“It … ”
“It looks like beer foam?” I tilt my head innocently.
Beau laughs. “Jesus, Bailey. Give the guy a break. He’s as wholesome as they come. He can’t even say it out loud.”
Jasper straight up chokes, a fist hitting his chest as I hand him his beer. “Here. Wash it down. Breathe through your nose.” I wink at him, and he shakes his head, doing his best tomato impression. I turn back to Beau. “Say what out loud?”
“You two have the same fucked-up sense of humor, that’s for sure,” Jasper murmurs against the rim of his pint glass.
Beau’s eyes stay pinned on me, a knowing smirk tugging at his lips. When he stares at me like this, I forget why he annoyed me in the first place.
“That it looks like you have jizz on your tits.”
Jasper sprays beer into his hand, a sad attempt to cover his mouth foiled by his inability to keep it together right now. But Beau and I just smirk at each other.
When I push, he pushes back. When he pushes, I push back. We keep ending up right in the middle.
Together.
It’s with a light shake of my head that I get back to work. I silently hand Beau his beer and proceed to mostly ignore the two of them. They speak in muted tones, and I hear the odd name I recognize. Beau’s eyes watch me all night long, while Jasper peeks between the two of us curiously.
He scrutinizes with a curious intensity. It makes me wonder what he knows.
It makes me feel like they’re talking about me.
Beau nurses his single pint and switches to tea. Sloane comes in, hair in a bun. She wraps her arms around Jasper’s neck, and he turns on his stool to kiss her soundly. When he pulls back, the look he gives her makes me think he’s a lot less wholesome than Beau might realize.
Shortly after she arrives, they leave together.
But not before Jasper whispers some parting words in his friend’s ear, squeezes his shoulder, and gives him a stern nod. “You need to tell her.”
I don’t know if I hear it or if I read his lips. All I know is that one sentence lands in my gut like a boulder at the bottom of a lake.
Tell me what?
33
Bailey
When Beau and I walk into the quiet house together, our presence in the space makes the silence even more deafening. Beau tosses his keys onto the kitchen counter, and I flinch at the loud clatter of metal on marble.
There’s clearly an elephant in the room and neither of us knows how to talk about it. At thirty-five, he should know what he’s doing with all this shit. Apparently not. In his defense, it’s not like he didn’t warn me he doesn’t do real relationships.
But here I am, falling for him anyway.
I start toward the stove, needing to do something with my hands to combat the awkwardness blooming between us. “Want me to make us some tea?”
“We need to talk.”
I freeze. That boulder is so damn heavy in my gut while everything else spins around me. I force myself to keep walking. Every movement feels like a struggle, like I’m walking through molasses up to my knees.
“Sure. About what?” I keep my voice airy as my fingers wrap around the kettle.
“Bailey, I don’t want tea. Come here.”
The rush of my heart pumping blood sounds like a heavy drum in my ears, but I turn and walk back to him, like a marionette on strings.
He’s taken a seat on one of the stools on the island. His brows dip low, and he crosses the massive arms I slept in last night. They felt so warm and welcoming.
But I’m seeing them differently now. Big, foreboding, perfect to crush my heart with.
Propping a hip against the island, I mirror him and cross my arms as a shield against what I seem to know is coming. “What’s up?” It sounds more petulant than I intended, but I’m feeling a little petulant right now. “You ghost me and barely acknowledge me all day, and now you want to talk? Lucky me.”
I guess I’m all in on the petulance tonight.
“I didn’t ghost you. I went to work.”
“Right.” My lips press together, and I glare at him.
Beau sighs, broad chest rising and falling as he reaches back and grips his neck. “Look, I needed some time to wrap my head around things after last night.”
The urge to berate myself is overwhelming. I shouldn’t have told him I was hung up on him too. I’m sure I freaked him right the fuck out.
“So help me, if this is some moment where you decide to admire my virginity again, I will walk out that front door.”
“I’m not admiring it, Bailey. I’m telling you it means something to me. I’m telling you there are only so many firsts in your life before every day just turns into a blur of more of the same. I’m telling you that, whether or not you realize it, it might mean something to you one day. And I hate the thought of you living with any regrets.”