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Something important.
She played it again.
Her heart fluttered and her fingertips tingled.
She played it again.
“What do you think?” Zara asked.
Nikki, having forgotten Zara was on the phone and also that she’d turned the volume to max, yelped and dropped the phone.
“Sorry,” she called, picking the phone up. “Hold on.” She adjusted the volume and turned the speaker off.
“What do you think? Do you love it?” Zara asked excitedly.
Nikki snickered. “I do love it. It’s…it’s incredible.” And she wasn’t just saying that.
“Yay!” Zara squealed. “I have to go but I’ll text you later, ’kay?”
“Okay, bye.” Nikki ended the call and stared at her phone.
Of all the dreams she’d dared to dream, this one had seemed the furthest from reality.
“Hey.”
Speaking of far-flung hopes and dreams.
André stood in the doorway, all sweaty and hardworking.
But instead of the heart-twisting reaction from earlier, she was still buzzing from her call with Zara and so she smiled like a dope.
He smiled too and she realized what she was doing and tried to look serious. Or at least less dopey.
“Was that an important call?” he asked, nodding at the phone she was clutching to her chest like it was precious.
The song Zara had sent rang through her mind and she smiled again.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” André said with a grin.
“What?” She moved her phone away from her chest. “No. It’s— Can I help you with something?”
He rolled his lips inward and swallowed his smile. “I need to ask you what you want for the walls in here.” He jerked a thumb over his well-sculpted shoulder.
He had been pretty athletic when they’d dated, but she wouldn’t have described him as jacked.
Now?
Definitely jacked.
Though you wouldn’t know it when he wore his professor clothes. His pressed shirts and silly bowties successfully hidallll of that.
His suspenders curved over his shoulders and lay flat against his pectoral muscles but didn’t touch the six perfectly proportioned rectangles making up his abs. Or were there eight? It was hard to tell without inspecting them more closely. Something about the straight lines of the suspender straps drew attention to the deep lines of the V at his hips that disappeared into the waistband of the denim.
On anyone else, the shirtless suspenders look would appear kind of trashy and try-hard. But not on André. It looked like he lived in those things. Which he kind of did.
She rolled her eyes, more so she could look away. But the image was burned into her brain forever.
Thank God.
