When he does that, I feel my cheeks heat up and a shiver roll through my body.
As if he’s staring at me and not at the dresses.
As if those fingers of his, now not as busted as before but still as large and masculine, are running over my skin instead of the sketch. Like he’s skimming his ring-sporting pinkie over my collarbones and my shoulders instead of the ones on the piece of paper.
As if he’s imagining me in those dresses.
And as shy and heated and shivery as I get, I still bring in different notebooks every time so he has more of my dresses to look at.
More of my dresses to touch and imagine.
“So this one is…” I swallow, standing beside him, my toes curled in my shoes, my belly tight. “Sort of like a prom dress. The bodice is fitted as you can see and… these little dots here are sequins. And this skirt here is long and full and shaped like a bell almost. And these little furry things are feathers. See the curled, uneven hem at the bottom? It’s because the skirt is going to be lined with feathers. Dark purple. So it’s like a dress made of feathers.”
He stares at it for a few more moments before lifting his eyes up at me. “What’s it called?”
Now in addition to curling my toes and tightening up my belly, I also have to clench my thighs. Because not only are his eyes a deep dark brown, but also he always asks me that.
“Miss Light as a Feather.”
Those eyes of his become even darker and deeper and more liquid.
And it happens every time I tell him the name of my dresses — Miss Yellow Buttercup; Miss Pink Me Lemonade; Miss Oopsie Daisies; Miss Tempest in a Teacup — that I know, down to my core, that he loves it.
I may not know anything else about him but I know that he loves my dress designs and he loves that I name them.
And all the shyness that I always feel melts away.
My body becomes looser and more relaxed as he keeps staring at me there at the end.
It’s the strangest thing.
Like he can do things with his chocolate chip eyes.
“I love chocolate chip cookies,” I blurt out one day, looking into them.
Those eyes of his narrow slightly. “What?”
“What.” I shake my head. “No. I mean, I… I didn’t say that.”
“I think you did.”
I adjust my glasses and accuse, “But only because your eyes look like chocolate chips.”
This gives him pause. It gives me pause too.
Because why would I say that?
What was I thinking?
“My eyes look like chocolate chips,” he repeats.
I fist my folded hands and decide to ride it out. “Yes. Because they’re, you know, brown. Like deep brown.”
“Deep brown.”
“Chocolate brown, you can say.”
“Chocolate brown.”
“So it’s only a logical connection to make.” I shrug. “Your eyes and chocolate chip cookies.”
A second of silence passes between us. Then, “My eyes and chocolate chip cookies.”
“Stop repeating everything I’m saying.”
“But you’re saying the most logical things,” he says, without missing a beat.
I narrow my eyes at him.
His eyes on the other hand flash and something flickers through his features. Something soft and amused and I’m so awestruck by it that I have to say, “Also I hate you. Just so you know.”
“I know.”
I lift my chin. “Good. Don’t forget that just because I’m being nice to you right now.”
“I won’t.”
“It won’t last. This is just the ‘break’ talking,” I insist, even going as far as to do the air quotes around the word break.
Exactly.
Because I’m not going to stay this nice when I blackmail him later.
And I don’t care.
I don’t.
Even if my heart twists every time I think about it.
“A car will come to pick you up this Friday after school,” he says out of nowhere. “To bring you back to the mansion.”
“What?”
I see his chest move under his tweed jacket on a sigh. “You can spend the weekend with Mo. She’ll be happy to see you. She was disappointed when you chose to stay here before the summer session started.”
I stare at him, confused.
But only for a few seconds.
After that I’m not confused anymore.
I’m restless and speechless like I have been ever since he gave me the sewing machine.
“But I’m not allowed to go out,” I say instead, every part of my body clenched once again.
“Fuck what’s allowed.”
I stare into his chocolate chip eyes. “Because I’m also your ward.”
He stares back.
His perusal lasts longer than mine. And every second that passes while he takes in my face, his features grow sharper, tighter.
Until his jaw becomes clenched and he shuts my notebook with a snap without taking his eyes off me.
Then, “Yes.”
With that, he offers me back my notebook. And I take it.
In fact, I snatch to take it from his hands so I can leave.