17. Chapter Seventeen #2
“I preheated it, so it should be ready to go,” Emmett said, opening the door for him, singing under his breath.
Preston slid his pizza inside and set a timer.
“Here, let me help you with yours,” Emmett said, carefully transferring my pizza to the oven alongside Preston’s and his.
"I’m sad I missed your performance,” I said, faking a pout.
The song changed to something vaguely familiar and upbeat. Preston, still riding whatever high he was on, grabbed my hands and pulled me to him.
“No need to be sad when you can have your very own private performance.”
I laughed against his chest, snorting as he pushed me away, only to pull me close again.
“Can I cut in?” Emmett asked, putting his hand out.
I nodded, drunk with the prospect of being close to him, too. It would be nice to be sandwiched between them, but that would be a weird request and today already felt like a twilight zone. Preston singing after a bad practice wasn’t a normal occurrence.
Emmett put his hand on the small of my back and wrapped his fingers around my other hand. We swayed around the kitchen, bumping into Preston on purpose as we rounded the island.
He laughed and tugged me out of Emmett’s arms.
My body was teeming with nerves and gusts of heady pleasure as they passed me back and forth. This was it. I could ask them to kiss me. Or maybe I could initiate it and not even ask. That was how these things happened, right? Organically? In fun moments like this one.
An icy dread sapped my energy. I couldn’t write a kiss scene. Who was I to initiate a kiss? I’d just make an idiot of myself, and they’d laugh at my expense.
I’d had enough people torment me over one botched kiss. I didn’t need two witnesses to another failed attempt. Especially not these two. I cared about their opinion, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the embarrassment a second time around.
Pulling myself free, I mumbled something about needing to put the cheese away.
They let me go and danced with each other as I tried to keep my heart in check.
It was hard to do as Preston’s cheeks flushed when Emmett held up his hand for Preston to twirl beneath.
I might have laughed if it wasn’t so intimate.
Even though they were bumbling through some moves, they were laughing openly and genuinely. And once again, it was something I was on the outside of. Love wasn’t for me. Juliet was wrong. Preston and Emmett had a better chance of making it as a couple than I did with either of them.
I focused on rearranging the ingredients as the song changed, and they chatted about practice. Emmett was giving Preston advice on how to tighten up some of his moves and Preston was listening while rummaging through the fridge.
“I think if you followed what Johnston has been doing, it could help your shots.”
“I’ll try that,” Preston said, shutting the fridge, his face deep in thought.
I turned away from the counter where I’d been pretending to organize toppings while we waited for the pizzas to cook.
As I turned, I ran into Emmett. Not like a light bump.
A full-on chest-to-abs smack. Very hard abs that knocked the wind out of me.
I glanced up, meeting his gorgeous green eyes, aware of how very short I was next to him.
He could sling me over his shoulder and—I sucked in a dizzying breath and tried to make my feet move.
Emmett was clear we wouldn’t be kissing in any sort of non-romantic moment, and I wasn’t sure if wearing a shirt covered in shredded cheese dust counted as a romantic environment.
My lips didn’t care, though.
If he bent his head down, I would have greedily stretched up to kiss him.
That was good. I could use that line in my book. Make my characters greedy for each other. That was exactly how I was feeling. I had two perfectly kissable sets of lips in the same room as me, and I would have done anything to kiss both of them.
Emmett reached behind me and grabbed an oven mitt. His arm brushed against mine and I pressed my eyes shut, not even meaning to.
I opened them again, hoping he hadn’t seen me savoring the sweep of his skin against mine. But he was smiling, his lips pursed, like he was ready to laugh at me or kiss me. I wasn’t sure which it was.
Either prospect made my pulse race, and I didn’t want to risk the chance of being laughed at. I forced my feet to move, turning on my heel to grab my pizza.
Instead of a clear path to the counter, I smacked into another roadblock. This one was taller and looking at me curiously.
Why in the heck were we all standing so close in a huddle around the oven? The kitchen was plenty big enough for all three of us to go about our business without touching. But there we were, bumbling all over each other clumsily.
I turned around again, and Emmett was still there, his lips parting as he flicked his gaze from my eyes to my mouth.
My stomach coiled into a heated knot as I rocked forward onto my toes.
Emmett stepped closer, our toes bumping as his mouth curved into a deliciously wicked smile that made my heart thunder in my ears.
Preston was still behind me, the two of them cocooning me in hope and possibility, as my body ached for them to move even closer.
This was it. I would never be twenty-six and never-been-kissed. The kiss was happening, and I was still very solidly twenty-five.
My stomach coiled tighter as Emmett brought his hands to my shoulders, trailing them down to my elbows as goosebumps tingled in the wake of his touch.
Preston was pressing against me so tightly from behind I could feel what I was certain was an erection against my leg. This was happening, and he was into it.
Would Emmett kiss me and then Preston immediately after?
My mind raced with the possibilities until Emmett stroked his finger over my lips and all my thoughts turned to mush. A small moan slipped out of me, and I wasn’t even embarrassed.
This was happening.
And then a beep startled me out of the fogginess of his touch. The timer had gone off, breaking the spell over us. Emmett’s eyes snapped to the egg-shaped kiss-blocker, and I swallowed around a lump in my throat.
Emmett quickly pulled the pizzas from the oven, the scent of melted cheese filling the kitchen.
Something had changed. Kissing was no longer something scary. Before, the beeping intrusion would have been such a relief. Not now.
Now, I wanted to kiss them. I wanted it so badly it hurt to be around them. I was too cowardly to admit it out loud, and that was the most frustrating part of it all.
“Ouch,” Preston hissed as he cut the too-hot pizza.
Disappointment in my inability to just kiss them flooded me as I grabbed my plate. “Thanks for cutting this,” I muttered, not trusting myself to keep the tears inside. “I’m going to eat in my room,”
These two were menaces to my mental health. I was doing just fine until they came along and uprooted everything I thought I wanted. I would have been perfectly content to live a life alone and never think about love, but all these moments with them had me reading way too far into things.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded with my back to Preston. The tears were already spilling with each step loosening them from the corners of my eyes, and I didn’t want him to ask me what was wrong.
Crying while telling him I wanted to kiss him was a low I wasn’t ready to reach.