It All Started with a Lie

Chapter 14

I take a bite of my own treat, smiling as I do to rub it in her face. "Rum raisin actually." Today was the first day I'd gotten it, and though delicious it did nothing to satisfy the craving that has taken over my thoughts.

Her expression is so bold the tables around us can practically see her disgust radiating off of her. "What the hell is that? How is that better than sherbet?"

"Have you had it?"

"Of course not, because I, unlike you, am sane. That sounds—"

I cut her off taking the advantage of her open mouth to shove my spoon, heaping with rum raisin, into it. She instinctively accepts the bite but scowles me, swatting my hand and the spoon away. She judges the bite and slowly her face softens. She licks the remaining bits off her lips. "It's not terrible," she mumbles, no longer impressed with her low fat sherbet.

"Way better right?" I lick the rest of the spoon clean.

She steals a second bite of it, talking with her mouth full. "No."

I switch our bowls and her eyes light up as she happily takes it. Her sherbet tastes like fake sugar and frozen peaches that have had the juice squeezed out of them and replaced with lukewarm water. Adding a jolly rancher can only help so much. "So what did you need to talk to me about so badly that you kicked my friends out of the table?"

Her joyous aura shifts and she bites her lip. My eyes fall to the sight, and it takes everything not to imagine how she looked biting her lip while unbuttoning my shirt. "What are we telling Richard?"

My stomach knots at the mention of the thought I've tried so desperately to suppress. "I thought we weren't telling her." I can't tell her. It is the one thing she asked me not to do. Had I known who Alexandria was that night on the patio, I would have never gone near her. Hell, I would have transferred universities just to avoid her. But now that I've tasted her, felt her, I can't stop. She is unraveling. I stand near her and all my self-control disappears. There is a hunger inside me that only she can satiate.

And now she wants to tell Beatrice. Tell her what? That we went against the only thing she'd asked us not to because we were what...horny.

I run a hand through my hair, setting the cup down a bit too hard. The already melted sherbet splashes up in the cup decorating the table and my shirt. I curse, a familiar pounding spreading through my veins, one that I know all too well. It consumes me, the fear of my guilt fueling it. I grabbed a tissue, only half of it tearing out of the dispenser. My rage tells me to throw the dispenser across the booth. The sane part of me only throws the tissues. "Relax, it's just a little spilled ice cream," she offers in an attempt to sooth me but it does nothing.

She tries to grab a second tissue but I swat her hand away. "I got it, Alexia." I don't look to see her face but I can imagine it.

She tries for the tissue again and when I respond the same, she slaps my hand away repeatedly until she grabs a napkin and takes my own away. "Quit being such a baby!" She cleans the mess, violently smacking me any time I try to intervien. "Don't you dare call me Alexia just because you're upset."

The words nearly free me from my anger, nearly, what is left is cured by her next words. "I mean seriously who is crying over low fat sherbet that tastes like ass."

"I thought you said it was healthy, Alexandria," I tease.

She rolls her eyes at my statement and finishes wiping up the mess on the table before pulling a tide pen out of her purse. She scoots closer to me, turning in the booth so that both of her knees are on the seat, one partially draped across my lap so that she might reach me easier. I stop breathing, afraid that if I don't I might catch a waft of her lavender perfume. I swallow hard as she sticks her hand up my shirt. "Alexandria," I rasp, my muscles going taut from the chill of her skin. It's almost refreshing in comparison to the burning weather I can never seem to escape in this town.