Above & Beyond ✔

44. The Birthday Girl

"Hey, Blake. Why did you kiss me back that night at the bar?"

"Because I couldn't resist you."

"I was a bit tipsy. Weren't you afraid I was going to hate you for that?"

"That flashed in my mind, yeah."

"Then why did you go ahead with it?"

"Because I'm an asshole."

I rolled my eyes at his answer. "Tell me something I don't know," I mumbled, earning a chuckle from Blake who was still fixing his eyes on his computer screen.

While Blake sat behind his working desk in the corner of his living room, I lay upside down on his couch. My feet were up against the wall and my head was hanging over the edge of the sofa seat. I had my stupidly thick book spread open on my stomach and a blue marker in my hand. I needed to start working on my data analysis and the last chapter of my thesis, but procrastination won me over.

He was also drowned under his pile of work he didn't get to finish before the weekend. His business setup, business dinners, quick lunch meetings, and some other extra paperwork had been messing with his faculty schedules. Now here we were, spending our Saturday with loads of work in our hands. As much as he complained that he couldn't focus when I was around, he didn't seem to let the weekend slide without us seeing each other.

"I just realized now that you were just an obnoxious insensitive asshole."

"I was?" Blake tilted his head to me, giving me a fake hurt look. "Very observant of you."

"You went hot and cold, so unstable like a hormonal teenager. You kept giving me mixed signals." I kept babbling while twirling a lock of my hair with my marker.

He smirked. "I am always turning into a hormonal teenage boy around you. But trust me, I wasn't hot and cold, I definitely felt hot all the time."

I gave him a deadpan glare before replying, "I'm not talking about little Blake."

"Hey! It's not–"

"One day you flirted with me like there was no tomorrow, but then you said that it wasn't a good idea for us to hook up. And again, you started to show that you cared, you even got jealous of that hickey stuff, then you took a step back again. Man, that was so confusing."

"Try to be a teacher and have a hot student hitting on you." He got up from his chair with an empty mug in hand.

"I wasn't hitting on you."

"Uh-uh. Sure." He went back to his desk before swiveling the chair in my direction, giving me his full attention. "Keep telling that to yourself, young lady."

"I'm not a young lady to you," I groaned. "I'm turning twenty-two next week. You're not far older than I am."

"It doesn't matter, I'll always be six-year older than you are. I'm allowed to call you young lady," he replied before taking a sip of his coffee.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever, old fart."

Blake glanced at his desk calendar and frowned. "What are you going to do for your birthday?"

"Birthday dinner as always. Mom wants to cook this time. So I might as well be there earlier to help with the preps."

"Are you coming back after dinner?"

"I don't think so. We always have a movie night afterward."

"Who do you mean by we?" Blake's voice sounded tentative.

"The usual. Mom, Dad, Dean and his brother, maybe their dad too." As Blake's lips made a straight line, I added up. "Dean's girlfriend is probably coming, too."