“Don’t cockblock me, man,” says the guy at the table. Two seconds later he’s being lifted by his collar.
“Get the fuck out of my bar,” James says. “And you’d better hope I never run into you outside of it.”
Great. I’ve now not only lost my tip but have also incited what could be a major fight. I see them glancing at each other in silent conversation. James is a big guy, but not big enough to handle all of them at once if it comes down to it. He knows this, but his anger trumps common sense: he knows the odds and he still wants the fight.
There is a mumbled apology from one of the guys who never did anything in the first place, and they start throwing cash on the table. James stands there, arms crossed, until the last of them has walked out, and then he heads back to the bar, completely untroubled by the fact that he just did what I explicitly asked him not to do.
I know he meant well, but still he ignored me and proved once again that he thinks of me as a little kid. My temper has barely begun to settle by the time we head home.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he finally says. “They didn’t stiff you, did they?”
“No,” I sigh. “They actually gave me about a 40% tip, although now it feels like I extorted it from them.”
“You earned it, dealing with those assholes.”
“I appreciate what you were trying to do, James,” I say diplomatically, although in truth I can’t say I really appreciate it all that much. “But seriously, I’m not as sheltered as you think. I really can take care of myself.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“I can,” I insist.
“Whatever,” he says. “As the guy who spent several weeks of his adolescence keeping boys away from you, I’ve earned the right to be overcautious.”
“What boys?”
“Do you remember that last summer at camp? I was a counselor and you and Ginny were in middle school?”
I nod.
“I heard two of the counselors talking about you, saying that if they gave you a year or two it would be just like getting to sleep with your mom. It was disgusting. I mean these guys were in college.” He grows impatient waiting for the light to change and takes a hard right. “I felt like I had to spend the next three weeks watching not just the boys your age, but the other counselors too.”
“Is that why Ginny and I didn’t get to go back to camp?” I ask. We’d only been a year off from becoming Counselors in Training. It was a rite of passage, so our parents’ unyielding refusal had devastated us both.
“Yep,” he says.
“I’m not sure what’s worse - them talking about me or them talking about my mom.”
“Uh, your mom is pretty hot,” he grins. “Not as hot as you, but still … ”
I smack his arm. “Shut up.”
“She is!” he laughs. “She was my first crush.”
“Please don’t tell me any more about this.”
“God’s honest truth. I told my dad and he told me I had good taste. And then he told me he’d kill me if I ever mentioned that to my mom.”
“Gross,” I laugh. “Just stop talking.”
“Okay, but my point, aside from the fact that your mom is super hot, is that it was already hard for me not to step in, and now … ”
He pulls into the driveway.
“Now?” I prompt.
He lifts me out of my seat entirely and places me in his lap, our mouths an inch apart. His hand runs through my hair as he bridges the distance. “And now Elle,” he says, “it would be impossible.”
**
The next morning he apologizes again for kicking my table out.
“Does that mean next time you’ll listen when I ask you not to intervene?” I ask.
“Sure, as long as no one’s touching you,” he counters. I roll my eyes – in other words, if last night happened again he’d do the exact same thing. But I’m incapable of staying annoyed.
“Well you can make it up to me by walking me to the bookstore,” I tell him.
“Not only will I walk you there, I’ll buy you any book you want, as long as it doesn’t enhance or inform you in any way.”
“You mean like 50 Shades of Grey?” I laugh.
“No,” he says sternly. “You’re too young for that. Maybe one of those YA vampire books where do they a lot of talking and almost kiss at the end.”
“You do realize I’m in college, right?” I ask. “And I seem to recall you met my 22-year-old ex-boyfriend.”
“50 Shades is about bondage and stuff. That’s not something anyone in college is doing.”
“Speak for yourself,” I crack. He tenses beside me and I can feel irritation rolling off him.
I laugh. “It was a joke.”
“It’d better be,” he says. Just the tone of his voice makes something tighten deep in my stomach.
Something that demands more than the long, frustrating nights we spend fully clothed.
Chapter 37
In the mornings it’s hard not to go directly to him, to find some way — or many ways — to touch him. He’s not much better. His eyes follow me as I walk across the room. Half the time he gets up the minute I walk in and stands beside me as I pour the coffee just like he did the first day.
He grabs my hand as we walk into town. I glance at him. “No one we work with is out this early,” he says with a small smile. “I think it’s safe.”
I’d like to ask what ‘it’ is exactly — are we just a fling? Are we dating? Is he hiding this because of Ginny and Dan, or because he’s ashamed? But I say nothing. It’s childish, I suppose, but I worry that asking for specifics will end up stripping pieces away rather than contributing. If it’s only a fling or if he’s ashamed, I just don’t want to know.
Our schedules mysteriously change so that they are almost exactly the same — we close on the same nights, work lunch on the same days. I’m not sure how it isn’t clear to everyone that something is going on. There’s a permanent smile on my face, one I have to struggle to get rid of half the time and only then with marginal success.
And people definitely notice the change in James. Including Brian, who comes out from the back and asks him if he’s been drinking, though it’s only 11 a.m.
James scowls. “You know I don’t drink at work.”
“You also don’t smile at work,” says Brian. “If you haven’t been drinking you must finally be getting laid.”
Which James, of course, is not. It’s a situation I’m finding increasingly difficult to deal with. We’ve now spent a week glued to each other, kissing, groping, moving from mouth to ear to neck, and he refuses to go farther.
Kristy is coming in to pick Matt up just as we’re leaving, and she asks me, volubly, about my date with Nick. I haven’t had a chance to tell her about the progress I’ve made in other areas.
I shrug. “I don’t think that’s happening.”
“Really?” she pouts. “I was planning to live through you vicariously. At least sleep with him before you make a decision.” James’s hand lands firmly at the small of my back, nudging me toward the exit.