Page 81 of Prince Charmless
“Oh.”
“Oh,”I mock in his low voice.
After a minute of us driving, I feel a hand on top of mine.
“I’m sorry,” Taylor says. “I shouldn’t have escalated that. I was asking for it.”
“Why areyousaying ‘sorry’, you just got punched in the face?”
“No.” He stares at the headrest in front of him. “I don’t know why I think I deserve to talk to people like that. He was riled up only a meter away from you, I mean, what if he—” Taylor swallows his words and looks out the window.
“Taylor, that guy was just a garden-variety douche. One of thousands. I don’t think he would have lashed out at me.”
“I don’t either, but you shouldn’t even have to think about it.”
I look down at our hands interlocking casually, neither one of us having the urge to pull back. Taylor just took a blow to the jaw, and he’s concerned about howI’mfeeling. I graze my thumb over his knuckles. I might have more than a little crush, that’s what I’m feeling.
25
Taylor
“Broccoli or riced cauliflower?” Cassie holds up two bags of vegetables she got from the freezer.
“Cauliflower, I guess.”
Her rabbit diet finally comes in handy.
She throws me the bag and I push it against my face. The cold sting is punishment for my idiotic decision to set off a man erratic enough to punch me. My obsession with always having to get the last word has put Melina in a dangerous situation. Somehow, I’m going to have to live with that.
Melina sits down next to me on the floral sofa. Her easy smile and the citrus smell of her shampoo are becoming familiar in the best possible way. I just got punched in the face, and I feel better already. I set the cauliflower on the oak coffee table because she has healed me. Melina is my cauliflower.Mon petit chou-fleur.
I unlock my phone and give it to her. “Could you go into my settings and make the font size as big as it can go?”
She smirks and does what I tell her. “I had to do this for my grandmother once.”
“You don’t get to mock, Melina. Without you here, my contacts would be resting happily atop my corneas.”
“And you probably wouldn’t have gotten punched in the face.”
I shrug. “Don’t act like I don’t deserve to be punched in the face every once in a while.”
“I want to thank you for not throwing one back,” she says. “I’ve had guys try to be heroes for me before, and they always end up looking really stupid.”
I’ve never punched anyone or anything in my life. I’vewitnessedplenty of fights as a teenager. All-boys boarding school is very much a Lord of the Flies type situation. There was a clearing in the woods behind our dormitories where we went to smoke and settle our differences, known asthe spot.We all had sophisticated upbringings and scheduled our fights like teatime. I’m not used to this kind of barbaric spontaneity.
I scooch toward her. “Are you trying to say you’ve had many guys spar over you?”
She raises her palm, “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m kidding. I’m not surprised, actually. I bet your whole life you’ve been fending off men like the plague.”
Her eyes roll up to the ceiling.
“What? I’m being honest. Talk to me, Melina.”
She looks back at the kitchen where Cassie and Neil are talking quietly. “I’m not immune to you, okay?”
“Like the plague?”
