Page 18 of Starfish and Coffee
“You want me to take a picture?” Alex finally asked his brother with a scowl.
Will straightened and looked away from Holly, the guilt flashing on his handsome face for one brief moment before he cleared his throat. “I got class.”
“Have fun.” Holly grabbed a piece of toast off the plate. “Learn lots.”
“Don’t eat that.” Will actually leaped across the kitchen to knock the bread out of her grasp as if saving her from something toxic. “He licked it.”
Holly held up her hands and then gave Alex a look. “Why do you have to fuck with him like that?”
“I’m the bad guy now? He needs to lighten up.”
“Doing shit like that doesn’t lighten him up, it freaks him out. It makes him worse. He doesn’t need anything else to make him more uptight. I think it’s starting to become a medical condition.”
“I’m still here,” Will reminded them.
Holly turned to Will and took a bite of the tainted toast as if the entire licking conversation had never happened. “I thought you had class.”
“It’s like you two are in your own wonder world.” Will stood there staring at them with his jaw hanging open. Then he shook his head and walked out of the kitchen.
Holly rolled her eyes and took another bite of toast. “He needs to get laid in the worst way.”
“I wouldn’t be offering up that suggestion. You could end up very surprised by the response you get from him.”
She frowned. “What’d you mean?”
“I can hear you!” Will called from the living room.
Alex grabbed the toast from Holly to put it on the plate. Then he served up a portion of the huge omelet and handed the plate back to her.
Holly looked at her breakfast. “No garnish?”
“Fuck you.” Alex laughed at her sarcasm.
“What’s got you jumpy?” Holly asked as she sat down at the kitchen table. “You only cook like this when you’re anxious.”
Alex turned back to the stove and dished himself up a plate as he listened to Will walk around the house, gathering up the stuff he needed for school and then work afterward. Alex moved slowly, using the excuse of doctoring Holly’s coffee and putting the pans in the sink to avoid answering her question.
“Leaving,” his brother finally shouted from the living room. “I’ll be back late.”
“Bye,” Holly called back, her eyes on Alex. Not two seconds after the front door clicked shut, she asked, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Alex put her coffee in front of her like a peace offering. “I hope it’s nothing. Itbetter benothing, ’cause I dunno what I’m gonna do if it is something.”
“What’re you talking about?” Holly frowned at him as he sat across from her. “You’re making no sense, and you’ve been bouncing off the walls since yesterday.”
Alex pushed at his eggs, looking at his plate instead of meeting her gaze. “Tarrington offered to come over and help today.”
“Help with what? Does he know how to fix a garbage disposal or do laundry?”
Alex shrugged, still avoiding eye contact. “I told him he could come if he wanted. Help, I mean. With the rentals.”
“Okay,” Holly said slowly as if trying to process this information. Finally a teasing smirk tugged at her lips as if she sensed a need to break the tension. “I thought you hated him.”
Alex tried to laugh, but it came out more like a moan of misery. “I’m not real sure what I feel about him.”
It was only half a lie. He knew some of the things he felt, like the blinding lust that welled up inside him whenever they were in the same space, and a bizarre desire to know more about the rich boy who was willing to work at Frank’s just to prove that he could. He was still trying to figure out the rest.
“What”—Alex started while sorting through the wild surge of emotions that clogged his thinking when it came to Matt—“what would I do if I could actually hit it?”
