Page 39 of Cream Pie

“Marshall, I love you man, but…” I mime zippering my lips, and he groans.

“One-time thing or something you’re gonna follow up on?”

I roll my eyes. “You know, you’re as bad as Faust over there,” I grumble, nodding my chin at a clearly eavesdropping Max at the next table.

Marshall roars with laughter.

“Alright, fine. Keep your damn secrets.”

“Gentleman never tells,” I mumble.

A gentleman doesn’t fuck his best friend’s daughter either, you shithead, I think darkly to myself.

As if on cue, I look up just in time to see a fucking dream breeze onto the breakfast veranda.

Amy.

Amy looking like fucking perfect—looking sexy as hell, and somehow also completely adorable. She’s in this breezy, short white sundress, her hair down and tumbling over one shoulder. She looks up and catches my eyes with her baby blues, and instantly, the heat burns into her face.

She hides a smile as she whirls and makes a beeline for the self-serve coffee station, and I quickly look down into my own mug.

“Hey, there she is!” Marshall beams, raising a hand to wave her over. I look past him, my eyes glued to the way the sun just bathes her in a glow, and my jaw tightens.

This isn’t good. I look at her, right there past my best friend, and I just fucking want her. I want her constantly, always, incessantly. I want her like I want air, and water, and food. Like my heart wants to keep pumping blood.

“One-time thing or something you’re gonna follow up on?”

And suddenly, like a knife twisting into me, I don’t fucking know.

This whole thing, here, at Marshall’s damn wedding of all places, was bad enough. But here at least, there’s this aura of being “on vacation,” like it’s an excuse. It’s not, and to me, it definitely isn’t. But what about her?

She’s young, she’s at a wedding, she’s on vacation, and this is all new to her. Yeah, I might be willing to admit that I’m fucking crazy about Amy, but I am older. I’ve been around the block, and I see the world from thirty-five, not eighteen. She’s got her whole damn life ahead of her, and as much as I want to just fucking claim her, and make her mine forever?

Shit, I mean, c’mon.

I turn, and my eyes land on Marshall. My best friend, my boss, and the man who’s given me so damn much. And when I glance back at Amy, something twists in my gut.

What the fuck am I doing, and what thefuck have I gotten myself into?

“Listen, I’m gonna go catch some sun before we take off later,” I mumble at Marshall as I stand. “Later.”

I turn, I grit my teeth, and I walk the fuck away.

Because I have to, before I march right over there, take her in my arms, and kiss her until they have to drag me off of her.

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