Page 99 of Change My Mind
“Not completely.”
“Before we go any further, I need to know. Did you ever think my eyes weren’t real?”
I frowned. “What, the colour? No. I mean, yes, but in the sense that I couldn’t comprehend that you got to walk around with eyes that stunning. But I didn’t think you were wearing like, contacts, or whatever. Did Josh question them?”
Addie nodded slowly while I went to the fridge and got two more bowls out. One with whipped cream in, the other jam, and put them on the island. “He did. Although it was somehow the least absurd thing he said in the ninety minutes that we were sitting at that table. I know we’ve had many a debate about interpretations of Shakespeare’s work, but at least you’ve never tried to explain his importance in Elizabethan culture to me.”
What a fucking idiot. “Hang on, he tried to mansplain Shakespeare to you? A woman with two master’s degrees and half a PhD in Shakespeare. The same woman who was brought in because she was a specialist on the Bard. Are you serious?”
“Like a heart attack.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. I found it mildly amusing. “Fuck, that was a bad joke. But yes, I am serious. He then deeply misread the signs and thought we were something more than what we were. A bust. He invited himself along last night, and then—well, you were clearly a witness to it. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. To be honest, part of me didn’t think you would care.”
“Because I’m dating Steffy.”
Addie rolled her eyes as she picked up the bowl of cream and started scooping it out from around the sides with her finger. I handed her a spoon.
“You aren’t alone in catching feelings. Although I’ve arguably had them since the first time I made your nostrils flare in annoyance.”
The blush on her cheeks deepened. “My sisters keep trying to tell me that I might have had a crush on you back then. And I can assure you that while I can now admit that you annoyed me so much because you were both cute and smart, I did really think you were the bane of my existence.”
She scooped more cream out of the bowl, and I held my hand out for it.
“And I fell a little bit in love with you anyway,” I said simply as she placed the bowl in my hand.
“Does it do it for you, when I’m a little bit mean?” she teased.
I smirked as I scooped some cream onto the cake. When I had enough to spread evenly, I gave it back to her.
“Not no. You’re kind of incredible. You always have been. I would have had to make a concentrated effort not to fall in love with you the moment you told me that you were a born academic, because the sexiest thing about you has always been your confidence, and it made me so happy to know that you’ve never let that go.”
“You know no one has ever found my confidence in my academic ability sexy before,” she said as she grabbed the bowl of jam.
“I do. Always have. Always will. You know you’re contaminating my cake, right?” I teased as I gently took the bowl from her arms and tipped some on top of the cream.
“We’re giving it to my mother. She’s not going to care. As she frequently likes to remind me, I lived inside her formonths. Plus, if we give her this cake, it might make her like you even though you’re defiling her baby.”
I gave her the jam back. “I’ve been doing that for months. I think you’ve even begged me to do it once or twice.”
She hummed around her spoon. “I don’t think Ibeggedfor it. That doesn’t sound like me. You begging for things on the other hand?”
I felt my skin start to flush. “Right now, I am just begging for us to officially dissolve this friends-with-benefits arrangement and let me take you out on a date.”
Her eyes sparkled as she raised her eyebrows.
“Please. Please.Please,” I added.
“Yes, you can take me out on a date. But I do have one small request,” she said as she licked more jam off her spoon.
“Which is?” I asked roughly as I watched her slowly pull the spoon out of her mouth.
“We don’t have sex until we’ve been on a date.”
I picked up the second cake and put it on top of the other one, pressing down and watching melted cream and jam spill around the edges.
“I’m not working on Thursday night,” I said.
“Thursday works. Are you okay about everything else? You want to talk about it, or do you want to keep making your cakes in peace?”
Tears pressed at the back of my eyes at the idea that someone was giving me an option to be anything other than okay. It was nothing that I wouldn’t expect from Addie, but it was so different to what I knew, I almost didn’t know how to respond.
