Pull (Seaside 2)

I squinted and opened the blinds wider.

Weird. Did he go inside?

I was just getting ready to open the door and step outside when a hand hit the window in front of me.

With a curse, I fell back to the ground taking an entire row of taffy with me.

Lucky for me, the blinds to the door weren’t closed, meaning Demetri, the bastard, saw everything.

Though to be fair, he did look a bit shocked as he ran into the store and helped me to my feet.

“Trying to kill me?” I brushed his hands away, but he kept prodding at me as if I was some sort of science experiment gone bad, so I shoved him. It just seemed like it was the right thing to do.

And honestly, it felt good to hit him. Maybe I was packing a lot of rage for the rock star. But nobody should have it as easy as he did.

Good looking? Rich? All he had to do was smile, and he had the world at his feet. Maybe it was jealousy that while I was stuck at my parents’ store, he had the whole world as his oyster, yet chose to get high and nearly kill himself instead of doing something with his life.

“I’m so sorry.” Demetri dropped to the floor and began putting the taffy back into the buckets.

“You’re sorry you scared me? Sorry you nearly gave me a heart attack? Or sorry you caused me to bruise my butt?”

Demetri looked up into my eyes with his smug smile. “Your butt, huh? Want me to take a look? Wouldn’t want any permanent damage.”

“No thanks.” I rolled my eyes and knelt down next to him.

“You can go. I’ve got this.”

“This…” He pointed to the mess at our knees. “Is all my fault. Honestly, I was just trying to scare you, not kill you or destroy your taffy. Hey, what flavor is this?”

“ADD much?” I snatched the taffy from his hand.

“ADD? Hey, that’s like our band name, AD2…” He grabbed another piece of taffy from the floor. “How about this one? What’s this flavor?”

“Oh my gosh! Just leave!” I snatched the taffy from his hand.

He shrugged. “I have nowhere to go, and this is going to take you at least another hour. Plus, it’s the least I can do after nearly killing you at the ripe old age of…” His voice trailed off as he looked at me with seductive eyes.

I felt myself flush as I looked away. “Eighteen. I’m eighteen.”

“Me too.”

“Congratulations, you’ve found common ground. Now we can get married.”

“Ah, the other one.” He snapped his fingers in the air and grinned.

“Huh?”

He unwrapped a piece of taffy. “The other sarcastic client Mrs. Murray had today. Thanks for that, by the way. By the time I got to her she had already had her fill of sarcasm for the day. And I ate an entire bowl of popcorn to keep myself from spilling all my feelings.”

“An entire bowl?” I divided the taffy into piles, so I could put them in the right buckets. “And you’re still hungry?” I pointed to the taffy he was unwrapping.

“Oh this.” He put the trash in his pocket and popped the taffy into his mouth. “I told my friend, Nat, that I’d stay clean, right?”

I nodded.

“So, I have this thing. Every day I stay clean, I try at least three new taffy flavors. Gives me something to look forward to and all that.”

“That’s depressing.”

He laughed. “If you only knew.” His eyes sparkled just a bit before he scratched his forehead and swallowed the taffy. “So what flavor did I just eat?”

“I don’t know, give me the wrapper.”

He pulled it out of his pocket and placed it in my hand. I purposefully ignored the fact that his touch lingered longer than necessary and lifted the wrapper to my nose. “Blueberry pancakes.”

“Whoa. Taffy super powers. Nice.”

I laughed. “To be fair, you have the taffy jingle super powers, so we’re kind of even.”

He smiled back at me. My heart nearly stopped. His deep-set dimples brought attention to his mouth, and when I looked at his mouth, I felt things I hadn’t felt since Brady. I cleared my throat and continued putting taffy into piles.

Demetri sighed. “Right, so I’ll just help you sort all this.”

We worked in silence. Demetri ate two more pieces of taffy, each time asking me to please sniff the wrapper, because it was the most exciting thing he’d seen in weeks.

It was hard not to laugh around him.

“That it?” He picked up the last bucket and shoved it onto the rack.

“Yup.” I looked around the store.

“Can I ask you something?” Demetri looked at me then down at his feet. Was he nervous?

Amused, I crossed my arms. “You may ask me something, yes.”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“No.”

“Promise not to feel sorry for me.”

At that I did laugh. “Easy. I’d never feel sorry for a celebrity who owned a car more expensive than my house, but since it seems to piss you off more, yeah, I feel real sorry for you.”

His shoulders seemed to sag a bit. “Fine, at least promise you won’t blog about what I ask you.”

“That, I can promise,” I agreed. “That is, if you promise to leave.”

He rolled his eyes and ignored my jab. “What’s it like to have friends? Actual friends. The types you can tell anything to, the ones that you do stupid shit with and stay up all night with just shooting the breeze?”