, man. They're all the same."
Angelo moved to stand, the legs of his stool harshly scraping against the wooden floor. "Fuck you—"