Chapter 23
C hairs were flipped on top of tables when I walked into the darkened interior of Wavy.
There wasn’t anyone milling about, no errant employee sweeping or wiping down tables.
It was so quiet I could practically hear my heart beating inside my chest. I followed a stream of amber light from under a swinging door and when I arrived inside the kitchen, Alex’s back was to me.
He was at a stove with just the light on above it, stirring a wooden spoon inside a tall stainless steel stockpot.
It smelled like garlic, onions, and a touch of thyme.
He was fully immersed in the task, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up revealing muscular forearms, a white apron tied around his waist, his shoulders stooping just a little bit because of his height.
I felt this tiny ridiculous smile creep up on my face. He was gorgeous. He always had been.
His hesitancy the night of that party popped into my mind.
He’d leaned in several times, excused himself to get another drink, bit his lip, kept coming in only to lean back.
And I was so uncertain myself that I wondered if it wasn’t shyness keeping him from taking the leap, but if he was, in fact, trying to find a way to get out of the situation.
For so long, I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing, saw what I wanted to see.
Now I knew that hadn’t been true. He’d been waiting for his moment.
I had forgotten what it felt like to be drawn to someone, to want to reach under their shirt and glide across the skin of their back, roam your hands across their chest, anticipate their lips on yours.
To want their arms around you so much that you could just sink into them with relief and heat mixed into one.
To want to be touched by them so badly it aches like a thirst that cannot ever be quenched until you get the real thing over and over and over.
To want to touch them back just as badly. To be starved and desperate for it.
I had never felt like that with Josh. Only Noah. And before Noah, it had been Alex.
“Hi,” I said.
Alex whipped around, startled, wooden spoon in hand, but when he saw it was me, his expression softened into a lovesick type of smile that made me want to close my eyes and commit it to memory forever.
My heart practically drummed its own beat.
Shit .
If I didn’t put boundaries on this whole thing immediately, I was going to end up hurt. He was leaving in a month. I was going back to my life in San Francisco eventually. This needed to be temporary.
“Hi,” he said back, voice low. He deposited the spoon onto a dish next to the stove and came around the large metal prep area to where I was standing.
Lifting up the basket in my hand, I declared, “I made fresh bread.” I’d spent the whole day working on it. Benny had sat on a stool in the corner being no help at all, but she kept me company and played lots of music and sang off-key the entire time.
Alex peeked under the towel. “You made fresh bread?” he asked, those green eyes hooded under long dark eyelashes. “Since when do you make bread?”
“It’s been years,” I told him. “But I’ve picked it back up.”
“Because of this whole say-yes-to-life thing?”
“Yep.”
“You know,” he said, “my imagination has been running wild about that.”
“About my saying yes?”
“To anything? Yeah. I have a lot of ideas.”
“I’m sure,” I said, and felt my cheeks heat.
I placed the basket on the counter and tried to step back from the intensity, but the moment my hands were free, Alex spread his arms and said, “It’s so good to see you,” and I stepped forward, feeling him envelop me, my wrists grasped at his waist. He smelled like a collection of spices and good body wash and the tiniest hint of something entirely Alex that could not be identified.
“I hear you smelling me, Quinn,” he murmured into my ear. Goose bumps popped up onto my arms.
“Caught me, Perry,” I whispered.
“What’s the verdict? Good smell?”
“The best.”
“Hmmm,” he said, and I could feel the vibration of his throat. I never wanted the hug to end. His voice dropped to a whisper right into the most sensitive part of my ear, beard scratching lusciously against the side of my face. “You smell sweet, like summer fruit.”
It took every bit of my willpower to wrest myself free of him and put a bit of space between us, but in my mind I had thrown him onto the prep table, climbed on top, and done delicious things to him until whatever he was cooking on the stove burned to a crisp.
When he looked at me, it was like he’d read my mind and was, maybe, picturing the very same thing.
I cleared my throat.
The problem with unrequited teenage feelings is that when they become requited, suddenly all that small talk and awkwardness of first dates melts away. We already knew each other. That familiar intimacy wasn’t building—it was built . And that made me sweat and shiver at exactly the same time.
“So,” I asked, strolling over to the pot on the stove, attempting to get out from his orbit. “What are you making?”
“This has been simmering since lunch,” he replied, following behind. “It’s my version of French onion soup. Wait.” He turned to me, alarmed. “Do you like onions? Oh, God, I should have asked. This is extremely onion-heavy, so if you don’t like onions, I’ll need to regroup.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, chuckling, stilling him with a hand on his bicep.
He glanced over at the touch like it surprised him.
“I’m not very picky. And I love French onion soup.
As long as it has cheese bubbling on the top.
And like, an insane amount of cheese. So much cheese I get a stomachache.
When you think you’ve got enough cheese, add more. ”
He laughed. “That is the only acceptable level of cheese.”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, I was going to use some bread from our supplier for on top of the soup, but what flavor is yours?”
I leaned across the prep counter and slid my basket to where we were standing.
“It’s thyme, rosemary, apple, and Gruyère,” I said. “Here, taste.”
I ripped off two pieces from the loaf. It was a perfect crunchy outer layer with a soft, springy interior.
Alex took a bite and moaned a little, which shot straight through to my skin like a thousand tiny bubbles bursting at once.
“I’m not even saying this because I have the biggest crush on you ever,” he said. “But this is honestly the best bread I’ve ever had.”
“I thought the crush was past tense,” I joked. “Teenage you and all that.”
“Present tense,” he said, sliding toward me until we were almost touching hips. “ Very present tense.”
I shook my head to try to gather myself. “The bread’s that good?” I asked, changing the subject.
“You have a gift,” he said. “Perfect seasoning. The saltiness brings out the sweetness of the apple. Honeycrisp?”
“Honeycrisp, yes,” I said. “But one Granny Smith, as well. Just to give it a bite.”
“Inventive,” he praised. “Are you doing this for a living? Are you a baker? I need to stop flirting with you so we can talk and catch up properly.”
“I definitely want to catch up,” I said. “But let’s not take flirting off the table, either.”
He gave me a wide smile, and the sage of his eyes nearly twinkled in the golden light above the stove. “You’re fun.”
I guffawed. “Only very recently.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, I like this Say Yes to Anything Charlie. I’m very happy she’s here.”
“I’m very happy to be here.”
“Okay,” he said decisively with a firm nod of his head.
He pointed to the other side of the kitchen.
“You go sit over there on the stool so I can put these soups into a ramekin and load them up with enough cheese to make you sick. Then, we talk. I want to hear how you’ve been, but you keep drifting closer and closer to me, and I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.
We have some unfinished business, you know. ”
“Was I drifting?” I asked, innocently, because I hadn’t even noticed I was suddenly right next to him again.
“I’m not complaining,” he said. “I just can’t focus.”
I felt this fluttery tingle move its way from my cheeks to below my belly button. Oh, he’d grown up . He’d become a lot more sure of himself.
“Okay,” I said, and, just to tease him a little, I grasped his bicep and trailed my hand ever so softly down to his forearm, which elicited a very sexy sharp inhale from him.
“Now, that’s just mean,” he whispered, breathy and deep.
“Alex, we’re going to talk,” I said. “But you know where this leads. Unfinished business needs to be attended to.”
“Is this part of your month of yes? Seducing me?”
“It wasn’t initially, but now it is.”
“I’m very glad we ran into each other,” he said, smiling almost bashfully.
“Me, too,” I agreed and then I swished off toward the waiting stool on the other side of the kitchen. I was wearing black sweats and a baggy sweatshirt, but the way I felt his eyes on me, I may as well have been wearing nothing at all.