Page 99 of Just Friends

“Are we here?” I ask excitedly.

“Yes,” Alex says, and I hear his door crack open. “Butnopeeking.”

My door opens a few moments later, but instead of Alex’s hand wrapping around mine, he settles his hands on my waist, brushing against my exposed midriff. Gently, he pulls me from the seat and lowers me to the ground. My hands land on his shoulders, fingers curling around the curves. A year ago, I wondered what it would feel like to touch him like this, but now it feels as natural as breathing.

Alex’s lips brush against my ear, and I shiver as he whispers, “If I didn’t say it already, you look beautiful today.”

My skin heats, and goose bumps skitter across my skin. It’s been nine months—nine months of slow kisses and easy touches, of heated glances and frenzied lips on skin, of Alex and me and our friendship changing—but it hasn’t stopped feeling like the first taste of an ice cream cone on a hot summer day, like the perfect mixture of sweetness and relief and goodness and magic.

Alex’s hands drift up from my sides to frame my face, slowly lifting the blindfold, the brightness reaching my eyes by degrees. I blink against it when he pulls the blindfold back, and when I see where we are, I have no words.

When I glance back at Alex, his lips are pressed together, mirth dancing in the browns and greens and golds of his irises.

“We’re at a gas station,” I say, my voice flat as I take in the building in front of me. Dilapidated and in sore need of a paint job. Cracking pavement and one of the lights on the sign blinking as it battles against dimming completely. Cigarette ashes littering the ground and the heavy scent of gasoline in the air.

I gesture at the building. “Thisis our special blind date?”

“And don’t you forget it,” he says, his fingers slipping through mine. He pulls me toward the steel and glass front doors, leaving his SUV parked beside one of the pumps.

It’s a warm spring day, but the gas station air conditioning chills me as soon as we walk in, a blast of cold air hitting us in the face. Alex walks with purpose, leading us toward the back, as if he knows exactly what he’s doing. When we stop in front of a brightly colored milkshake machine, a smile curls across my lips.

“Ah, I see,” letting my gaze trail over him as he confidently presses the button on the screen and scrolls through the options. “Although, I don’t know that the blindfold was necessary for milkshakes.”

He smiles down at me, an unreadable expression hidden behind his eyes. “I didn’t say this was theonlypart of the date.”

Something warm and liquid bubbles inside my chest as I watch him. I don’t know how I went two years without seeing him the way that I do now, without noticing how objectively beautiful he is. He’s a work of art, the kind that I would stand in a museum and stare at all day, trying to decipher what makes it so breathtaking. The sharpness of his jaw contrasted with the soft flutter of his lashes. The dark stubble that blends into the creamy lightness of his skin. The pink that colors his cheekbones when he’s nervous in social situations, that everyone assumes is merriment. The way his hair looks better at the end of the day, after it’s rebelled from the styling products.

Every bit of him is a masterpiece, something I’ve never been able to capture, even though I’ve made him sit for me as I tried to paint him. I’d get frustrated and he’d try to make me feel better, and we’d both end up covered in paint and breathless.

The machine finishes mixing a peanut butter cup milkshake, and Alex hands it to me before ordering a cotton candy for himself.

“I don’t even get to pick my own flavor?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow, a smile hitching up one corner of my mouth.

He shakes his head as he finishes his order. “Not today.”

I suck hard through my straw, and overly sweet vanilla and rich peanut butter and chocolate bits coat my tongue. “It’s a good thing I like peanut butter cup.”

Alex doesn’t say anything, waiting for the machine to finish his milkshake, but a smile plays at the corners of his mouth. While the machine whirs, I look around the store. It’s almost…familiar, like I recognize the peeling paint on the yellowing wall near the register or the slightly crooked sign on the women’s restroom.

“Have we been here before?” I ask Alex, my brain still trying to place details.

Alex pulls his milkshake out from the machine, holding it in front of me. He ignores my question, asking instead, “Want a sip?”

My face scrunches up, my nose crinkling. “I still don’t understand how you thinkcotton candyis an acceptable ice cream flavor after the age of four.”

“A tiger can’t change its spots, Hazel,” he says calmly, walking toward the register.

I blink at his back. “Alex, you know that’s not the saying.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks, glancing at me over his shoulder. “That is the saying.”

“It’s ‘a tiger can’t change its stripes,’” I tell him. “Or ‘a leopard can’t change its spots.’ Tigers don’t have spots, Alex.”

He shakes his head, setting his milkshake on the counter, and I follow suit. “I’m pretty sure tigers have spots.”

My eyes blow wide, and the woman behind the counter watches us, scanning our treats. “No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do,” he says and turns to face the woman checking us out. He gives her a winning smile, the same one that convinces me to let him choose the movie on Monday or leave the dishes in the sink and cuddle with him on the couch. “Do tigers have spots or stripes?”

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