Page 21 of Sweet Passions at Bayside
“Yeah. And?”
“And that was for you. I figured you’d want to binge-watch something at some point, and I wanted to be prepared. I even bought the first season of that show you keep begging me to watch.Outsiders.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She and Desiree used to do things like that for each other, but her guy friends would be more likely to toss her a beer when she showed up than prepare for her visit. Her older brother Alec had told her about the series, and she’d been dying to watch it. But Alec had a fledgling entertainment magazine he was trying to get off the ground, and he traveled often. He always seemed to have time to watch over Emery in a big-brotherly way, but rewatching a television series with her wasn’t how he wanted to spend the little free time he had.
“I think you just inched up a notch closer to the number one BFF spot. But…” She opened the fridge again and scanned the contents—fresh veggies, Greek yogurt, farm-raised chicken thighs…“Let’s see if you make the cut…”
He reached around her and pulled a can of whipped cream from the back of the top shelf. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
He set it on the counter and reached into a cabinet above her. His chest brushed against her back, and for a fleeing moment she allowed herself to enjoy the feel of his hard frame pressed against her.Friends, friends, friends, she reminded herself, struggling to ignore how good he felt. Could a person go through withdrawals from human touch? When thefriendsreminder didn’t take away the tingling in her lower belly, she pulled out the big guns—boss, boss, boss!
He took a step back, and cooler air rushed over her skin. Her breath left her lungs with a long, relieved exhalation.
There. That’s better.
Worse. But safer.
He set containers of chocolate and rainbow sprinkles beside the can of whipped cream, flashing a knowing grin. “What do you call nights like this again? Who-needs-men-when-I-have-Bennights?”
And just like that her head cleared and she needed no more reminders. This man had become one of her closest friends. He knew her—all of her—the good, the bad, and the annoying, and he still spent hours on the phone with her, had helped her figure things out so she could come to the Cape,andhe had offered her a place to stay without hesitation. Only an idiot would take a chance at messing that up.
“I can’t believe you remembered that.” She opened the ice cream as he took two bowls down from a shelf.
He scooped the ice cream into the bowls. “Kind of hard to forget when it seemed to be your mantra for a while there.”
She opened the can of whipped cream and sprayed some in her mouth, thinking about what he’d said. “Not all of us are lucky in love. Open up.”
She aimed the can and filled his open mouth with creamy goodness, earning a dark look that made her mouth water. She turned her attention to spraying whipped cream onto their ice cream to avoid getting swept up in the wrong direction again.
He added chocolate and rainbow sprinkles to hers, leaving his without. After putting away the ice cream and condiments, he handed her a bowl and spoon and said, “Ready to binge-watchOutsiders?”
“You mean am I ready to bury my bad date?”
The muscles in the side of his jaw pulsed. “Thought we already did that.”
She followed him to the living room and curled up on the couch as he set up the DVD. “Girls don’t just bounce back from bad dates. Do guys?”
“How should I know?” he said as he sat down beside her.
“You had a string of first dates that you said were boring or the women were too into themselves.”
He filled his spoon with ice cream and grinned. “I guess we do, because you and I talked after each of those dates, and I don’t remember having anything to bounce back from.”
She stuck her spoon in his bowl and tasted his ice cream. “That’s not bad. Here, try mine.” She filled her spoon with Karamel Sutra and fed it to him. “See? You didn’t keel over from Ben and Jerry’s. Anyway, getting over bad dates takes time. Think of life as the stem of a rose. You know how it has all those prickly things on it?”
“Thorns,” he said.
“Yes. They’re like bad dates, and in between them, you have this lovely, smooth stem, thegooddates.” She ate a spoonful of ice cream.
“And…?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like a good analogy at the time. Thorns draw blood. Bad dates draw bad feelings. It takes time to get over the sting of it. I’ll meditate it out of my system in the morning.”
He picked up the remote and said, “What you need is to skip the thorns and go straight to the calyx.”
“The what?”
“You know those green things at the bottom of the rose petals? Those are called sepals, and collectively, they’re called the calyx. It protects the flower in bud and supports the petals when it blooms.” He ate a bite of ice cream and turned on the first episode ofOutsiders.
