Page 9 of Honey Undone
My friends call me Addy.
I don’t want to be your friend.
He was smooth, I would give him that.
How does tomorrow sound?
I laughed, he was also eager. I sighed, tapping my thumb against the screen and trying to come up with a response that kept him on his toes.
I have practice.
After?
“Addingpersistentto the list,” I said to no one but myself. I swiped out of our messages to give myself a moment to think without his words staring up at me. It was like I could see his expression, it was the same one from the game.His big brown eyes staring up at me, practically begging me to take his number with a goofykissablegrin on his face. I cursed myself for wanting to know if he was good at it, he had to be with lips like that. My mind wandered to all the inappropriate places he could put them. My shoulders dropped and I laid back on the bench to look at the sky, maybe relaxing was easier than I thought it would be.
I play a real sport, pretty boy. It’s not all flirting and showboating.
You’re mean today.
I like it.
I pressed the phone to my chest and pulled my bottom lip between my teeth as I squealed into the chilly air. It was becoming obvious that he was ready for anything I threw at him and he was enjoying every second of it.
I’ll get that date eventually, Adeline.
SARAH
Jensen:
We have a game tonight.
Too bad, it’s hair washing day.
What kind of shampoo do you use?
That’s creepy.
No it's not, I want to know what you smell like.
His texts stop for a second and it’s almost like I can hear his realization as the little dots pop back up at the bottom of the screen.
Okay that did sound creepy but…
I think it’s some blue bottle, it's Amika.
I don't even know why I told him that, maybe the sick need to feel something took over. Even if it meant being stalked by some cocky baseball player. I was tempted to google the statistics of baseball players being horrible people. Did I really want to know if the cute guy that was flirting with me about what kind of shampoo I used was a stalker? Or did I just want to be stalked because it meant someone was givingme attention.
“Stop chewing your nails.” Tyson leaned over from his desk with a dirty look on his face.
I was going to argue with him but to do so I had to take my fingers out of my mouth. I set my phone in my lap and spun in my chair to face him.
“Talk to me,” he leaned back on his own. It was hard to concentrate because he was wearing a vintage band shirt with two naked women riding a motorcycle on it today that literally demanded all the attention in the room.
Tyson had been working with me as an app developer at Clarity for two years and we had trauma bonded over bad dates and even worse bosses. I rarely ever saw him outside of the office. His desk was covered in weird trinkets he found thrifting and his wardrobe was made up of click bait vintage t-shirts and obnoxiously bright Hawaiian button-ups. He was made up of all the weirdest things, a curly ginger mullet, dark green eyes and more freckles than a normal person with a crooked smile and a dramatic flare.
Work would be boring without him and he proved it every time he opened his mouth.
I held out my phone to him with the messages open.
