Page 41 of Out of Bounds
He smiles but I detect there’s only a limited amount of humor behind it, and I’m not sure if he’s doing that thing again where he’s laughing at me.
“Muffin, I’m not sure what gave you the impression I wanted to be friends with you.”
There’s something about the way he said that, that doesn’t make me mad. I also don’t think he’s being mean even though he called me Muffin.
“Why do you call me that?”
“I can’t believe you would ask me that.”
“Of course, I would. Thanks to you no one decent would date me for a long time either because of the lingering dead fish smell in my hair from trying to clean out my car, or they thought I was a stripper.”
“Muffins are your favorite things,” he replies. I’m surprised he knows that. “When we first met you offered me a strawberry glazed muffin with little pink hearts on top of it.”
I furrow my brows. “You remember that?”
“Yes.”
“But you were so mean to me. You didn’t even answer. You just scowled at me and walked away.” There I was, new in town, and my parents were having a picnic on the beach. I saw this boy by the rockpool, and I swore he was crying, so I thought I’d offer him a muffin. That was how we met. The next time I saw him was at school when he pushed me off the swing and called me a weirdo.
“Maybe I didn’t answer, and I was so mean because my dad just kicked the crap out of me when I tried to stop him from hurting my mother.”
While I suck in a breath he gives no more emotion away.
“Your dad did what?” I had no idea his father was like that. He seemed so normal when he was alive. Although I did hear some rumors about his death, and they weren’t very nice.
“Story for another time, Muffin. Anyway that’s where the name came from. That and the fact you were dressed as a giant muffin for the Christmas play when you were twelve.”
I’m endeared but I’m stuck on what he said about his father. So much so that I get up and close the distance between us by sitting next to him on the sofa he’s sitting on.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I just felt like sitting here. You, um, don’t seem so much like the devil now.”
“Then you haven’t learned your lesson.”
“I think I have.”
He sits forward and our knees touch. The spark sends a shiver of delicious heat through me. I’m not sure if that’s the drink but it feels good.
“I’m not sure you should be sitting so close to me.” He gets his drink and finishes another glass.
“Why not?”
He picks my glass up and tips it so I can drink the rest. When I lean forward and drink it up as he serves it to me, he watches me the way a predator would watch its prey.
More than a buzz hits me now and the combination of that heat filled shiver and the buzz assaults my nerves.
“Why?” I nudge his knee and he looks at my finger poking into his pants.
He dips his head low and catches the end of my ponytail as it falls over my shoulder.
We both watch the ends coil around his finger and then he pulls it away and touches the underside of my jaw.
“Because… your sexy as fuck and I want to kiss you. That’s why I can’t be friends with you.”
My mouth goes dry, and I find myself unable to look away from his endless gaze.
A moment of madness must take me because I find myself wondering what that might feel like. Then I remember the times I used to think about that a lot.
