“Thank you.” He returned her smile, and it was one of his rare real smiles that wrinkled his eyes, dimpled his cheeks, and revealed even white teeth.
Sky and earth, she wanted to taste that smile. And each of those dimples. Pure wanting speared through her body on electric currents, making the fine hairs on her skin stand up, and she almost swayed toward him. If she was better at being Esme in Accounting, would he want her back?
His smile dimmed. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Without taking time to think, she answered, “I want to kiss you.”
When she heard the words fall from her mouth, a furious blush heated her cheeks, and she spun around and busied herself emptying the dustpan into the garbage. Why had she said that? Why?
He approached her. “Esme . . .”
She stepped around him and swept up the rest of the hair on the floor. “Sorry. Forget I said that.” She dumped everything in the garbage again and hurried to return the broom to the closet. “When do you want to go to Cal Berkeley?”
Rubbing at the back of his neck, he said, “We can go after I eat something and shower again, I guess.”
“Okay, I’ll get ready.” She limped toward the hallway.
“Wait, aren’t you hungry?”
Not for food. “No, thank you, Anh.”
“I’ll get you when it’s time to go, then,” he said as he ran his hands through his newly short hair.
“Take your time.”
She’d just be in her room, trying not to think about him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Khai drove Esme to Berkeley, he couldn’t get her confession out of his head.
She wanted to kiss him.
He wanted to kiss her back.
But he couldn’t.
You kissed a woman if you wanted to date her and have a relationship, if you wanted to love and be loved in return, if you could love. If you kissed a woman when you couldn’t deliver on the rest, you were an asshole. It was better to jack off in the shower.
He wished that was an option. Ever since Esme had come into his life, he was in a constant state of arousal, and there was no relief—except for what happened by accident in his sleep. To date, he’d had to get up four times in the middle of the night and change his boxers. It was embarrassing as fuck. Like being twelve again. And his dreams always involved her. Always. Half the time, they involved her Hammer pants, too.
It had been a while since he’d seen those particular pants. Currently, she wore a pair of blue jeans that looked like they’d been painted onto her legs. He didn’t care for denim himself, but he wouldn’t have minded running his palms along her thighs. For someone who didn’t like touching, he spent an awful lot of time fantasizing about it.
When they reached campus, he parked as close as was humanly possible to the registrar’s office, and they walked down the road together. More accurately, he walked. She limped.
“The doctor should have given you crutches.” Instead of his phone number. Opportunistic bastard. “How are you feeling? Do you need help?”
“It’s not too bad.” The smile she beamed at him was sunnier than the yellow long-sleeved shirt she wore. One of the sleeves had orange text down the side that read Em yêu anh yêu em. His written Vietnamese was god-awful, but he knew enough to roughly translate that as Girl loves boy loves girl. It was a nice concept. The circle of love and all that. Too bad he could never complete that circle.
“Let me know if you want to rest. I can just carry you there, too.”
She tucked the hair behind her ear. “If you do that, people will think you’re my boyfriend.”
He looked at the students walking around campus and shrugged. “Why does it matter?”
“In that case, I hurt really bad. Carry me all the way,” she said as she smirked and took an exaggerated limp.
He knew her well enough now to catch when she was joking with him, but he picked her up anyway. She laughed and wrapped her arms around him, grinning at him as her eyes sparkled in the sunlight. Right then and there, Khai decided green was his favorite color, but it had to be this specific shade of seafoam green.