Page 20 of Jesse

“Wait,” she says. And she does this shudder thing. You know, like when you get a chill up your neck and you bunch up your shoulders to make it go away? “What’s up?” she says. “What do you mean by that?”

I just shake my head at her. So uptight. But a little less mean.

“Vanilla butterscotch and half-and-half cherry!” the teenager taking orders says from behind the screened-in counter.

I step forward, take the two cones, then nod my head to Emma. “Grab us some napkins, will ya?”

For some reason she sucks in a deep breath. This makes her breasts rise and fall underneath her strapless bodice.

We are so overdressed. And it’s a little warm tonight so the first thing I do when we arrive at the only empty picnic table out front is to hand her both cones so I can take off my suit coat.

Emma just stares at the ice cream cones in her hand, like she’s never seen one before.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” I say, slipping my coat off and then taking off my bow tie. I stuff that in the pocket so I don’t lose it, then decide the cufflinks need to go too. Because I want to roll my sleeves up.

Emma looks at me, then the cones, then back at me.

She licks her cone, her tongue darting out to swipe the hard sugar shell off the swirly top.

Damn, that was sexy.

In fact, she’s sexy. Very fucking hot, this one. And she’s so familiar. That feeling that I know her comes back to me.

“Have we ever met before?” I ask, taking my cone back now that my sleeves are rolled up.

“What do you mean?”

“Did we… go to school together or something?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m not saying we did. I’m just asking. Because you look so familiar.”

“Hmm,” she hums, but doesn’t answer me. Just takes another lick of her cone.

“Oh, here,” I say, placing my coat on the picnic table bench. “You can sit on my coat so you don’t get your dress dirty.”

She makes a face at me.

“What? What’d I do now?”

“Why are you being so… so freaking nice?”

I laugh. “Why wouldn’t I be nice?”

“If you remind me how much I paid for you again—”

“I won’t,” I say, putting up a hand. “Jesus. What do you do, Emma? For real. Day-to-day kinda thing. Because it must be super stressful. You need to relax a little. Maybe we should go get that couples’ massage? I think you need it more than I do.”

She lets out a long breath, then immediately sucks in another one and holds it. That breath has to come out eventually, so I wait her out. Finally, she exhales and says, “Sorry. It’s just… I wasn’t expecting you to be so…”

“Nice?” I ask, raising my eyebrows at her. “And that’s not a waggle,” I say, pointing to my forehead. “It’s just a… surprise.” I stare at her for a moment. “That you had some kind of preconceived opinion of me before this date.”

She turns her head away and mumbles, “Well, you do have quite the reputation.”

“Yeah,” I say, taking a seat on the table and placing my feet on the bench. I point to my coat next to my feet. “Come on. Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

She sits. Stiffly, for a moment. Then leans back against the table and begins to lick her ice cream again.