Page 23

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I close the oven with the side of my hip when I hear my phone ding. I place the freshly baked cupcakes on the cooling rack, wipe my hands against my apron and tap my screen to see the notification:

Just got out of practice, Cupcake. WYD?

My lips curl up at the sight of Tristan’s name on my phone. My heart beats wildly as I unlock my screen and text him back.

I have a bridal shower I am making 60 cupcakes for. Super busy. Still need to decorate all of them. Just need them to cool enough. Probably going to be a late night here at home. ??

Gilmore Girls is on in the background and my kitchen is a mess. Cocoa powder and flour are sprinkled all over my counters. Luckily for me, I only have one more batch left to make and then I can frost them.

Need a taste tester? You know, just in case a mistake was made ??

Jerk. But a hot jerk at that.

I think it’ll be fine. A thorough inspection was made before I even put them in the oven.

Fair enough...I miss you. I am having Brooke withdrawals.

I giggle. We literally saw each other a couple of days ago and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I didn’t think I could miss someone who I see almost daily, but here I am missing a man who I avoided seeing for so long.

It has been two days, Tristan. I hardly think you are having withdrawals.

It’s totally possible since I am having the same withdrawals.

Two days too long, Cupcake. I need to see you tonight. It’s not even a want for me anymore.

My heart leaps. As much as I need to see him too, I need to get this done more. This is a really important client for me and I can’t afford any distractions.

Can we take a raincheck? I am probably going to be wiped after I frost the last cupcake.

Three dots appear, then disappear. My stomach sinks a bit, but I literally have to get this done and then I plan on vegging out on the couch and binge-watch Gilmore Girls for the thousandth time.

About forty minutes later, I am halfway through piping frosting on my cupcakes when someone knocks at my door. I set down the piping bag and run my hands under the sink. I take a kitchen towel and dry my hands as I pass my TV –Lorelai and Rory are in an argument because Lorelai didn’t tell her she was dating again.

I look through the peephole and see Tristan standing outside my door with a bottle of wine and a plastic bag. He is the most determined man on this planet.

I check my appearance in the mirror next to my door. I adjust some rogue strands of hair and wipe some flour off my nose. I am a mess but, to be fair, Tristan’s seen me look a lot worse. Then again, I wasn’t sleeping with him when he saw me at my worst. I exhale and open the door.

Tristan stands there with one arm up on the doorframe, leaning in toward me. Shivers cover my body at the sight of him.

“What are you doing here, Hot Shot? I told you I was…”

“Busy. Yeah, I know.” He kisses me, almost habitually, as he steps into my apartment and makes his way to my kitchen. He places the plastic bag on the one empty space on my counters and takes out two pints of ice cream. Before he can close the freezer, I glimpse the label: Strawberry Cheesecake. My favorite flavor. And he brought my favorite wine…again. This man is spoiling the hell out of me with my favorite things and I am glad he is progressively becoming one of them. He closes the freezer door and shrugs. “I wanted to come help you out. Plus, like I said earlier, I needed to see you.”

He taps my nose, then grabs my chin and presses his lips to mine. The invigorating scent of mint and cedar hijacks my senses. He smiles against my lips. “You taste like chocolate.”

“Well, like I told you earlier, I ensured that the cupcakes were up to par.” I grab the bottle of wine. “Is this your master plan? To get me drunk and have your way with me, Lawson?” Secretly, I am not opposed to Tristan having his way with me.

“I would never get you drunk and take advantage of you, Cupcake. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s not really my style.” He sits down on one of my bar stools and assesses my mess of a kitchen.

“I know it’s not. I was joking.” I grab the piping bag and continue to layer icing intricately onto the top of the cupcake. “Are you sure you want to be here, Tristan? I have about thirty more of these to go and then I was just going to chill on the couch and continue watching Gilmore Girls . Super exciting things are happening at the Beckett residence this evening.”

“Anything that involves you in the equation is always exciting in my book.” He hops off the stool, walks around the island and starts washing his hands. “What can I do to help? Do you need me to frost some of these to speed up the process?” He takes the kitchen towel off my shoulder and dries his large, veiny hands. I bite my lower lip and remind myself to calm down. He literally just dried off his hands–that should not elicit such a visceral response from me, but it does.

I laugh off his suggestion to help. “I don’t know if you could frost one of these, Hot Shot. It’s kind of intricate work.”

He closes the gap between us and takes the piping bag from me. “I got steady hands, Cupcake. I thought you knew that by now.” He licks the excess frosting coming out of the bag with an unruly grin.

“Fine.” I grab another piping bag and spatula white icing into the clear bag. “But none of that tonight, you seducer of women.”

Tristan’s laugh booms in my small apartment. “I’m hardly a seducer of women.”

