Page 14 of Can I Tell You Something?
Tea?
Of course I remember how you take it. I remember everything.
God, your perfume.
(Inhale deeply)
It brings back so many memories.
Of course good ones.
That spot behind your ear that smells like your shampoo. I used to love kissing you there. I still remember the way you taste, too.
You know the way some couples have break-up sex. Did you ever wish we’d done that? One last time together, to say goodbye.
No? I do. I think about it all the time.
Chapter 10
Cameron
Thiswomanisaclosed book. A brick wall. An iron fortress.
All I want is for her to admit that she knows who I am, then maybe she wouldn’t be so awkward around me. She’s been shy around me all morning, and I’m nottryingto make it awkward.
We should be able to laugh about it, acknowledge that it’s a wild coincidence. If she wasn’t so nervous around me, I bet we could probably have some fun together. She’s so gorgeous, and since I know she’s into a lot of the same stuff as me, it’s pretty much impossiblenotto imagine us having a good time together.
Leading questions clearly aren’t working, so I’m going to have to take a different approach. I think I might know just the way to get through to her, but I’ll need a bit of time to myself to execute it.
I catch up with her by the ski rack as she’s stepping into her bindings.
“You need to clip your boots back up first,” she says, tapping my leg with her pole as I lay my skis out flat.
“I think I’ll skip out for the afternoon. I have some work to catch up on, and I don’t want to overdo it on the first day.”
I don’t miss the way her face flushes. I’m sure she’s wondering what exactly that work will entail.
“OK,” she says. “Let’s ski back to the top of the first lift we took and you can ride it straight back down to the village.”
“You don’t trust me to make it back by myself?”
Her face breaks into a smile as she shakes her head slowly, her quiet laugh a beautiful sound that only reaches my ears. “I wouldn’t feel OK sending you off alone on your very first day of skiing. I’d be a terrible teacher if I lost my only pupil.”
“Fair enough. Do I need your keys for the house?”
“No, there’s a keypad on the door. I’ll message you the code so you don’t have to memorise it.”
I can’t help but smile when she tugs her glove off with her teeth, unzips her jacket pocket, and pulls out her phone. Only when she opens up Instagram does she finally realise what she’s just said. Her cheeks redden and her lips part as she stares, wide-eyed, at the floor. She knows she’s fucked up, and accidentally given away the fact that she has a way to contact me.
“You don’t have my number,” I say eventually. I’ll let her slip-up slide, this time. “Give me your phone.”
I’m tempted to save my number under Mac just to really get under her skin, but the poor woman might spontaneously combust or burst into tears.
“There you go. Now you can reach me whenever you need me.”
She reaches for her phone and her fingertips graze the underside of mine, sending a spark of… something through the back of my hand. She gasps, her eyes locking with mine, and I know she felt it too. My hand finds itself on her elbow, cupping it, pulling her gently towards me. Her palm lands on my waist, fingers curling around me, and suddenly we’re the only two people on the mountain.
I want to pull her even closer, lift her chin, and drop my mouth to hers. I want to know what she tastes like, what her hair smells like, whether she would make a noise if I tugged on one of those pretty braids.
