I looked over at him, but it took several seconds of me looking at him for him to look over at me. And when he did, there was half a smirk on his face, though he didn’t actually look all that amused. In fact, his eyebrows were just slightly lifted in the way they were when he thought someone just did something weird.
“Alright,” Adam said slowly, in a tone that made me feel especially weird.
And that was it.
Wait. Seriously?
In the silence that followed, I couldn’t help staring somewhat crankily out the windshield, because I’d said what I’d said, and I had certainly meant it, but couldn’t he acknowledge it? Or say an actual sentence back?
Also, I knew him well enough to know that he was very much capable of delivering the word “alright” in a less shitty voice.
It annoyed me.
And though we talked for the rest of the car ride, it was noticeably strained. And then it got even more strained because Adam knew it was strained, and all he did was laugh to himself about it.
I knew it was irrational, but it put me in a huff.
A very girlfriend-y type huff, which was the exact kind of huff I had no right to be in, given I was not a girlfriend. But here we are.
We had radio playing for the last twenty minutes of the ride before he pulled into Judy’s, the little white shop with the Spanish tile roof and big palm trees out front.
As soon as Adam parked, he was looking at me, watching me as I unbuckled my seatbelt and grabbed my phone off the dash. I could feel him smirking and smiling, but since he wasn’t saying a word of anything, I didn’t look his way before getting out of the car.
It took till he got out of the car before he finally said, “AJ.”
“Yeah?” I rounded the front of the car to find him shutting his door, wearing that boyish grin I didn’t want to be charmed by right now.
“Come on. You usually read me better than this.”
“Better than what?” I asked, but since I didn’t stop walking, Adam snorted.
“Get the fuck over here,” he muttered, jerking me over to him by the back of my shirt and spinning me so fast that my yelp was half-surprised laugh.
And before I knew it, he had me leaned against the side of the car, his strong arm circling my waist and his hand pushing the windblown hair from my face. He took a few seconds to just look at me before he said, “If it isn’t clients or family these days, AJ, you’re all I think about.”
My breath hitched in my throat. All I did was stare back at him, and though I might’ve looked outwardly blank, bells were sounding off in my head, like I’d just won some big prize I didn’t even know I was waiting for.
“If we’re being honest, I spend half my day trying to get you out of my head and the other half just letting you fucking own every inch of my brain space, so have I been thinking about sleeping with other women?” Adam paused and laughed. “I can barely think about getting up in the morning instead of jacking off a second time to the thought of you.”
Oh.
Well then.
Stunned, chewing my lip back, I only nodded. But it was probably clear that I was trying to suppress a giant smile, because Adam suddenly looked smug.
“What?” I snapped.
“Nothing,” Adam smirked. “I just love how pissed off you get when you’re wrong.”
With that, I finally broke into a smile, prompting Adam’s satisfied grin as he touched his thumb to my dimple.
“There we go,” he murmured before nodding at the shop. “Now let’s go get this stupid fuckin’ shake.”
22
ADAM
I wasn’t sure if I was more aroused or amused.