Faker - Sarah Smith Page 0,30
looks away and slowly licks his lips, like he’s lost in thought. The sight of his pink tongue emerging from his mouth is a shot of adrenaline to my heart.
For a second, I let myself remember how solid he felt under my hands. I recall his taste, his lips, the feel of his hair. God, his hair. It’s a tousled mess today, and it’s hypnotizing. The way the curls fall seems more reckless. It takes every ounce of self-control to keep myself in this chair. My hands would rather take a touch-tour of his hair and body.
I silence my dirty mind. “What should we do about it?”
“What do you mean?” He sounds surprised.
His gaze shifts from my face to the bottom of my neck, then to my chest. It lingers there briefly, then he looks away.
I open my mouth and for a moment I feel bold. I itch to tell him that the clean taste of his mouth is all I’ve been thinking about, that he’s the only guy to ever make me ache between the legs during a first kiss. I’m dying to climb on his lap, wrap my arms around his neck, press my forehead against his, and sink into his eyes until I pass out.
But when I fixate on his gaze, I lose my nerve. There’s an intensity behind the gray-blue that I’ve never seen before. Clarity hits for the first time in three days. It wasn’t him who initiated this conversation. I did. I walked to his office. He didn’t dare set foot in mine. If he felt any inkling of what I feel for him, he would have brought it up. He would have come to me. Instead, he walked to his desk without so much as a glance in my direction, like he does every morning. Today is just another day for him. It’s like Friday night never happened. If that’s not indifference to our kiss—to me—I don’t know what is.
If his actions just now weren’t evidence enough, his stare is. Wariness has replaced cool. Whatever affection I witnessed from him earlier is gone. I understand him now. He wants to ignore what happened between us and move on.
“It was a mistake, right?” I let out a quiet, defeated breath.
He looks at the floor and nods. “Yeah.” There’s an edge to his voice that wasn’t there before. I tuck it away in the back of my mind along with the fleeting boldness I felt.
I take the hint and start to walk back to my office.
“Good weekend for you, then?” he asks while facing his computer.
I pause at the doorway. “It was fine. How about you?”
This is one of the first normal exchanges we’ve had, and it feels phony. Maybe the two of us are incapable of anything but bickering and smart-ass comments.
“My weekend was okay.” He assaults his keyboard with renewed intensity. “You and Jamie have a good time on Friday night?”
I cringe, remembering that he saw us holding hands at the crosswalk while driving away. When I peer over, I can see the muscles of his jaw push against his skin. The way his mouth clenches indicates that this is probably the last time he will ever make small talk with me.
“It was okay. I mean, good.” Apparently “okay” is the word of the day. “We’re terrible at small talk, aren’t we?” I try to make it sound like a joke, but it comes off more like a sad observation.
A full five seconds pass before he answers me. “Obviously, it’s quite the ordeal for us to converse casually. Why don’t we go back to normal? Silence unless we need to talk about work.” The stony expression I’m used to seeing on his face is gone, replaced by one I can’t recognize.
Even though he’s right, I can’t help but feel hurt.
“Sounds perfect,” I say flatly, hoping it hides the despair in my voice. He can probably still hear it, though. I walk back to my office, an invisible cloud of rejection hanging over me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to fake anything with him.
* * *
• • •
IT’S WEEK TWO of building the house, and the heat wave hasn’t loosened its grip in the slightest. Even at nine a.m. it’s scorching hot, but I welcome it. Avoiding heatstroke is a necessary distraction after four days of tense silence with Tate. We’ve missed this week’s meeting for our social media and marketing project because he never bothered to schedule one. I