Page 30 of Bloom

Breathe.

I can’t fucking believe Ginny.

Breathe.

God. I am so bad at this. Is that a bug on my leg?

**

This is pretty much how I spend the next hour. It doesn’t feel all that restorative. Ginny is pulling up from work as we get home. She glares at us and walks inside without a word.

Yep, not all that restorative.

**

Ginny and I avoid each other for the next few days. By Thursday we have brokered some kind of tentative ceasefire. We speak in passing, sit out on the deck at the same time. But it’s not the same thing as being friends. And it’s certainly nothing like being best friends. I look at her warily now. She looks at me warily too, which I find infuriating. Not once during our entire lives have I ever stolen someone’s boyfriend or even attempted it. But Allison suggests it and it’s as good as true in her mind.

James is not himself either. He seems legitimately troubled by something, and tired. He’s been running a lot at night, and he’s different with me — more alert and restrained than normal. I look toward the bar and find him watching me, something pained in his face before he turns away.

The next time I see that dark, brooding look on his face, curiosity wins out.

“Are you okay?” I ask him abruptly.

He looks surprised. “Yeah. Why?”

“You look tired. And troubled. Ginny thinks it’s because you miss Allison.”

He barks a short laugh. “Yeah. Ginny is wrong.”

“So you’re finally a free man. Shouldn’t you be overjoyed?” I ask. The second I say it, a horrible possibility unfolds in my mind. He’s free to date. Date like Max does. He’s free to not come home or to slide some girl still wearing last night’s clothes past the kitchen the next morning.

That dark look on his face only deepens. “It’s complicated.”

I’d like to ask him to clarify, but I don’t. Selfishly, I don’t want to help him untangle this knot of worries. It might lead him further away from me.

Chapter 19

Things are almost back to normal between me and Ginny by the time her birthday rolls around. I get off my lunch shift early and walk into the kitchen to find James baking cupcakes for tonight’s party.

“Now this is a sight I thought I’d never see.”

“Guys bake. Haven’t you ever watched ‘Cupcake Wars’?” he asks, his mouth quirking up to the right a bit.

“Sure,” I laugh. “But you’re James. You know, all alpha male and stomach muscles and testosterone.”

Ooops. That may have gone too far.

He grins. “I feel like I’m being typecast.” He hands me a beater covered in frosting. “Try it.”

He watches me run my tongue along the outside of the beater.

“Oh my God,” I moan. I expected the standard confectioner’s sugar/butter combo, but it turns out that James makes amazing frosting. “It’s so good.” There’s a flicker in his eyes that, for the briefest moment, goes bright and feral.

“Damn, Elle,” grins Max. “Thanks for that. I always wondered what you’d sound like during … ”

“Shut it,” James growls.

I smile at Max. “That was nothing. I’m much louder during sex.”