Some Sort of Happy (Skylar and Sebastian): A Happy Crazy Love Novel (11 page)

Her eyes lit up, her cheeks blooming pink. “Thank you.”

“But there’s no one there who’d care about seeing me.”

“That’s not true,” she said, setting down her empty glass. “I’d care.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather fucking shoot myself than go to that thing.”

She sighed. “That’s kind of how I feel about it now too. I know everyone there will just be talking shit about me, being pretend-nice to my face.”

“Then don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, everyone will talk shit about me.”

My forehead wrinkled. “Wait, you just said they’d talk shit about you if you did go.”

“Yeah, but it would be worse shit talk if I wasn’t there,” she said with some sort of baffling female logic. “So I have to go, and you should go too. In fact, we should go together.”

I almost choked. “What?”

“We should go together.” She braced her elbows on the table and leaned toward me, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Then we could give them something new to talk about.”

I leaned in too. I couldn’t resist. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Like this.”

And without any warning whatsoever, she kissed me. Put those soft pink rose petal lips right over mine and left them there for a second, during which I was too stunned to move. My cock jumped, and I pulled away.

Then she sat back, her expression horrified. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

Holy shit. What did I just do?

I kissed him. I kissed him.

I kissed Sebastian Pryce.

I tried to read his expression, but I couldn’t.
Best I could tell, it was somewhere between Jesus Christ, why the hell did she do that?
and
Goddamn, let’s flip this table out of the way and go at it.

An eternity passed. Several species of birds went extinct. Continents drifted.

“Say something,” I begged. “I feel horrible right now. I shouldn’t have done that. Can I blame the wine?” Yes. That was it. Pin the kiss on the Pinot.

But had it been the wine? Maybe it was something else. I was no math expert, but this was an intoxicating equation: Hot Guy with Mysterious Past + Way With Pretty Words x Chivalry at Beach / His Aloofness at Coffee Shop (Immunity to My Face & Flirty Efforts) + Innuendo at Hardware Store x Honest Confession about OCD Struggles —> Curiosity + Arousal (Belly Flutters + Pulse Quickening)=ATTACKISS.

Right?

Or was I overthinking it? Maybe the plain, crazy truth was just that I was really attracted to Sebastian Pryce. But he was probably one of those quiet, tortured geniuses that didn’t go for girls like me. He went to law school, for heaven’s sake! He wrote poetry!

His lips tipped up slightly, those warm lips that had felt so good against mine. “Ah. Sure. It’s fine. Don’t feel horrible, really. You just surprised me.” He shifted in his chair.

“I can tell.” I reached for my wine glass but it was empty. Frantically, I looked around for our server.
Waiter! This is an emergency!

“Hey.” He put his fingers over my wrist. “It’s OK.”

“Are you sure?”

His sea glass green eyes were clear and his voice gentle. “I’m sure. I don’t want you to feel bad.”

“OK.” Since he’d been pretty forthcoming about everything tonight, I was sort of hoping he’d elaborate on his feelings, but that’s all he said.

For the rest of the night.

I mean he totally shut down.

Not in an angry way or anything, but he just stopped talking. No more jokes, no more smiles, no more stories. Was he anxious? Angry? Confused? Scared? In any case, I was so embarrassed and flustered I talked about anything and everything just to fill the silence.

We finished our meals—I decided against the second glass of wine, especially since he just had the one beer—and he drove me back to my car. I chirped like a bird on crank about random nonsense the entire ride back, and as we pulled into the hardware store lot, I looked over and saw him laughing a little.

“What?” I asked.

“You. Do you ever stop talking?”

I slapped my hands over my face. “No. I mean yes, but no. Not when I’m nervous.” Beneath my palms, my face was hot.

“Why are you nervous?”

“Because! I made an ass of myself by kissing you in the restaurant! And you’re all smart and silent and mysterious and I’m just…” I threw my hands in the air. “Obvious and silly.”

“Is that what you think?” He put the truck in park and shifted on the seat to face me.

