Chapter Twelve #2
I definitely wasn’t thinking about touching the front of his shirt. Of pressing my hand to the flat expanse of his abdomen and feeling the hard-won muscles there.
I rub my eyes, shooting a glance at him. With his head tipped back, his Adam’s apple is prominent, his neck muscles taut.
I grip the cushion beneath me and manage to not run screaming from the room. “I’d like the record to show that I did apologize,” I say, my voice thick. “Many times, in fact.”
Jamie glances at me with his good eye, then does a double take as he sits straight up, the bag of vegetables falling into his lap. “What the hell is in your nose?”
“I’m blocking out the candle smells.” After the smoke, my sinuses simply couldn’t handle the onslaught, and the only relief came from stuffing toilet paper in each nostril. It gives my voice a nice congested sound.
As the others begin to laugh, I hold up a hand, covering the lower half of my face. “Everyone stop looking at me! It’s because of my allergies.”
“This was the only thing you could think of?” Andres asks.
“We could’ve blown them out!” says Felicity. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“We needed the light,” I say. “And I didn’t want to be difficult.”
Mikey, who’s sprawled on the floor, has rolled onto her stomach, her face buried in her arms as she continues to giggle.
Even Jamie’s mouth has quirked in a smile, but when he catches me looking, he smooths out his expression and picks up the bag of vegetables.
“You didn’t want to be difficult?” he asks, lifting the bag to his eye again. “That’s new.”
“Hilarious. Should I go find my umbrella and even out your face?”
“I cannot take you seriously right now,” he replies.
“I can’t take either of you seriously right now,” Felicity says, lifting her phone, and I hear the camera shutter. “Wow, what a cute couple.” She turns the screen around, showing Jamie and me in the dim light—him with the frozen vegetables, me with wads of toilet paper sticking out of my nose.
“Delete that,” I say. “And then delete it from deleted.”
She grins, tucking her phone in her pocket. “No, I think I’ll have it framed.”
“I blame you for this,” I say to Jamie. “She takes too much pleasure in bullying you. I’m an innocent casualty.”
He huffs out a laugh. “There is absolutely nothing innocent about you.”
His bare knee presses into mine, and I inhale so sharply, I begin to cough. One wad of toilet paper shoots from my nose like a projectile, landing in the nearest candle, where it quickly burns up. The candle begins to spark, spitting little flares over the side.
I stare at it in shock while everyone else screams with laughter.
Even Jamie is grinning as he lowers the vegetables from his eye again and leans forward to blow out the candle.
It smolders for a moment before a curl of cinnamon-scented smoke begins to rise.
I sneeze, losing the other wad of toilet paper.
“You’re a mess,” Jamie says, shifting to the edge of the couch. His thigh brushes along mine as he stands, sending tingles down my leg. I curl my hand in a fist and shove the little bullet of toilet paper into the pocket of my shorts. My face is so hot, I worry I’m glowing.
Jamie disappears into his bathroom, returning with a roll of toilet paper that he tosses into my lap. When he drops down beside me again, his shoulder bumps mine before settling, still touching.
“I’m bored.” Mikey stretches across the floor to the TV stand and pulls an Uno deck from a basket on the shelf. “Let’s play a game.”
Jamie lowers the frozen vegetables. “You mean you want to commit a murder?”
Mikey gapes at him. “Excuse me?”
“I think we’ve had enough bloodshed tonight,” Andres says, nodding at Jamie.
“I suggested an innocent card game—”
“UNO brings out her violent side,” Felicity stage-whispers to me.
“I don’t have a violent side!” Mikey protests.
“Except for the time you grabbed me by the hair because I hit you with a Draw Four when you were about to win!” says Andres.
“I told you—there was a bug on you!”
Andres shoots her a narrow-eyed look of suspicion. “Uh-huh.”
“That one DnD night when half the group was home sick, I think you scarred Norris for life,” Jamie says. “And you threw your cards at Heather.”
“I maintain she kind of deserved that.”
“I do think Heather has an equally violent spirit. Besides, that worked out fine for you, Jamie,” Felicity says, sending him an arch look. “Some might say Mikey did you a favor.”
I glance between them all, guessing at Felicity’s meaning. Heather, the pink-haired girl from DnD night—the one I definitely thought was flirting with Jamie in an inevitable-hookup kind of way—clearly has been down that road before in some capacity.
My curiosity gets the best of me, and I’m proud I manage to sound casual as I ask, “And what does that mean?”
Jamie tosses the bag of frozen vegetables aside and pushes up from the couch, leaning across the coffee table to swipe the cards from Mikey. “Are we playing or what?”
“Oh, I see. You want me to use my imagination.”
“Wrong,” Jamie says without missing a beat. “I don’t want you thinking about me at all, Blair.”
Too late.
Jamie swipes a card off the top of the deck and points it at my nose, but when I make a grab for it, he flicks his wrist and it disappears.
I blink, startled out of my bad mood. “What was that?”
He flicks his hand again and taps my nose with the card as it reappears between his fingers.
“Did you just… I’m sorry, did you just do a magic trick?”
If I’m not mistaken, Jamie Atwater might be blushing right now. He starts to shuffle the cards, his fingers as deft as a Vegas dealer’s.
“Jamie knows a bunch of card tricks!” Mikey says. “You didn’t know that?”
“Show me one,” I say to him.
Jamie keeps shuffling. “Win a hand of Uno, and maybe I will.”
“Cut your losses now,” Felicity says. “You’ll never win in this group. Mikey kills every time. Literally—if she thinks she won’t win, she just—” She slashes her thumb across her throat.
Mikey’s jaw drops. “I am a perfectly fair and normal person to play games with!”
The room goes silent but for the fwip of cards being shuffled.
“Screw you all,” Mikey says with a laugh.
“There’s that fighting spirit,” Andres says.
I smile to myself, but I feel a pang of loneliness in my gut.
The affection in their teasing, their familiarity with each other’s lives.
Starr, Leni, and I had that—the gentle ribbing, the knowing looks, the jokes and the laughter and the easiness.
Seeing my roommates together, witnessing their friendship up close, makes me miss the one I lost so deeply, I almost consider grabbing my phone and calling them.
Could breaking that ice somehow put everything to rights?
Could we work through it if I just reached out?
I feel Jamie’s eyes on me, and I realize I’ve picked up my phone, clutching it so hard that my fingers ache.
I flip it screen down on the couch, avoiding his gaze. It’s embarrassing that he might be able to read my desperation straight from my face.
I turn my head away from him as I scoot toward the coffee table. “So how do we decide who goes first?”