“Have you see my bra?” I asked after a minute with no luck.
I could hear the smirk in his voice as he said, “No. But I’m going to need you to cover up your tits right now.”
I looked out the window. “Why? No one can see.”
“I can see,” he said, turning to me as he brought a white espresso cup to his lips. “And if I have to look at them any longer, I’m going to fuck them.”
I swallowed. “Fair enough,” I said, grabbing a pillow off the couch.
“Coffee for you?” he offered, smirking when he peered over to find me hugging the pillow to my front.
“Sure,” I said.
And as he made another cup, I felt a sudden rush—the return of all these memories of him I’d suppressed while desperately trying to get over him at seventeen. They used to pain me, but my heart felt warm right now as I stood there, perched at the edge of the couch, watching Iain make coffee for me the way he used to do for everyone back home in Jersey.
I was lost in my thoughts till the grinding hum of the machine stopped and Iain was coming toward me, handing over my cup.
“What’s that look for?” he asked, his gaze shrewd on me.
I smiled sheepishly. “Oh, nothing. Just remembering you and your coffee.”
It was the first and perhaps only thing that ever endeared him to my impossible-to-please mom. She was so hell-bent on disapproving of Iain’s presence and interacting with him as little as possible. The completely blank-faced stare she reserved for him had been perfected within hours of his first stay with us, but then his second stay came around, and that time he came bearing gifts—specifically coffee that he brought back from Brazil.
“You actually managed to get some points with my mom with the, um… what was it? The cafezinho,” I recalled, surprising myself by pulling up the memory of the word. I was pretty sure it just meant little coffee, but it involved Iain boiling sugar and water in a pot before adding coffee grounds then straining it through a cloth filter into espresso cups, making for very little, very intense shots of black coffee.
Apparently, he and Adam drank them every day, several times a day, especially during exams. And since coffee was Mom’s only vice, she couldn’t help but try it.
And since she loved it, Iain started to get more of a pass in our house.
I expected to see him crack a smile at the memory, but instead I felt an odd shift in the air as he said nothing.
“Do you still go to Brazil every summer?” I asked, remembering how he’d always leave for his yearly trip directly from our house.
His parents had divorced when he was young and after, his mom had moved back home to Sao Paulo to live with her sister. I remembered that Iain always left for Brazil straight from his June visit to our house, because the flight was shorter and there was something about needing to bring them things from New York, where his mom had lived for so long before the divorce.
Images flashed in my mind as I remembered the suitcase he always packed full of gifts for his family. Perfume for his mom. Skincare products for his aunt. Sneakers, sports jerseys and electronics for his little cousin.
Iain took a last drink from his cup then peered briefly at her. “Not as often,” he replied briskly said before grabbing his briefcase and heading or the door.
I blinked, staring at his back for a second.
Cool. Guess you did it again, I thought wryly when I realized I’d touched on another sore subject that hadn’t been sore the last time we spoke. But clearly everything’s changed, and you can’t talk about just anything anymore, I thought, feeling a little frustrated and a lot tense because I feared Iain was going to be icy with me again, the way he was with me last night.
But once he got to the door, he turned to look at me.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” he said, hitting me with such a big wave of relief that I exhaled the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Not unless I get you home before then,” I replied, to which he smiled.
“I wouldn’t count on it, Holland.”
“Yeah, but remember the last time you said that to me?”
With a hand on the doorknob, he actually took the time to pause and think about it. And when he remembered, he tilted his head down and smiled broadly to himself, giving a low, sexy laugh as he said, “I do.”
It was the biggest smile I’d seen on him yet, and in that moment, I found myself quietly bursting inside, overwhelmed by how fucking attracted I was to this man. I didn’t even know what was coming over me when I blurted, “Wait!” as he was opening the door. All I knew was that I was suddenly hopping off the couch with urgency, heading to where he was paused at the door. His brow was furrowed, but his gaze was curious as I ran to him, the stupid pillow still hugged to my chest.
But I discarded it as soon as I stood with my bare feet in front of his shoes, and without even thinking—or caring about whether or not I was allowed to do this—I grabbed hold of his shoulders and hoisted myself onto my toes, pressing a kiss onto his lips.