Page 39 of Make it Real
“I crochet a little bit, but I can’t knit at all. Even then, I always get the ending stitches wrong, and whatever I’m making gets smaller and smaller until it disappears.” I laughed, but she didn’t seem to find my story all that funny. Maybe she didn’t crochet. “I’m bad at counting out the stitches in every row, and that’s never a good sign your work’s going to turn out right. I’m a teacher, so you’d think I could sort out the numbers, but nope.”
She watched me like I had a screw loose.
“Sorry, I’m babbling. Have a good day, I hope you make a lot of sales!”
I grabbed Jed’s hand, bolting away from the booth and hopefully far from wherever Gran and Linda were. Marching us between shoppers, I broke out into a sweat not entirely due to the sweltering summer sun. I hated acting like a fool, and I’d just done exactly that in front of Jed. Again. Ugh.
“Are you hungry?” We’d reached a cluster of food trucks where fifty different smells assaulted our senses. Spicy, sweet, tangy—a little bit of everything filled the air. “Tacos? Corndogs? Chili?”
“Mmm, chili.” He rubbed his stomach. “What could be better than a hot bowl of chili on a hundred-degree day?”
He tugged at my hand, letting me in on his joke. The brittle embarrassment inside me softened some, and I exhaled a laugh.
“Ice cream?” I said.
“Now you’re talking.”
He bought us scoops of specialty hand-crafted ice cream while I chewed on a thumbnail when he wasn’t looking. I was still worked up over letting myself get…well, so worked up, and I didn’t want to know if he’d realized it. Probably hadn’t. We’d agreed to pretend to date, so I needed to act the part. But if hehadrealized, the rest of our fake relationship could turn all sorts of awkward. If I didn’t want to lose all my goals here, I needed to get a grip.
We walked away from the market while we ate our cones, and the crowd thinned down to more typical Saturday afternoon sidewalk traffic. Jed nodded toward an open bench.
“Do you want to sit for a while?”
I slumped down, my bare thighs grateful the wrought-iron bench had been in the shade all morning. Finally relaxing a little, my heart rate and my thoughts settled back down to normal levels. Savoring the sweet-salty crunch of the cool candy bar confection I’d chosen, I made a sound in the back of my throat.
He turned to me, eyebrows raised.
“I’m sorry, it’s just really good ice cream.” Maybe not so good I needed to moan over it, but it’d been a wild morning.
“I didn’t complain. I encourage your yummy sounds.”
I rolled my eyes, nudging him with my elbow. “Shush.”
He took a bite of his cone, licking his lips afterward in a truly scandalous way. I’d never stared quite so intently at someone’s mouth before. My insides heated, and my heart rate spiked all over again. His eyes darted to me, his lips lifting into a little smirk.
Just great. Jed’s attractiveness already sat at unhealthily high levels, but if he was going to add a little extrazhuzhto it just for fun, we’d have widespread carnage. Women for fifty miles around would swoon without knowing why.
“How’s your strawberry buttermilk?” I needed a distraction. Ice cream flavors probably wasn’t the best option, but anything would help.
“Perfect combo of sweet and tart.”
“I can never decide if I want fruit or chocolate. Fruit flavors are light and bright, you know? And I can eat a lot before I regret it. But chocolate is just so decadent and rich, it’s hard to resist. Even if later, I’ll feel like I ate a whole tub of it.” I started crunching on my cone. “Sorry,” I said around the bite. “I’m babbling about ice cream.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
The softness in his voice made me sit up straighter. Oh boy. Here it comes. He’d noticed the wanton longing in my eyes during the shawl debacle and wanted to talk it out. Remind me of our arrangement, and my promise not to fall for him. Something that carried the wordsabsolutelynotwith it.
“Okay.”
“Why do you do that? Why do you always say you’re babbling?”
Oh. The tautness inside me eased up. Much better than asking about the way I’d lightly groped him earlier. “I was talking a lot.”
“I didn’t complain.”
“I know, but it’s an annoying habit. People don’t like it.”
“What people?”
