“You know we’re going to keep you, right?” he asked. “Jordan coming home doesn’t change that.”
I didn’t really know how to answer, so I didn’t. A few seconds later, we pulled back up at the bar. Mason got out and came around to take the pizzas out of my lap. He was only inches away from me, and I could smell his cologne. I lifted my eyes to his, and we stared at each other for a breathless moment.
My stomach fluttered, and a warm feeling rose in my chest. It felt like he was going to kiss me. I drew in a breath, but he stopped. He took the pizza boxes out of my lap and stepped out of the way so I could climb out of the truck. We went inside and joined his brothers, all of us eating together before the shift started. I tried to tell myself it was a good thing he hadn’t kissed me. That would have just complicated things. But I wasn’t really convincing myself.12MasonAnyone who ever thought pizza wasn’t sexy had never seen Ava with a stack of them in her lap. I thought I was doing well with shoving down any attraction to her and pretending she was just someone who had come to work at The Hollow. Then I just had to invite her to come along with me while I picked up dinner. Why I did that was beyond me. I didn’t know what possessed me into thinking being alone with her in my truck, reliving all the memories from when we were young and happy was a good idea. It was like I was testing myself.
This would be no big deal, right? I could totally handle sitting there with her, pointing out all the ways the town had changed since she left it. There would be absolutely no issue in going back to the restaurant where we used to cuddle up close in the back booth and nibble our way through double slices as slow as we could just so we could spend more time together.
And there would definitely be no temptation in taking the longest way possible back to the bar so she could see the old movie theater where we used to make out through every movie that came out. Our only criteria for picking out what movie we were going to go see was figuring out which one of them was the longest and had the lowest chances of a lot of children being there.
It was just poor decision making all around. And it came to a head when we got back to the bar and I opened that door to see her big eyes staring back at me. Whether it was the little trip down memory lane we took on our way there, or the smell of the pizza, or the way she licked her lips the way she always did, I had the strongest compulsion to kiss her.
At the very last second, I managed to stop myself. Maybe it was knowing my brothers were right inside and could pop out at any second. Maybe it was worrying about how the hot pizzas were probably burning Ava’s thighs through the boxes propped on her lap. And maybe it was just realizing it wasn’t the best idea. But I didn’t take that chance and give her the kiss I wanted to.
Holding back didn’t make the urge go away. If anything, it only made me want it more. Even after we brought the pizzas inside and sat down with my brothers to eat before getting started with work for the day, all I could think about was how badly I wanted to kiss Ava. Every time she brought a slice of pizza to her lips or licked away a bit of sauce, it made my stomach clench and I had to look away.
I wished I would have just done it. She was staring right back at me and didn’t seem to be in any rush to get out of the truck. She could have been thinking the same thing I was. At the same time, a voice in the back of my mind told me it wasn’t a good idea. For a lot of reasons.
If I had given in to my desire to kiss her, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. It couldn’t have just been one kiss. I knew myself well enough to know that. I kept telling everybody what happened between us was in the past, but that wasn’t true. The fact that Ava and I hadn’t talked about our shared past wasn’t a sign that it was really all behind us. It just meant we really weren’t over the old shit.
That on its own made jumping past any conversation and right to kissing her a bad idea. Especially now that we were working together. It wasn’t just about me. The bar was critical to all my brothers and my parents. Since Ava came back to town, we were seeing better business and had a lot of optimism for the future. Chasing her away wouldn’t just screw things up for me. It would drag my whole family down.