“Yes.” I turned toward him. “Because before I did that, everything seemed fine. And then afterward, you kind of just…shut down.”

Nodding slowly, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

“Why? Are you mad?”

He looked at me strangely. “Why would I be mad?”

“I don’t know! I can usually read people pretty well but your face was like totally impassive. Fucking stonehenge. And you weren’t
talking
either, so I felt crazy awkward and tried to talk for the both of us.”

He cracked a smile. “You did it well.”

I stared helplessly at him, finally out of words.

“OK, look.” He put an elbow on the back of the seat and propped his head on his fingers. His expression was more relaxed, amused even. “I’m sorry I shut down. I was trying to process some things.”

“Like what?”

“Like why you did it.”

“I did it because I felt like it. How’d you feel about it? Be honest.”

He smiled lazily, and I had the insane desire to trace his lips with my tongue. “Good.”

I gaped at him. “That’s it? Good? You’ve been silent for an entire hour and a half and that’s all I get? Good?”

“Uh huh.” His eyes glittered in the dark, and I hoped he was undressing me with them.

“Oh, that is so mean.”

“Sorry. I’m a man of few words.”

“How can a lawyer be a man of a few words?”

A beat went by. “Did I tell you I was a lawyer?”

Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. “Um, you must have, right?”

“I don’t think I did.”

He didn’t seem angry, exactly, but there was an edge to his tone that hadn’t been there before, a wariness, maybe. I decided to come clean. If we were going to be friends, I felt like I owed him the truth about what I’d heard. After all, he’d been more than honest with me tonight.

Plus the silence was killing me.

“OK, don’t be mad. Natalie mentioned that she’d heard some women talking in the shop about you. She told me she overheard you were a lawyer in New York.”

“Anything else?” His voice was tight.

I took a breath. “Yes. There was something about you having some sort of…mental breakdown last year.” I decided to skip the fiancée part.

He nodded slowly, a reaction I was starting to recognize as his
I need to take this in so don’t ask right now
gesture. But I was me, so I asked.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Oh. OK.” At a loss for what to say and worried I’d pushed too far, I slung my bag over my shoulder and reached for the door handle. “I should get going anyway. Thanks for dinner. I had fun.” I opened the door, and he grabbed my arm.

“Hey.”

I looked back at him.

“Come here.” He tugged me toward him, and I shut the door. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk about that stuff right now.”

“It’s fine,” I said with a shrug. “Your past is none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked about it.”

“Skylar.” Taking my hand in his, he gently rubbed his thumb across the tops of my fingers. “I’ve said more to you tonight than I’ve said to anyone but my therapist in the last year. And I don’t even remember the last time someone kissed me by surprise.”

My heart raced with pleasure—not desire or lust or sympathy, just pleasure. It meant something to me that he’d opened up a little tonight, especially since he’d built such protective walls around himself. Not that I blamed him. The more I thought about what school must have been like for him, the worse I felt. How horrible to live like that, to be so alone.

“I’m glad you did,” I said softly. “I like listening to you, and talking to you. And kissing you.” I lifted my shoulders. “I like you, Sebastian. I want to know you better.”

His eyes dropped to our hands. “I’m not an easy person to get to know.”

I tipped his chin up, forcing him to look me in the eye. “I’m willing to try.”

She got out of the truck and shut the door without another word. I watched her open up her car, get in, and drive off, wishing I’d have had the nerve to kiss her.

Of the two of us, she’s the brave one.
Brave enough to ask me for a drink, brave enough to trust me alone with her, brave enough to kiss me just because she felt like it. That actually made me smile.
I did it because I felt like it.
I could still hear her voice, guileless and sweet. And I could still see the look in her eye as she leaned toward me, daring and sexy. Then her lips on mine… I groaned aloud and put the truck in drive.

She had no idea what she did to me. Of course I couldn’t talk after that. I was too busy trying to adjust my boxers and not think about my dick. But of course, since I was trying not to think about it, it was all I could think about. Couldn’t she tell?