Page 14 of Flaunt
Especially to him and that dimple. I sigh.
“Sara?” Rebecca asks.
I flinch and mentally return to the table. “Yeah?”
Her brow furrows. “I asked how your move went, and you just checked out on me.”
“Oh. Right. It went fine. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
I shift in my seat, swirling my long pink straw around my drink. “I had a verySaramoment today.”
“Meaning …”
Jenny drops off our plates and asks if we need anything else. Then she scoots off toward the table full of construction workers in the corner.
Our plates sizzle. Steaming peppers and onions fill the air, and I wonder why someone hasn’t created a candle for kitchens that smells exactly like this.Heaven.
I remove the foil from my tortillas. “I was getting my last few things packed up—mostly bathroom stuff. I was able to get my extra clothes, kitchen crap, and all of that to Sabrina’s earlier this week. The furniture came with the apartment, so all I really had left was the stuff I’m taking to Ashley’s.”
“Right.”
“Do you remember that glass jar of macadamia nut oil you got me for Christmas?” I ask.
She nods.
“Well, I love that stuff very much, and I’ve been milking it for as long as I can.”
Rebecca grins from ear to ear.
“I had it in one hand to carry to my bag and my vibrator in the other,” I say, not making eye contact with her. “And, through a series of unfortunate events, the glass broke. The oil went all over the tile floor. I slipped, and the vibrator went down my toilet.”
“Sara.”
“I’m fine, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I say, generously slathering sour cream on my tortilla.
“Um, yeah. That’s not really what I was wondering.”
Didn’t think so. I layer lettuce and pico de gallo on top of the sour cream. “I got the oil cleaned up. There wasn’t that much left, so it wasn’t a huge loss.”
“And?”
“I used a coat hanger to try to fish the vibrator out, but it wasn’t happening. So I borrowed a plunger from the neighbor and tried to use that. Also, a fail.”
Rebecca’s gaze doesn’t stray from me. It nearly burns a hole in my forehead.
She and I have had many conversations about Banks and the rest of the Carmichaels over the years—more so now that Ashley is officially one of them.
The good genes run deep in that family. They’re a loud, mischievous, chaotic bunch who values family over all else. They have striking eyes in various shades of green and blue. Every one of them is lean and built from years of sports and physical activity. There isn’t one of them that doesn’t belong on a magazine cover.
And then there’s Banks—the hottest one of them all.
I don’t know what it is about him that makes him so ridiculously attractive.
He sings old country songs too loudly in the truck. He seems to think things like knowing the location of your car fuses are downloaded into your brain at birth. Worst of all, getting him to take anything seriously takes a shield and sword, and he prioritizes things on his own scale.It matters not what anyone else thinks. He runs on Banks time.
But then his wild blue eyes with thick black lashes are an open book. He makes you laugh but never feel laughed at. He opens doors and overtips servers—he pulls over on the side of a busy highway to help a random old man with his car in a one-hundred-degree, hundred-percent humidity afternoon when he could just keep going.
