Page 65 of Jealous Guy

Do you?

Please answer ASAP. This is urgent.

After thirteen or fourteen messages of a similar ilk, Kirst finally comes online and reads my first message. Blue checks appear on my screen, but her ability to give top-tier sisterly advice seems to be on the blink because she doesn’t type a reply. She simply hits some of my messages with a heart and the rest with a crying-with-laughter emoji.

I don’t even know what that means.

Does he like me or not?

Please tell me right now.

Answer yes or no only.

Eventually, three dots appear, and at long last, a message pops up.

If you want to know how Orion feels, I think you’re going to have to ask him.

Ask him? Ask him? What kind of terrible advice is that?

I’m talking to Sasha about this in the future.

Sasha is my third eldest sister. She’s great. I love her a lot. She’s terrible at replying to messages because she often starts typing, gets distracted, and forgets she hasn’t hit send. Still, I know for a fact that if I asked her to reply to a question with a simple yes or no, she’d never tell me to ask Orion how he feels about me.

I glare at my screen, expecting a row of laughing emoji to pop up, but it doesn’t.

I love you so much, Jordy, and I’m proud of you.

Ugh, fine, I admit it. That was supportive as hell.

Love you too, Kirst.

By the time we’ve dropped Sarah at her apartment, I’m almost a hundred percent sure I’m going to burst. My chest feels all weird. My ribs are tight, my lungs way too big. I feel like I have a secret to tell my favorite person. Not just a secret, a really, really good secret. A life-changing secret. The juiciest tea ever to spill. Tea that’s boiling, desperate to pour out of me.

It feels kind of like I’m trying to hold in a really inappropriate laugh. A belly laugh that’s so big it’s threatening to come out of my nose.

It also feels a bit like I might sneeze. Or nut.

For the past thirty minutes, I’ve done nothing but think about asking Orion if I can kiss him. I’ve thought about it so much that the words have stopped sounding like real words and have morphed into a garbled collection of letters and sounds that don’t make a lot of sense.

Can I kiss you?

No. Terrible grammar.

May I kiss you?

Is that really how people talk? In this day and age? May I? Can I? Might I?

Is it just me, or do all those options sound up my own ass?

Orion indicates and slows the car as we approach our building. Trees and light posts flit past. A familiar façade comes into view. The secret inside me swells. Or maybe that’s my dick. To be fair, it could be my balls too. Either way, my palms are sweaty, and I’m severely lightheaded by the time O pulls into his parking spot in the garage.

It’s darker down here than it was outside, thick blocks of concrete lit by the blue-green flickering of halogen bulbs. The sounds of the street have been drowned out, replaced by an eerie quiet that makes my ears ring. Orion kills the engine, gets out, and opens the trunk to get our bags out.

I wipe my hands on my jeans and take several deep breaths. I open my door and scramble to my feet in time to see Orion raise his arm leisurely and slam the trunk shut.

A look passes between us, and a hint of the confusion from this morning casts a shadow that spills from his eyes and pinches his lips together.

He has a question.