AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I–yeah, I mean, it’s been nearly eight years. Of course you have.” I reached up and tugged at the collar of my shirt. An old habit. A tell. My friends from the old neighborhood always knew when I had a particularly bad hand in a card game because I’d tug at my collar and crack my knuckles. I resisted doing the latter now.
“You look the same,” Layla observed. Even though I was staring straight ahead again, I could feel her gaze was still on me.
“Yeah, well, time goes slower when you’re old like me. You don’t see much difference between seventy-five and eight-five-year-olds, do you?” Yeah, that was a good tactic, I congratulated myself. Remind her–and yourself–how much older you are than her.
“No, butyou’renot seventy-five. You’re, what, forty?”
“Forty-two.”
“That’s not old.”
I looked over at Layla again. Was I imagining that soft, persuasive note in her voice? It was impossible to say. Her expression was entirely unreadable. “Almost as old as your father,” I said finally, feeling like I was putting a nail into a coffin. I didn’t really want to nail the lid down, but it had to be done.
She made a face at me. “You are not nearly as old as my father,” she disagreed. “My father was born an old man. Have you ever seen a picture of him as a baby?”
I couldn’t help laughing at her description because she wasn’t wrong. Even as a twenty-eight-year-old, Jack had seemed middle-aged. An old soul, Shara called him. I was pretty sure it was just the fact he already had kids that was putting that gray in his hair. “He used to be young and cool,” I lied. “We both were, a long time ago.”
“I don’t believe you,” Layla smiled.
Fuck, there it was again. It wasn’t what she had said, but ratherhowshe had said it. Something resonated in her voice that I couldn’t put my finger on. But I wanted to. Thank God we were at the coffee shop now. I yanked open the door a little too enthusiastically and gestured for her to go in ahead of me.
I caught the faintest hint of tangerine and linen as she moved past me, and I had to stop myself from leaning forward as I got in line behind her to catch another whiff. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was her shampoo. Thinking about her shampoo led to me thinking about her in the shower, which almost led somewhere worse, but I managed to redirect. Instead, I thought about what Jack would do to me if he knew I had pictured his daughter in the shower, even for a second.
“How does she take her coffee?” Layla asked, studying the board.
“Blonde roast. Four creams, eight sugars.”
Layla looked over at me to see if I was kidding. I wasn’t. “That’s practically a frappuccino.”
“I know.”
The line moved up. I took the travel mug from Layla. “Here, I’ll do it.”
She handed it over gratefully. “Thanks. I don’t want that to be their first impression of me.”
“I understand.”
We were both speaking in grave, serious voices, but there was an undercurrent of laughter to the conversation that felt almost as dangerous as thinking about her in the shower. I couldn’t think about her naked, and I couldn’t have fun with her either.
Both were slippery slopes.
CHAPTER9
LAYLA
Somewhere between leaving the office for the coffee shop and returning, caffeine in hand, I stopped being nervous around Aiden. It was a strange, exhilarating feeling. When I was a kid, I’d been intimidated by him. When I was a teenager, I was in love with him. Up until thirty minutes ago, I’d felt the same combination of excitement and nerves that I’d felt the day of my high school graduation–but with an edge of trepidation that the butterflies in my stomach were about to get stomped on.
Now all that was gone.
When I looked at him now, I didn’t see my dad’s best friend anymore.
I didn’t see the unattainable older man.
I didn’t see my boss.
I just saw Aiden, a handsome guy that I wished would ask me out.
I wasn’t stupid–I knew that hewasall of those things, but for the first time, I felt free of everything they stood for. Almost without realizing it, I slipped into treating him like he was a person instead of a walking No Trespassing sign.
