Page 38 of What I've Tasted of Desire

“It doesn’t look like we have that title. We don’t carry a lot of independent authors. But I can order it for you.”

My mind was racing a million miles a minute, and I couldn’t even register what the girl had said. Was Alex jealous?

He was! The second that little harlot started flirting with you, he ran right over to claim what’s his!

“Do you want me to order it?”

I shook off my thoughts and cleared my throat. “That would be great, thank you.”

I chuckled to myself as we walked out of the shop.

“W-what?”

“You were jealous.”

“Was not,” Alex retorted.

“Was too… Err…weretoo,” I said, quickly shaking off the grammatical slip. “That poor girl flirted with me for all of 30 seconds before you walked over to ‘claim’.”

“You wanted me to let you know about public affection. That’s all I was doing,” Alex lied with a small shrug.

“Ah, okay.”

We walked a few more blocks talking about everything and nothing until we came up on the downtown skating rink. I had made a vow to take Alex to do fun, cute date things. Things that Tom would have never done with Alex in a million years. Ice skating together could create a really nice memory for Alex.

“This could be fun! I haven't skated in years.”

Alex hesitated, “I’m n-not a very good s-skater.”

“I’m no Scott Hamilton myself, but it could be fun to try it together.”

“Okay,” he shrugged.

“You are going to hold my hand, though, right?” I asked him as if I were scared to do it alone.

“This is going to go p-poorly.”

I approached the attendant to rent our skates and pay for the tickets. “I need a size 12, and a size…”

Alex is a size eight.

I looked over at Alex, waiting for him to tell his size. “Eight.”

I grabbed the skates and walked over to an empty bench at the edge of the rink so we could change our shoes.

“When was the last time you skated, Alex?”

I’d never seen him skate.

“When I was 13. First time and last time. I broke my wrist. Haven’t skated since.”

Oh, you stupid motherfucker. Of course he didn’t want to skate. Idiot!

“Oh, shit,” I said, looking over at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. We don’t have to do this. You should have told me.”

He tried to tell you, and you were too obsessed with having your Hallmark Movie moment…

I tried desperately to read his facial expressions.

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