Page 39 of Deep In Love
“I never said that.”
“Oh, you didn’t need to.” She waves a hand around in a circle near my head. “Your face did all the talking. And it’s saying ‘I want to sleep with Mateo.’”
I huff, cleaning up my bench space and ignoring her laughter.
We arenothate fucking. We are barely even friends.
Even if I have thought about it—which I would not admit to Sofía—thinking about him is far different from actually seeing him naked, which based on the way my pits are sweating, I don’t know how I would handle myself if it actually happened.
Faint, maybe.
I saw a sliver of abdomen yesterday when he stretched, and I had to tear my gaze away before my jaw fell open.
This has to be some sort of sickness.
Sofía spins in her chair again, and I’m nearly done cleaning when the door bursts open and she drops to the floor like there’s a fire.
“Who is it?” she whispers, crawling under the bench, knees to her chest.
“You’re insane,” I whisper back, but also crouch, peeking my head around to identify our visitor.
My heartbeat thrashes when a very manly arm comes into view.
“It’s a man.”
“Which one? There are so many.”
“I don’t know.” I try for another angle, and my stomach drops when Shaun appears.
I ignore the mild disappointment and wave at him from our hiding spot. I have no idea why I’m still down here or why we hid in the first place, but I’m following Sofía’s lead, so if she says hide, I’m not going to question her.
“There you are,” Shaun, an ROV technician, says, glancing around the rolling chair I placed to block us. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Why is everyonebutMateo looking for me today?
“Yup. That’s me. Right here.”
I give him a thumbs-up, and Sofía hides a laugh with a cough. My hand darts out to whack her.
Shaun stares at me oddly, probably because I’m crouched beneath a lab bench beside Sofía, who is giggling like she’s drunk.
“I wanted to check what collection equipment you needed deployed with the next ROV dive.”
“Just a Niskin for the water samples and a grab for the soil.”
He nods and gives me another peculiar look, one I can’t decipher, when I make no move to get up from the floor. “Will I see you at dinner tonight?”
His voice is low, his attention focused entirely on me, and I have to suppress the urge to squirm.
“Uh, yes? I mean, probably. Will there be food?”
Sofía cackles again, which morphs into a grunt when my fist connects with her stomach.
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
My brow furrows at the bizarre tone, but before I can think about it any more, he disappears and we fall into a fit of giggles.
“Boys are so weird,” she says between breaths.
