Page 53 of Mistlefoe
“Fine, let’s change the topic then.” As she props her bent arm over the back of her chair, Rachel asks, “What’s the deal between you and Conor?”
Of course, this happens at the same time as I’m taking a sip of bubbly—and it goes down the wrong pipe. I hack horrible coughs that make half of the patrons turn our way.
“What are you talking about?” I sound like a chainsmoker with pneumonia as I ask.
“You guys don’t seem to hate each other, but you were all weird in the elevator the other day.” She offers my glass of water to me. “Here.”
I take it and swallow water down in big gulps, both for relief and for stalling. “Any chance we could talk about literally anything else? Environmental policy? Politics back in our home country? How your famous brothers are doing this season?”
“Hmm, none of those sound appealing to me and I thought we were here for me?”
“I fail to see how that sentence is a fully strung thought.” I sigh, though. Rachel has determination in spades and she won’t drop a bone when it’s already clenched tightly between her jaws. “Fine, the answer is I don’t know. And I’m not being cheeky here, I really don’t.”
Rachel leans her elbow on the table and props her chin on the heel of her hand. “Was it my fault? Were you about to kiss under the mistletoe when I interrupted?”
“No.” I fold my arms and melt a little on my chair. “If anything, he seemed extremely reluctant to kissing me again.”
We both stare at each other, neither of us reacting to what I just admitted.
The soft jazz music wraps around me like a fake safetyblanket. Any moment now, one of us is going to explode with sound and movement and drastically change the atmosphere of this bar. Not sure if for the better.
Rachel tucks her tongue against her cheek, still quiet as she watches me sweat through my cardigan across from her. Clearing my throat, I pick up my glass water again and take an elegant little sip.
“Again?” She shrieks the word. Next thing, she smacks the table. “And you weren’t planning to tell your best friend?”
“Well, in my defense Grammie’s my best friend and she doesn’t know either, so why should I tell you first?” I pretend to check my nails.
She ignores all that. “You kissed Conor Mahoney?You? How was it? I demand every minutia right this second.”
Groaning, I lower my face to my hands and run them up and down my face. “Oh my gosh, Rachel. It was the most incredible kiss of my life—and he doesn’t want to do it again! Ugh.”
“Backtrack, please. I beg.” She snaps her fingers several times. “And give me all the details too.”
“There’s not that much to it, to be honest,” I say and launch into the story of that venue visit. In retrospect, I was already crushing on the man before the kiss—otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d have ignored superstitious threats. That was just the device I used to negotiate acquiring a kiss.
When I tell Rachel about how Conor asked me how I wanted to be kissed, her eyes all but pop out of their sockets. She leans forward, hands on the edge of the table as I tell her what I can of the kiss. It’s not like I’m a writer and can use pretty words to describe something that was transcendent.
I explain as much with a shrug. “What can I say? The man knows how to use his lips. And tongue.”
“I imagine he knows how to use the rest of his body too, huh?” Rachel’s lips curve into a sneaky smirk because, unfortunately,a lamp hangs low over our table and easily lights up my reddening face.
“Probably.”
“And you want to find out.” Her smirk deepens.
“Maybe.”
“Which from you means heck yeah.”
“But what good is that when the man contorted himself to get as far from me and that mistletoe as he could?”
“Have you considered—oh, I don’t know—asking him directly?” Rachel lifts her hands and gives an exaggerated shrug.
“What’s the point? He said with his own mouth that it wouldn’t be a good idea to kiss again.”
“He could’ve meant at the office.”
Crap, I hadn’t considered that. One thing is kissing at that hotel, with no one we know to bear witness. Quite another would be making out in the elevator and have it, say, open its doors right in front of Richard’s face. Or worse, in front of someone like Camila Puig who would immediately march us to HR.
