Page 70 of Honeysuckle
“Yeah, ‘cause he risked a suspension over you because he likes to be left alone…” Cael scoffed. “Big, dumb, and pretty,” he sang under his breath, and I looked up at him. “You did that.”
I shrugged.
“Josh craves violence; he would have gotten in a fight that game over anything,” I said.
My skin shivered thinking about how rough he loved.
I shifted at the island, stretching out my arms across it and rolling out my back to hide my sexual frustration from my best friend.
Cael tsked and tugged on one of the curls near my ear.
“The last person I saw go full doberman was Arlo, on Nicholas the day he hurt Ella.” Cael’s voice was quiet and serious. “He didn’t attack Hudson for fun, Deano…”
“Did he tell you why he left Lorette?” I asked Cael, who just shook his head at me.
I couldn’t tell if I liked being the bearer of that secret or hated it.
“Can you two stop staring at me?” Josh set down his pen and turned his head to look at us in the kitchen. “You’re five feet away, I can hear every word you’re saying.”
Cael snorted, but I turned six shades of red, dropping my forehead to the counter.
“How’s the hand?” Cael asked as Josh wandered into the kitchen and crossed his arms slowly at the other end of the island.
“Fine,” Josh huffed.
Blue eyes flickered between Josh and me, gauging our body language before he slipped from the counter and backed away.
“I thought you were hungry?” I said, my voice begging him to stay and fill the awkward silence that would no doubt fall over the kitchen the moment he left.
“Yeah…” he looked over at Josh and back at me with a suspicious look on his face. “I’m going to go crawl back to Clem, Josh has murder eyes and that’s your problem now!”
Before I could argue, Cael was gone, slipping from the back door of the Nest out into the warming spring air.Fuck.
“Honestly, I’m surprised he doesn’t get punchedmore,” Josh said with a tight smile.
“Yeah, I think about that every day,” I shook my head and tried to recover from how embarrassed I felt. “About the conversation…”
“You’re the captain, he’s your best friend, you’re allowed to talk about the team with him…” Josh shrugged like it didn’t bother him.
“The team, right.” I nodded. My fingers twitched at my side, filled with the urge to close the gap. I needed something to do with my hands. I wasn’t sure where we stood after the entire conversation and the fight, we hadn’t… kissed again but we also hadn’t really spoken.
Josh was either asleep or gone by the time I crawled out of bed most mornings and he was so focused on school that all his spare time outside the stadium was spent studying. But now he was standing in front of me, those dark brown eyes waiting for me to make a move but I couldn’t because I wasn’t sure what move to make.
“You know, I don’t think I ever asked you what you were studying?” I asked him, just trying to break the tension.
“It’s stupid,” he dismissed it and I stared at him until he broke. “I want to be a social worker,” he confessed. That was a surprise, I figured he would pick something that made him money… Money meant the ability to leave, to feel respected. Social work was exhausting, it was hard work andit hit close to home.
“That’s cool, Josh,” I said, surprised.
He eyed me trying to figure out if I was being serious or not before he nodded gently. "It’s how I make a difference, maybe if I can learn how to prevent what happened to me, I can stop it from happening to other kids.”
It was brave, selfless.
“You surprise me every day,” I said. He swallowed tightly, the silence stretching over us again. I don’t know why small talk felt so hard between us now. It was like the kiss had broken down a boundary, and now we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
“What are you making for dinner?” He asked, cutting through the silence.
I looked around the kitchen, realizing I’d have to run into town—we were completely out of real food. The cupboards were empty except for some fruit and junk food. I chewed on my tongue and tried to ignore the way I wanted to have a different conversation with him, one that wasn’t about baseball or dinner.
