Page 31 of Trust Issues
Austin would be in my apartment in a little while and I didn’t have time to figure out if I thought Max was sexy.
“Then don’t have him in your space,” he reasoned.
“It’s not that simple, Max. I’m giving him a chance to make up for the incident at the restaurant. Plus, I don’t know if he’ll be able to find a parking space if we go out to eat again. He came up with this idea to make me dinner at my place so I’m going to see where it goes.”
Max blinked at my words as if they were foreign. “Is Kyla Bradshaw getting soft on me? You’re giving a guy a second chanceandletting him into your apartment?”
“What’s wrong with that? Damn, Kyle can’t be the queen of high standards forever,” Owen said. He walked around the corner holding the cord to the vacuum cleaner, searching for an outlet to plug it into.
“I will always reign supreme, thank you very much.” I tipped my nose in the air and took another swallow of my drink. It was starting to storm its way through my veins and I was extremely grateful.
“Well, petite chocolate queen you can’t always keep your standards so high. How are you going to find Mr. Right if he can’t climb over your walls?” Owen asked. He found a plug just outside of the kitchen and looked at me.
“Mr. Right will be able to climb over my walls. I’ve already outlined how he’ll do it in my book of standards.”
“I really thought Max was bullshitting when he told me that you had a literal book of standards. I could never date you, Kyle.” Owen shook his head and I feigned sadness.
I poked my bottom lip out and said, “Damn, now I’ll never have the Parker last name. It was my only wish in life, Owen. How will I ever survive?” I rolled my eyes at him and he muttered something under his breath right before he turned on the vacuum cleaner.
Once the vacuum was whirring and making noise, Max pulled me closer to him by my elbow. I knew it was only so I could hear what he was saying but the action made my stomach tense and my tongue swell.
That was some damn good tequila.
“Kyle, I know we’re attempting to be friends now, so in honor of that decision made from sheer insanity, I’m going to let you know that if you get too freaked out by the thought of having Austin in your space, text me. I’ll barge in with a phony emergency.” I blinked a few times letting his words sink into all the crevices of my brain. Was Maxwell Parker actually being a decent human being? Wait, he was being better than decent. He was being a damn good friend. I opened my mouth and tilted my head to the side a little bit but no words were able to come out. I think the speech department of my brain was in shock momentarily. “Did I break you? Do you have a reset button on your back I can push?” He joked.
“I’m fine,” I took a few steps back from his warm scent. It was something expensive and even though he didn’t wear much, it made me throb and tingle.
Nope.
That was the tequila. The tequila made me throb and tingle.
“Thank you, Max. I’m not used to you being…nice.” I almost choked the word out. I was still in disbelief.
“Yeah well, if we don’t start being cordial now, we never will,” he remarked.
“Cordial is boring. Like your choice of women.” Just like that, I was back in the saddle. Taking jabs at him was what I did best. It came naturally to me. I couldn’t stop myself. The smirk and glint in his eyes told me he couldn’t help it either.
“At least all the women I choose have been tested. The men you talk to must have parasites in order to voluntarily date you. Clearly, something is eating their brains.” We stared at each other until the silence was sliced in two by Owen shutting off the vacuum. How we found a bubble of silence in the chaos of the Bissell running up and down the floor was beyond me.
I looked down at my forearms and rubbed the goosebumps away before finishing the rest of my drink. “Yall done?” Owen asked. I didn’t even hear him come in the kitchen. Max and I scattered like children caught doing something bad.
I went to the speakers and put on my nineties R&B playlist to calm my nerves because even though they should have been mellow due to the tequila, they were jittering and bouncing around like they didn’t have any damn sense. I grabbed a couple of pink Starbursts to help.
“You know they have the bags of all pink Starbursts now, Kyle?” Owen asked, sitting on my freshly fluffed pillows in the living room. I eyed him from head to toe then grunted.
“Yeah. I know. My days of picking through an entire bag of Starbursts to fish out all the pink ones are done. I have them on subscribe and save from Amazon. No joke.”
“Wow. You have a problem. You know that?” Owen laughed and reached for a piece of candy tentatively. “Will you bite my hand off if I have a few?”
“Few?” I lifted an eyebrow at him and I heard Max’s deep laugh bellow out from the kitchen.
“Yo, leave her candy alone. You ever tried to take food from a Chihuahua?” Max asked his brother.
“Oh, yeah. Never mind. Those little dogs are demons with fur.”
“Yeah. So is Kyle.”
I heard the insult. It registered but I could only feign reciprocal annoyance. For some reason, every time I looked at Max my chest tightened. Either looking at him was giving me gas or something else was happening.
