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I laugh, pull up my boxer-briefs and pants, and kiss her goodnight. Opening her door, I take a last glance at her disheveled state and cauterize it to memory. “See you in a few days, baby,” I say.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” she responds.
And I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the way she’s been looking at me. Open, wanting, possessive in return. Smug, now, even with a wash of embarrassment still tinging her cheeks.
I open the door and tip my chin to Addy before heading down the hallway.
Her ringing, “Baby?!” falls at my back, and my lips tip up at the edges, lifting into yet another goddamn smile.
______
“Look at that smug as fuck grin you’re wearing!” Elijah booms from the darkness of his living room—like a fucking creep.
“Jesus,” I curse as I drop my keys in the entryway. Swatting a hand at the wall, I hit the lights. “What in the fucking fuck are you doing sitting in the dark like that for?”
His laugh barrels out of him like a shotgun. He slaps his hands on his knees before falling back onto the couch with the force of his laughter. When he tries to explain himself, he starts wheezing all over again. His words die off each time he tries, laughter taking over again and again.
I lost the battle against my own smile a while ago.
“Your fucking face, Little J,” he hardly manages.
I choke out a laugh and shake my head, hanging my keys on one of the hooks at the wall and kicking off my shoes. “Where’s Bee?” I question. “I thought she was coming by tonight to watch the fireworks.”
His amused expression falls that quickly.
“Whoa.” I point a finger at his mug. “What’s that about?”
“She’s pissed at me.” He sighs, sinking farther back into the couch.
“What? Why?” I ask. Bianca is the equivalent of a faerie—light, airy, takes nothing too seriously, always has something to smile and chatter on about, and is giggling almost constantly. You might find her in a corner every once in a while, pouting about something or another, but you’d never find her angry.
“I fucked up and kissed her,” he mumbles.
“Come again?” I grin, knowing as fuck.
“I said I kissed her.” Sweeping a hand through his locks, he groans. The sound is tortured as hell. “I shouldn't have done it. But if I’m being fully honest here, it was a long time coming.”Damn right it was.“I freaked her the fuck out, though. We’ve been friends for over a decade, Little J, and I’m her boss now, technically. I stepped over the line.” His features, so similar to mine, draw into a scowl that rivals my best.
“I’m not going lie, Big E,” I tread forward, “I thought maybe you two had been hooking up for a while now. It seemed that way, anyhow.”
“Yeah, fuck. We were,” he grumbles, and I’m only left confused.
“You’re not making any sense. Hooking up with her isn’t stepping over the line, but kissing her is?”
“Can we go back to five minutes ago? When you walked through that door, and I scared the piss out of you?” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That was far more entertaining.”
Palming the side of his head, I give it a light shove and lower myself down onto the couch beside him. “Nope. Spill. What’s going on with you and Bee?”
He blows out a breath and sinks deeper into the couch. “Fine. Fuck it. About a year ago, I’d say, we started messing around. We’ve always flirted and shit—fucking always—but one night, we were both at the shop real late, and one thing led to another, and we—”
I raise a palm between us. “Got it. Got it. Alright. So, you hooked up, and…?”
He shakes his head with a laugh. “So, we hooked up, and then we kept hooking up. Her only rule—no kissing. That, and she refused to ever talk about it in the light of day. She was her same bubbly, happy-go-lucky self, no one the wiser—but then the sun would set, and the shop would close, and… well, you get the picture. Over time, it became less about the sex and more about the time we spent together, though.” He pushes out a short, humorless breath of laughter. “She’s the best thing to ever happen to me, Little J. Always has been.”
Gripping his shoulder, I give it a squeeze. It’s unreal to hear him talking like this. While I’ve had my suspicions about how he feels about Bee, it’s another thing to hear him say it.
“So, I told her so tonight.” He shrugs. “And then I kissed her. And then she ran the fuck off.”
“Damn.”