I snort. “Whatever you say, Hot Shot. I see the way women look at you. They are practically foaming at the mouth.”

“I guess I haven’t noticed. None of them are you, so what’s the point?” He has a serious, focused look on his face as he pipes frosting almost like a pro. His tongue sticks out of his mouth and I smile because he only has that look when he is concentrating really hard on something. He is legitimately trying his best.

He must sense me staring at him, because he stops and shifts his gaze toward me. “Am I doing this right?”

I pretend to inspect the cupcake, which is perfect, and say, “That’s pretty good for an amateur. I approve. You can continue.”

We carry on for about fifteen more minutes. Tristan helps me wash and dry the dishes and get the cupcakes into the containers for transport. After getting the ice cream out and pouring glasses of wine, we make our way onto the couch. I plop down and start rubbing my feet.

“God, my feet are killing me. Those little monsters at school were running rampant today. And then having to bake tonight has really done me in. And I even wore comfortable shoes to work.”

Tristan sets his wine glass on my coffee table. “C’mon, give ’em here.” He taps the top of his lap. When I hesitate, he reaches down and grabs both of my ankles with one colossal hand and props them on his thighs. He places the perfect amount of pressure on the balls of my feet. I rest my head back against the arm of my couch and say, “Oh my goodness. Do you moonlight as a masseuse or something? That feels so good.” I let out a moan.

“When would I have the time to moonlight as a masseuse? I barely have time to relax during hockey season, and I hardly get a vacation before preseason training starts back up.” His thumb presses into my foot, traveling from my heel to the ball of my foot and I let out a moan again. “And you better stop doing that, Cupcake.”

I grab my glass and take a sip. “Doing what?”

“Moaning like that. Add that to how you look tonight. Talk about me being a seducer. You are being a temptress right now. And I’m trying really hard to be on my best behavior tonight per your request.” He moves on to my other foot and keeps his gaze on the TV.

“Tristan, I am wearing gray sweatpants, a white tank top and my hair is up in a clip. What about this image makes me a temptress?”

“Everything about you makes you a temptress.” The muscles in his forearms and biceps move as he massages my feet. That simple undulation makes me shift on the couch and now it’s my turn to distract my dirty thoughts about what I want Tristan to do to me.

He clears his throat. “So, what’s going on in this show?”

I finally process what episode it is, and it happens to be one of my favorites. It’s the season one finale, the one where Max Medina proposes to Lorelai with a thousand yellow daisies. Lorelai whispers to herself, “A thousand of them. A thousand yellow daisies,” and I start tearing up.

“A thousand yellow daisies? What the hell?”

“Let me explain something to you, Hot Shot. This is probably one of the most romantic gestures of the whole show. I am not going to tell you the other one because that will spoil things and I would never do that to you.”

“Okay, enlighten me, Cupcake. Why is this one of the most romantic gestures of this whole show?”

I sigh, then continue, “Because Max remembered what a proposal is supposed to look like based on Lorelai’s standards that she laid out earlier in the episode. He did that for her. And this episode honestly is why I love daisies.” Tristan glances at me while his hands shift to massaging my shins and calves. “How romantic would that be, a thousand yellow daisies? But I’d want pink daisies because I love them. I love the notion of a thousand pink daisies. Doing something like that for somebody – proposing in that way – I mean, swoon.”

Tristan grunts out a laugh.

“Seriously,” I continue, “even though they weren’t together for very long, Max understood Lorelai. I mean Luke is obviously endgame, but for Max to do that grand gesture, you know, taking what she said and literally providing that for her and giving her what she really wanted? Because in the arguing scene before, she was just spewing out all the other ways he could have proposed, but subconsciously she truly wanted a man to do that for her. To show up and listen to what she has to say.” I wipe a tear rolling down my cheek and look at Lorelai sitting amongst the daisies on the phone with Max. “I cry every time she walks into that inn and she sees a thousand yellow daisies that Max bought her.”

“So, it’s not really about the daisies.”

I look at Tristan. He is concentrating on the scene on the screen intently, and then his hazel eyes find mine.

I scrunch my eyebrows together. “What do you mean?”

He takes both his hands and scoots my sweatpants up to expose my leg. His calloused hands wrap around my left calf and his thumbs press into my shin and move up to my knee. I can’t stop looking at the veins popping out of his hands and how big his fingers are. “It’s about the fact that he understood her and showed up for her in a way that no man had done before.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s it.” My heart leaps as Tristan switches to my right leg. My gaze shifts from his hands up to his forearms and biceps that are covered in tattoos. “So, I know that one tattoo is for me, but do all those tattoos represent all the women you’ve been with? Like all these twisted notches in your belt?” I playfully smile at him.

Unphased, Tristan vivaciously smiles back. “Why, are you jealous, Cupcake?”

