this… I couldn’t complete the sentence, my brain pretty much stalling on that. I’d built so many roadblocks to the idea, sick to hell of mooning around, waiting for Jai Heller to want to be with me, that I was going to need some time to deconstruct them.
Time… His eyes tracked every move of my lips, the way I bit them when I realised what we needed to do, my tongue slipping out to try and soothe the abused flesh. How was I going to tell the man I’d been obsessing about for much of my adult life we had to take things slow?
“So we shouldn’t go home then,” he replied finally. “I…I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I need to do this properly. Take you out, go slow—”
“Get to know each other?” I said.
“Yeah, that.” He frowned for a second. “Seems ridiculous to say about someone I grew up with but… You went away after graduation. You came to some of the gatherings and would show your face when you needed to, but it was like you were already gone. You talked less, smiled less, ate less.”
“Well, that part’s because if I ate like you lot, my arse would get even fatter.”
He let out a low growl at that, a pleased smile spreading across his face.
“What?”
“I like your arse just as it is, maybe a little plumper.” I reached across and belted him on the arm, which just had him laughing. “I’ve got an idea where we should go. Beth’d kill me if I didn’t make sure you had something to eat, and it’s in public, so we’ll keep our clothes on.”
“Where?”
“The old lookout.”
I could tell Beth was keen on this match by what was in the basket. Jai pulled out plastic container after plastic container of some of her signature dishes. Roast lamb, and creamy mashed spuds so thick and rich, you could eat it all by itself. Fresh made bread rolls, and butter she made herself from cream taken from their cows. We both made increasingly obscene noises as we opened each lid and piled food on the plates she’d packed, until the only sounds were the birds in the trees and us eating.
“Candle lit dinner,” he said, gesturing to the storm lantern he’d placed on the concrete picnic table. We’d pulled into the empty car park and walked along the winding path to the lookout that gave you a panoramic view of the valley. Kids had sprayed all sorts of graffiti tags all over the furniture here, but the council kept it otherwise clean.
“Beth likes you,” I said after we’d cleared our first plate full, watching in amusement as he dug in for more.
“What?” he said, nodding to me. “I’m a growing boy.”
“Growing?” I made a show of eyeing his six-foot-two frame. “Maybe that head of yours. Always the golden boy.”
“Is that what you thought of me?” he asked with a sly smile, then busied himself with his food. “Wasn’t me floating around looking like I’d been dipped in pure sunlight all the time. You used to come into class, and I’d…” He shook his head, smiling down at his plate, then those eyes flicked up. “Half the time, I’d be hassling the teacher to go to the shitter to…settle things down.”
“You’re trying to romance me by telling me you left class to deal with your boners?”
“I’m telling you it hurt to look at you. You were so fucking beautiful that I wanted to see if your hair felt as soft as the cloud it looked like. And yeah, I knew you were something special by the way my body responded to you. I spent most of school aching, watching.”
“You barely spoke to me, and when you did, you were a dick!”
“I—”
“You tied me and Jaz’s plaits together in middle school.”
“Well—”
“You pushed me into a puddle trying to get on the bus faster.”
“So I—”
“You tripped me over in front of the pack and then laughed the loudest out of all of them when I faceplanted. The whole bloody school saw me.”
“Fuck, Shan.” He scrubbed at his scalp. “Why the hell did you sleep with me?”
“You first,” I said, gesturing to him with a fork.
He played with his food for a moment, which was almost a relief, as when he looked up, I had to stifle a gasp, his eyes stabbing straight into me.