'Nother Sip of Gin - Rhys Ford Page 0,63
fashions. Sarah would chase that wisp of an idea until something else caught her eye, but Quinn found the past fascinating, often more intriguing than anything else. The past held patterns, echoes of ripples one could only clearly see by stepping back into the present and staring at the whole picture. Sometimes the smallest of stones tossed into a vast sea created the greatest impact, but at the time, no one knew what hit them.
Much like Rafe Andrade did to Quinn’s life… and exactly like he was doing right now as he slipped into the room and took a seat by one of the doors.
Of course the students noticed Rafe. It was impossible to ignore him, and even if not everyone knew who he was, he drew eyes to him. There was more than a bit of pirate to his look, a dash of rogue made all the more distracting when he ran his fingers through his disheveled blond hair and gave Quinn a slow, wicked smile. He’d probably grabbed whatever was handy to put on, because Quinn was pretty sure Rafe was wearing the ramen shop T-shirt Quinn wore to the Morgan family dinner the night before, and the pair of beat-up jeans barely hugging Rafe’s hips were paint-splattered in places, celery green dots exactly the shade of the walls in Con’s study. Throwing out old clothes wasn’t something either one of them did on a regular basis, but the jeans were kissing the line of indecent, especially after Rafe caught a sharp corner and ripped a small divot beneath his left asscheek.
What Quinn really didn’t need was the good peek of the boxer briefs Rafe wore beneath his jeans, the red cotton framed by the faded denim and clearly visible when Rafe rested his foot on the table’s edge, bending his knee while sprawling across the chair’s wide back. The top level of the risers was nearly empty, and Rafe’s presence filled that corner of the room, pushing much of Quinn’s train of thought right out of his brain. After shooting a fierce scowl at Rafe, he turned back to the whiteboard, hoping his notes would lead him back to where he’d been in his lecture.
“So tikka masala isn’t really Indian food?” One of the lantern-jawed boys who usually squirmed through the class pushed himself to the edge of his seat, glancing over his shoulder at Rafe before drifting his attention back to Quinn. “Or is it one of those influenced things?”
“That is a hotly debated topic, and according to one side of the argument, it was created by a British Pakistani chef in Glasgow, while others maintain that its origins are in India. But that’s another rabbit hole, because we’re talking about something that earned a niche in the lexicon of British foods sometime in the 1960s or ’70s. It all depends on who’s telling the tale,” Quinn replied, his mind careening back to where he’d gotten derailed. “Now, that’s not to say India didn’t have its hand in influencing British cuisine during Queen Victoria’s reign, because here’s when things get really interesting….”
He got through the rest of the class with a determined focus. Rafe’s presence… throbbed in the corner of Quinn’s awareness, pulling him back to the sun-kissed bassist time and time again until Quinn was nearly ready to kick Rafe out just so he could finish his lecture in peace. Rafe said nothing, did nothing, but every shift of his shoulders or the minute squeak of a Converse moving against the table’s edge yanked Quinn right back to the top level of the classroom’s seating. Hidden partially by silken gray shadows, Rafe merely sat and watched Quinn, making eye contact every time Quinn glanced his way and infuriatingly smiling once in a while, with enough of a heated promise in his grin to make Quinn stutter and trip over his words.
It was like being back in high school and watching his brothers and their friends hunker down over lunch, usually leaving the end of the bench open for Quinn… where inevitably, Rafe joined them five minutes into the period, shoving Quinn farther in with a nudge. He’d spent more than a few lunch hours wishing he was anywhere but plastered to Rafe Andrade’s side, while also hoping the meal would go on forever.
Except right now, he would cheerfully kill Rafe, because he had a class to get through, and the asshole knew exactly how Quinn felt about those damned jeans and the challenge of a