Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Jeff
I’m tipping the pizza delivery guy when I hear Devon laughing uncontrollably from the kitchen.
“Thanks, man. Drive safe,” I say, closing the door between us, trying to wipe the cheesy smile I’m sporting off of my face as I make my way through the living room with the pizzas. Her laughter is pure joy.
“You can’t be serious, Jeff,” she says, her grin so bright it makes the Edison bulbs above the island look dim. Her hair is wet and pulled into a bun on top of her head, her skin glowing.
Shit. She’s holding the third DVD I hid beneath the fruit bowl.
“I told you it was a mistake,” I say, placing the pizzas on the table and reaching to snatch the disc out of her hand. She dodges my grab and scurries around to the other side of the island, her oversized sweatpants nearly catching under her feet and making her fall.
“I want to know what you were thinking when you chose '50 Shades' from the machine,” she says, her brows merging with her hairline. I’d pick the damn movie again if I got to see her smile like this all night.
I let out a breath. Look to the ceiling.
“Let’s call your mom down—”
“To watch soft-core porn with us?”
“To eat the pizza.”
She shakes her head.
“Kathy won’t be joining us for dinner. She’s requested room service,” she says, eyes still glittering. “Shame though. She does love herself some S & M.”
“You’re impossible,” I say.
“Impossibly awesome.”
Devon slides the DVD across the island to me and winks, then turns to grab some plates from the cabinet.
As she lifts onto her toes and reaches upward, her shirt lifts a little exposing the skin at her back.
The memory of how soft and warm she was that night on the dance floor makes me grip the edge of the counter.
I remind myself why I’m here. To comfort. To listen. Not to ogle.
She turns and meets my gaze, freezes with the plates against her chest. It’s like every time she sees me in her kitchen, her brain needs to re-acclimate.
“What do you want to watch first?” she asks, swallowing hard.
“It’s your night. Your choice.”
“Ok. Efron it is,” she says, looking down at her fuzzy pink socks.
“It’s a shame I didn’t bring anything with Henry Cavill. You know you thought I was him the first night that we met?”
She makes a disbelieving noise and moves toward the pizza boxes. “You didn’t actually let my hallucinations go to your head, did you? Awww. You did. That’s sooo—cute?” She tilts her head and gives me an overstated pitying look as she lifts the lid.
This—the teasing and banter—feels too damn good.
“Not everything patients say when the anesthesia wears off is nonsense. In fact, I’ve heard patients profess their love for people who they never had the guts to tell because of those pesky inhibitions,” I tell her. Really, I heard a girl tell a pack of saltines she’d love them forever. But still.
“Mistaking you for Henry Cavill is hardly a declaration of love,” she says.
“I didn’t say that it was. But it’s a declaration of something.”
She pulls a slice of pizza onto each plate, narrows one eye at me as she licks the cheese from her fingers.
“You know you are barking up a dead tree—”
“The wrong tree,” I correct.
“Yeah, a dead tree is the wrong tree.” She takes a bite of pizza, chews slowly, and keeps her eyes on me. “See this shirt.” She points to her chest. “It says ‘damaged goods’.”
It doesn’t. It says ‘Beer me, bitch.’
“We’re all damaged, Devon. Stop trying to push me away and go feed your mom and meet me on the couch.”
To my surprise, she doesn’t argue. Just lets out a long, uneven breath and picks up a plate, then heads out of the kitchen and up the steps.
I grab the other two slices and a couple of beers from the fridge, and head to the living room, setting it all down on the coffee table in front of the couch.
I don’t know what I expected to find here, but a laughing, joking Devon was not it.
If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been infatuated with the dancing light in her eyes since that night in recovery, I would never have noticed its absence tonight.
But infatuated I am. And so I recognize her humor for what it is.
Another coping mechanism—a tool to cover and avoid. She’s a world class illusionist.
Confirming my thought, Devon appears from nowhere with a cupcake in one hand and a beer in the other.
“It’s Efron time, baby!” she yells in an NFL coach’s voice.
She lets out a whoop-whoop and does a little fist pump with the cupcake hand, then grabs the DVD and pops it into the player.
When she turns and straightens, all of her focus lowers to her cupcake.
She rolls her tongue around the top of the icing, and shuts her eyes.
A low sound escapes me before I can swallow it.
“What?” she asks.
Damn it. She hears everything. Teacher senses.
“Nothing,” I say.
“That dramatic teenage girl exhale was not nothing. That’s the sound Syd makes when I make her focus on pre-calc.” She takes another swig of her beer and watches me. I was not thinking of pre-calc.
“Really it was just—it was a cleansing breath.”
She takes a step forward, pulls one side of her mouth upward.
The white bulbs in the recessed lighting above are sending streaks of copper through her thick hair and I can’t stop imagining the way it might feel wrapped around my fingers.
Devon seems to see into my mind because a dusting of red spreads across her cheek bones.
She lowers her eyes and lets out a breath.
“What?” I ask.
My heart is stuck in this frantic rhythm, the too fast tempo of a song your feet can’t keep up with.
“Nothing,” she says, but her voice is thicker—warmer. “Just a cleansing breath.”
She swallows, the freckle just above her clavicle jumps and settles, then she turns away and plops into the center of the couch.
I stay put, take the time to pull my shit together and stop the tachycardia she’s triggered.
She needs comfort. And I need to back off.
And get my heart rate steady. But I know that all the cleansing breaths in the world aren’t going to steady this.
I’m fucked. Head-over-heels fucked. And if I really let myself look closely, I know that I have been for a while.
Every piece of me is pulling toward her, except that one reasonable part of my brain, saying, “don’t be a selfish shit, Jeff.
” Give her what she needs. Maybe I should head out back and scrape the chicken shit. That’ll cool me down.
I take a long swig of my beer and roll my shoulders once, grab onto that reasonable voice in my mind, and get ready to face that cupcake.