Mixed Signals by B.K. Borison

Author:B.K. Borison [Borison, B.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

We eat our dinner.

Layla sits at one side of the table and I sit at the other.

We make conversation like we didn’t agree over a smashed tomato on the floor to make our relationship a physical one.

We talk about my classwork at the school. About Jeremy’s progress with Lydia and how a couple of other kids have shown up asking for my help translating their notes. Layla calls it my love club with an adorable, snorting laugh that makes me feel like someone’s trying to wrench my heart out of my chest through my throat. We talk about her upcoming photoshoot and the little custards that she’s finally perfected. Beignets and brioche and baguettes with fig jam.

I only get hard twice when she uses fancy baking terms. I consider that a small miracle.

We don’t talk about our conversation in the kitchen again.

Layla wants to. I can see it every time she looks at me, anticipation in her eyes and in the curl of her hands around her glass. One of her socked feet nudges mine beneath the table and my knee jolts so hard into the solid oak top that my glass goes tilting to the left. I catch it before it can spill.

Layla hides her smug smile behind her fingertips.

“Okay?” she asks just a little too innocently.

“Fine.”

I’m fine. Totally fine. I just can’t stop thinking about the way her breath slipped out of her when I had my knuckles against her neck. I can’t stop picturing the soft swell of her breast and how she arched into me, chasing my touch without even realizing it.

She’s so damn responsive. And the fact that no one has ever taken the time to reward her for that is a crime.

“Caleb?”

I shake my head. Distracted again. “Yeah?”

Her smile waivers, her eyes unsure. “I asked if you wanted dessert?”

I follow the line of her dress strap against her shoulder with my eyes. It’s thin, a dusty orange that makes her skin glow. She was wearing a cropped button-up wrapped overtop of it before dinner, tied in a bow above her waist. She slipped it off slowly while she poured our wine, the material gliding over her shoulders to the bend of her elbows. It whispered against her skin when she tugged it off and draped it over a chair.

My hands had itched with the desire to do it for myself. I wanted to unwrap her like a present.

“You’re drifting again.”

“Sorry.” I rub my hand across my forehead. “I know I am.”

“Do you want any dessert?”

I shake my head and her face falls. “But I have Boston cream pie in the fridge.”

It says something about how badly I want her that I don’t even flinch. I push my chair back from the table. “Come here for a sec.”

She doesn’t move from her seat on the opposite end of the table. Her bottom lip is stained a deep red from the wine. “Why?”

“Because I want to kiss you,” I tell her. Might as well be honest.

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