Page 17 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

My gaze snaps to hers. “Oh?”

She blinks at me, like she doesn’t realize she just told me she intends on taking me home. She must not have realized, though, because her pale face flushes a deep shade of pink. She shakes her head, looking down at her pastry as she peels more of the parchment paper away from it and takes a nervous bite.

She chews it as I continue staring at her. A little bit of vanilla mascarpone remains smeared on her lower lip. The longer she zeros in on her pastry, the more amused I get. She’s so fucking cute. She swallows her bite, still pink in the face and finally says, “I mean. You don’t have to come over. I thought you might like to see the shop and my apartment is just like—well it’s upstairs, you know?”

“Right,” I say knowingly as I close the box. “You want to show me the shop.”

“Yeah,” she says as I step closer to her. She takes another bite of the pastry. She’s eating it so fast that I’m not sure she’s actually enjoying it. Still, that little smear of mascarpone clings to her lower lip. It must be so light and fluffy that she can’t feel it.

I lift her chin, perching it on my folded index finger. “Lillith, if you want me to spend the night, I’m more than happy to do that. You know, just in case you do want to show me your apartment. Or your comforter. Or the thread count of your sheets.”

She blinks up at me with her huge, slate-colored eyes as she swallows. Her tongue flashes out to wet her lips, almost cleaning off the sweet cream on her lower lip that I decided was mine some time over the last few seconds.

“Do you want me to spend the night?” I ask her, hushed.

“M-my sheets do have a very interesting thread count,” she almost whispers.

“Okay,” I huff.

“Okay,” she whimpers.

I grin as I lean down and draw her lower lip into my mouth.

ㅤ

Ilove kissing Damien. It’s very quickly becoming one of my most favorite activities in life. The way he drags my lower lip through his teeth just so has me lifting up on my toes as he starts to pull away. The hand he used to lift my chin slides into the back of my hair as he renews the kiss, his tongue sweeping in and circling mine before retreating.

He lets out a low, masculine sound and I answer with a sigh of my own.

He brushes his nose against mine when he parts from the kiss. “The tiramisu is pretty good, judging by how you taste after eating it,” he says.

“Want the rest?” I almost slur.

“Of the cake, or of you?” he asks, making my chest feel too tight.

“Yes?” I offer weakly, then laugh.

He laughs softly against my lips too. “No to the cake, yes to you,” he says. “But don’t worry, beautiful. I can be patient.”

There’s a honk from behind Damien, and when he straightens to his full height, he waves at the grouchy old man in the driver’s seat of a sedan. “That must be Craig,” he says. “Come on, I don’t think he’s one of those drivers that honors a grace period.”

He picks up the bag of pastries and takes my hand with his free one. I shove the rest of the tiramisu very demurely and cutely into my mouth in case Craig is also a stickler about food in the car. When I slide in, he grunts out a curt ‘hello’ before asking somewhat rudely, “You two been drinking?”

“Nah,” Damien answers as he slides into the back seat with me and shuts the door. “I had a few, but it’s been about two hours since then, so we’re good.”

“I will charge you for the cleanup fee if you puke in my car,” Craig says. “And no drugs.”

“Damn, you’re telling me I can’t snort lines off her tits while you drive us...” He looks down at his phone screen. “Three miles away?”

“Very funny,” Craig says despite clearly not finding it funny at all.

“Can you just drive, dude? I promise the tattoos and funky hair doesn’t mean we’re junkies,” Damien sighs.

I smile at him with understanding. Most people these days aren’t weird about alternative-looking folks, but there are still a few that are. I haven’t touched much when it comes to psychoactive substances—not aside from the rare this or that for ritual purposes— and I’ve always done so with either Wren or Bastion around to intervene if it triggers a seizure. But some people still like to assume.

Craig pulls away from the curb and Damien winks at me just before taking my hand in his and weaving our fingers together.

I wonder as I look at the blacked-out ink on his arm if he’s aware of the pacifying, accepting air he gives off. When other people flirt with me over the phone or over text, there’s always this sort of slimy feeling about it. A sort of arrogance that comes along with how thick they lay it on. As if by virtue of us ‘matching’ over the arbitrary metric of baseline mutual attraction, our meeting and potentially fucking are foregone conclusions. The interactions always put me off so much that I didn’t ever bother following through on meeting someone in person for a date.