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“So, you hate being cold, yet you spend your entire break outside, in February, drinking a frozen beverage?” Ken took a sip of his smoothie.
“That’s why I sit here.” I smiled, gesturing toward the sun overhead with my lit cigarette. “It’s, like, ten degrees warmer on this side of the mall. But we can walk around if you want. That’s what I do when I get really cold.”
Ken smiled and shook his head. “I’m just giving you shit.”
That was good because, the way we were sitting, angled toward each other, my foot was touching his shin, and it was the highlight of my day.
“How’s that papaya-mango treating you?” I asked, flicking my eyes down to his giant Styrofoam cup.
“It’s pretty fucking amazing,” he deadpanned.
“Lemme try it,” I said, sticking my cigarette between my teeth so that I could hold out my empty palm.
Ken held my stare as he took another sip, shaking his head.
“No? Why not?” I snapped.
“You didn’t say the magic word.”
“What? Like, please? That magic word?”
Ken nodded, straw still in his mouth. He was so fucking cute and so fucking infuriating, all at the same time. I had to fight the urge to slap his drink to the ground and then kiss the shit out of him.
With a dramatic eye roll, I said in my best British orphan accent, “Please, Mr. Easton? May I please have a sip of your smoothie, sir?”
Ken’s lips curled around the straw in triumph.
Asshole.
I jerked the cup out of his hand and replaced it with mine. Giving him what I hoped looked like a fuck you death glare, I took a sip, and my eyes instantly rolled up into the back of my head.
“Holy shit, that’s good.” I took another sip. “I’m keeping this one. You can have mine. There’s more of it left anyway. That’s, like, a better ounce-per-dollar ratio or something. You can’t argue with that.”
Ken smiled and tapped the side of his new cup against mine. “Only because of the ounce-per-dollar ratio.”
I watched as he put the straw that had been in my mouth into his mouth. There was no sense of ickiness. No traces of germaphobia at all.
Weird about touching. Not weird about swapping spat. Interesting.
As we sat and talked, I realized that I could not keep my hands out of my hair. I had a ton of nervous tics. My hands and mouth were pretty much always busy—smoking, talking, chewing pen caps, gesticulating, laughing inappropriately, picking threads from my clothing, chewing my fingernails, twirling my hair. But trying to make small talk with Kenneth Easton made it worse than ever.
“Oh my God, if I don’t stop playing with my hair, I’m gonna go bald.” I laughed, sitting on my hand. “I’m not used to it being straight. I normally can’t even get my hands through it.”
Ken watched me in amusement but said nothing.
“Did you notice?” I turned my head from side to side, my burgundy bob twisting and falling back into place. “I just got it done a few days ago.”
“I noticed.”
That was all he said. No smile. No innuendo. Just I noticed.
My face fell. “You don’t like it.”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not I like it.” Ken’s features were serious. As in he was seriously not going to tell me that my new fucking haircut looked pretty.
“Why not?” I snapped, heat rising to the surface of my ice-cold cheeks.
“Because you’re Brooke Bradley.” Ken set down his cup and faced me head-on. “The first time I ever saw you, you had a shaved head. You didn’t give a shit what people thought then, and you shouldn’t start now. Do you like it?”
