I was having a hard time breathing steadily.
He seemed unaffected, though.
I needed to talk, a distraction so that I’d stop fixating on him next to me.
“You guys aren’t playing yet?” I asked, my voice sounding uneven. At least it was a valid question. It seemed to be taking a longer amount of time than I was accustomed to for them to start.
“Zhen is fighting with the group over his two-class character. Catalina’s the only one on his side, so they’re not starting until they come to an agreement. There may not be one, as far as I can tell.”
There was a long pause, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I was just too aware of him. I started reciting the major laws of chemistry in my head so that I would stop thinking about him next to me. Conservation of mass. Dalton’s law. Faraday’s law. The second law of thermodynamics . . .
Whoops. That one made me think of Marco in my room and had me focusing on him being so close.
He spoke, and I was grateful for the interruption.
“Gum?” he asked, offering me a stick.
“You got me gum?” I asked, my breathing getting more labored as my heart fluttered up in my chest. It was such a sweet gesture that I felt a little overwhelmed.
“Yes. You said it would make tonight easier for you.”
I took the silver-wrapped gum from his hand, doing my best to not touch fingertips again, which was stupid given how close we were pressed together.
For just a second, I let myself imagine what it would be like if he kissed me. I figured it might be like a nuclear bomb exploding.
I didn’t think I could handle that kind of detonation.
Shaking off that impossible fantasy, I focused on the gum, slowly unwrapping it. I wanted this. Not the gum, but a man who was considerate and thoughtful and easy to spend time with.
I was determined to get it. “I can have the fairy tale.”
He looked at the gum as I put it in my mouth and then back at me. “You lost me.”
“Earlier. When you said I couldn’t be Cinderella? I can have that. I can find my perfect person and fall in love and have my own makeup kingdom and live happily ever after.”
His expression was odd, like he wasn’t convinced. “Have you been sitting over here thinking about this the whole time?”
Other than the parts where Catalina and I were waxing poetic over his physique? Sort of. “I even have woodland creatures living in my home. All they do now is swear and eat and poop, but maybe I could train them to help me clean. But that’s not even the point! I can have true love and a happy marriage.”
He frowned briefly in disbelief. “You might have lost me there. A happy marriage really is a fairy tale.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I’ve seen it. My parents were so in love and deliriously happy. My grandparents were made for each other. It’s real.”
“My father has never been faithful to a single woman. When he married Tracie, she was already pregnant with Craig. They had been having an affair the whole last year of my mother’s life. He’s cheating on Tracie now, but she stays for the perks. Marriage is a transaction of two people who usually end up hating each other.”
“And what? You think all marriages are like that? They’re not.”
Marco kept his gaze fixed on the arguing group, Zhen’s voice carrying over to us. Then Marco said, “I don’t want to end up like my father.”
“Then don’t be like him,” I said.
He turned back to look at me, and the intensity there was shocking. I felt the burn of his look deep in my gut. “Do you think it’s really that easy? Don’t you think we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of our parents?”
“No. Aren’t we supposed to be trying to do better than the generations before us? Fix their mistakes, don’t pass along their trauma? Give ourselves the best possible shot at life? If your dad is a terrible husband, then you can be better than him. Be committed.”
He didn’t say anything, and that only made me feel compelled to keep talking. “My grandma—she became an environmental scientist in a time when not a lot of women were doing that. She had to be tough and serious. Kept people at arm’s length, including her loved ones. But my mom was softer and more open. I want to be the same way.” I wasn’t doing a great job of it so far, though. I needed to be better about letting my walls down.
He seemed to take in what I was saying. Zhen yelled something that had Sanjit yelling back at him. After Catalina got the two men calmed down, Marco looked at me again.
“I wasn’t trying to upset you earlier. I tend to tease the women in my life.”
“Maybe that’s why they don’t date you for very long,” I offered with a wry smile. “As I just demonstrated, I’m usually the teasing kind, too. I don’t know what’s going on with me or why I’m being so prickly and putting up walls.”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he asked.
“Yes.” And as friends, we should be allowed to give each other some grief. I was taking everything far too seriously.
Somehow he managed to move closer to me, putting his arm behind me so that he could lean in. My throat closed in completely as the air in my lungs solidified. What was he doing?
He looked down at my lips, then back up to my eyes. “I know you’re going to have your happily ever after, Anna. I don’t doubt that for a second.”
The air inside my lungs turned solid as I realized what was happening.
Marco was going to kiss me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Right here, in front of a bunch of people I used to work with.
Okay. Don’t freak out, I told myself. We should be practicing. This was fine. It probably would look like just a regular old couple about to share an average everyday kiss. Like we did all the time.
Only this one wouldn’t mean anything, and nobody else was supposed to know that.
I probably should have let my eyes close, but I wanted to see what was happening.
I could feel myself overanalyzing and calculating and trying to figure out how I could let this happen and not lose myself completely to his touch.
But oh, his eyes were mesmerizing. Dark pools of chocolate that I wanted to dive into and live in. Something shifted between us, that electricity arcing to life and making the air around us crackle with excitement.
“Anna.” He murmured my name, his lips moving closer to mine. Somehow the entire space-time continuum stopped. My heart beat quickly at first, then slow and hard. I kept telling myself I could do this. I could kiss him and not lose total control.
But every nerve ending, every hormone, every cell in my body was telling me that that was a complete and utter lie.
I also found that I didn’t care. I didn’t care what the reasons were behind it or whether or not I’d be able to dismiss it afterward. In that moment, the only thing I cared about was it happening.
“Marco! Marco!”
Someone was calling his name, and it was like a lightsaber cutting through that electricity between us. I jerked back, hitting my head against the wall behind me. I reached up to touch the back of my skull.
Marco looked concerned. “Are you okay?”
New rule I was going to follow—no more injuring myself around this man. It was getting embarrassing.