Page 24 of Brand
With a sigh, Brand unwrapped his sandwich like he already knew what kind of disappointment was in store for him. He would never say anything though. I knew this only after such a short time. I smiled to myself as I pushed my finger down on the edge of the paper that held his sandwich and slid it in front of me. Then I plopped the number three down in the newly cleared space.
I swear his eyes lit up as he opened it to find his favorite sub. I didn’t directly look at him, but I couldn’t help but see it out of the corner of my eye.
“You ordered this…for me?” he asked like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug as I picked up the grilled cheese that was topped with tomato, sprouts, and hummus. A sandwich that I very much didn’t mind eating.
I could feel his eyes on me, but I did my best to ignore him as I took a huge bite. A moan escaped me as the amazing taste hit my tongue.
He cleared his throat, then picked up his sub.
“Thank you,” he muttered before he dug in.
As the silence set in, I wondered if I should say something. Before I had a chance to open my mouth, my phone dinged with a text. I pulled it out and it continued to ding over and over again. All I could think was that it had to be Laurel. Before I even unlocked my phone, I had a good idea that there was probably a slew of questions and pictures of wedding stuff.
Yes, she’d jumped on the wedding planning pretty much the day after Brice had proposed. Her and my mother, both. Why she constantly asked my opinion, well, I had no clue. It was her wedding, after all. And I wasn’t really good at those things.
I wasn’t the girl that had been planning her wedding since she was six. I wasn’t the girl that wished for love and all that stuff.
But I did my best to give her an honest, but positive opinion. Unless it was just really bad.
Like the wedding dress that my mother was head over heels for. Come on, the thing had like a ten-foot train and looked more like a literal princess should have been wearing it. Yes, we were rich and there were standards my parents thought they had to keep up with. But the dress was just too much. I knew my sister didn’t really like it either so, I hadn’t felt all that bad about telling her it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.
These texts were of bridesmaids dresses. I knew that our mother had hired a wedding planner, even if she ended up taking over most of the time anyway. I wasn’t really sure why my sister insisted on getting my input. I knew nothing about weddings. I barely knew about fashion. But as I scrolled through the three pictures she sent me, I couldn’t help but snort out loud at them.
“That good, huh?” Brand asked.
“Oh, God. You should see these. They are so bad.” I couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up out of my throat. “Look at that bow. It’s so big. And that color…what is that even supposed to be? Burnt brownies?”
Then my laughter was gone as he moved into my space, his head right next to mine and his stupid summer and leather scent filling my nose. Yeah, an odd combination that I couldn't even begin to explain. But I loved it. It was warm and somehow had a sense of strength to it, like the security of big arms wrapping themselves around me.
What was I even saying?
That didn’t even make any sense.
But in a way it did.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to snap myself out of the craziness going on in my brain.
“Wow,” he said with a breath of a laugh. “Those are really bad. And is that a belt on that last one? I don’t get it. Lilac and tangerine are two colors that should not ever go together like that.”
My head snapped to look at him. I don’t know why I had been so surprised. I mean the guy was an artist. And gay. Yes, that I imagined might be a combination that would cause him to use specific colors versus just purple and orange.
Either way, he was so right.
And I couldn’t help but smile like an idiot. Because I just maybe had found my kind of person. Someone that would understand the workings of my brain. If we could just knock this slightly weird and awkward thing that lingered between us sometimes, I had no doubt we’d be good friends. And I could always use friends. It wasn’t like I had that many that weren’t more family acquaintances than anything else.
“You alright?” he asked, his head suddenly turned in my direction and his nose was almost touching mine.
Alarms were going off in my head and with a flinch, I jerked upright, my phone slipping out of my hand in the process. The clang that rang out from it hitting the hard counter was enough to break my thoughts away from the weird things that were happening to my body.
“Yes.” I let out a very obvious forced laugh. “I’m just wondering if she is actually going to choose one of those. They are really hideous.”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those.” He smiled and his joke made me relax a little.
“Oh, I don’t know…I think you could pull off the mint green strapless one.”
“Yeah?” His brows went up right before he picked up my phone and unlocked the screen to look at the picture again. “I think I have the shoulders to pull it off, but my boobs are pretty much nonexistent. I think I need something with straps…maybe like those thin, stringy ones to help hold it up.”