Even though I was the one who started this ex conversation, I immediately want to retract back and ask in a different way. I have to stand my ground, though. “You wish, Lawson.”

“Well I’m jealous as hell about all your ex-boyfriends. They got to have what is mine and I am not above envy, Cupcake. I am not a fan of sharing.”

With Tristan’s admission, I feel safer revealing how I really feel. “Okay, maybe I’m a little jealous. Just a teensy bit though.” I squint and shrug, placing a spoonful of delicious ice cream in my mouth, and that’s when Tristan squeezes right above my knee (my most ticklish spot on my body) and makes me squirm. I cover my laugh with my hand and kick my feet wildly. Tristan belly-laughs and guards his body from my kicks.

When I finally swallow my ice cream, I nudge Tristan one more time with my foot. “Ugh, I hate you, Hot Shot.”

“I definitely don’t hate you, Cupcake.” He traces a finger over my knee. “I will do that every day if I can see you laugh like that. Your smile is my favorite thing, especially when I see your dimples.” He continues to massage my legs. “And no, my tattoos do not represent all the women I’ve slept with. Not even close. Most of them are for my family. I have a few for my sisters. Some for hockey. My family crest with doves and a tree wrapped around the crest.” He lifts his shirt sleeve to reveal “Invictus.” “My grandfather’s favorite poem, and in turn mine.” He lifts his shirt to reveal his chiseled chest and points to the words “Leve et reluis” over what looks like a phoenix.

“What does ‘leve et reluis’ mean?” I inquire.

“Arise and re-illumine.” He unfortunately lowers his shirt. “It’s the Lawson motto. It’s on the crest and I’ve kind of stuck to that motto my whole life. I guess that’s why I am not afraid of taking risks or giving it my all out there on the ice or in my personal life. I know that if I fall, I can always rise right back up.”

“Hence the phoenix,” I say in awe. I didn’t know what I expected his tattoos to mean, but I didn’t guess they would all have such profound significance and meaning in his life. And my initials are right there too, permanently drawn on his body.

“Yeah.” He reaches for his glass and takes a sip. “How about you, Cupcake? I haven’t seen any tattoos on your body. Unless they are in a very inconspicuous part, but I feel like I’ve seen every angle of you at this point.” He winks. He’s not wrong. I start to blush thinking about all the positions this man has put me in.

“Nope. No tattoos for me. I am deathly afraid of needles and the sight of blood makes me squeamish. Seriously, if one of our students has a nosebleed or falls on the playground and there is any trace of blood, I defer to Tess to take care of it.” I shake off the image of all of those scenarios running through my mind. “Plus it probably hurts like hell. Which one was the most painful tattoo to get?”

“All of them were painful.” He finishes off his wine. “Okay, if you were to get a tattoo, what would you get and where would you get it?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve never thought about it since I made a decision a long time ago that I was never going to get one.”

Tristan nods and presses his lips together. He gently slides my feet off of his lap, and stands up. Even through his basketball shorts, I can still glimpse his quadricep muscles. I will never not be attracted to this man.

He adjusts his backwards hat as he walks over to the kitchen again. “I am assuming you have a pink pen somewhere?” He aimlessly opens a couple of kitchen drawers.

“Yes, in the drawer next to the refrigerator. But why do you need a pink pen?” I nervously laugh.

He finds one of the many pink pens in my junk drawer and saunters back to the couch. I raise my feet to let him sit next to me. He grabs my left foot and places a soft kiss on my ankle. He bites the cap off the pen and keeps the cap in between his teeth as he holds onto my foot steadily.

“What are you doing?” I flinch my foot. He strengthens his grip on my foot and brings it back to eyelevel.

“Hold still, Cupcake. I’m going to give you a temporary tattoo.” The tip of the pen grazes the back of my ankle.

“What, are you drawing the number 92 as a way to brand me as yours?” I tease.

“Oh I already know that you are mine, Cupcake. I made sure of that multiple times. On that kitchen counter. In my shower. In my bed.” He licks his lips as he continues drawing. “In that locker room. This is strictly for you.” He blows softly on the pink ink and goosebumps trickle across my body. “There. All done.”

I smile softly and bend my leg up to see my temporary tattoo. Tristan drew a small pink daisy behind my ankle.

“I know it’s not a thousand of them, but you gotta start somewhere, right?”

He might as well have drawn a thousand of them, because the amount of butterflies that take flight in my stomach sure as hell make it seem like he did. I prop myself up and wrap my arms around his neck. “One pink daisy. I love it.”

I have no more strength to resist this man. I straddle his lap and already feel him underneath me. I give him a devouring kiss and we lose ourselves in each other as if we haven’t kissed each other in years. I guess we are making up for all those years we didn’t indulge ourselves.