“I didn’t go to Princeton.”
My eyes flew to his face. “What?”
“I didn’t go.” His expression was blank but there were thoughts working in his eyes.
I took a steadying breath and tried to keep my voice free of malice. “But what about your father and all his grand plans?”
“I told him to go fuck himself.”
Sebastian smiled — a real, genuine grin that made the corners of my own mouth lift. I thought about his words for a moment, and small bubbles of hysteria began to dance within me like popcorn kernels just before they burst open. They filled me, vibrating and expanding in my chest until I could no longer keep them contained, and I burst into laughter. Spurts of giggles popped from my mouth into the air like a flurry of exploding kernels.
“I’m sure that wentreallywell,” I gasped out between fits of laughter, my mind conjuring up images of the senator’s face as his golden boy broke the news. My reaction probably didn’t make much sense to Sebastian, but I couldn’t help myself — there was a tremendous amount of karmatic justice in the fact that, after everything the senator had done to ensure it, Bash still hadn’t ended up on the path to the presidency or even followed in his father’s footsteps.
I glanced over at Sebastian and was pleasantly surprised to find him still grinning, rather than looking at me like I was a crazy person. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Just the thought…”
“Of his face?” Bash shook his head, grimacing. “Yeah, not pretty at the time but, in retrospect, pretty damn hilarious.”
“So no Princeton…” I trailed off, an unspoken question hanging in the air between us.
“He cut me off, of course,” Sebastian said, his happy smile still in tact. Evidently, he hadn’t been too upset about this turn of events. “I went to art school out in California. To pay my tuition, I worked my ass off every night doing freelance for local magazines and spent my mornings as a waiter, serving breakfast at this tiny diner. Then I g—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupted, holding out a hand to stop his words. “You, Sebastian Michael Covington, were awaiter?” I contorted my expression into a mask of horror. “The same boy who didn’t know the difference between an omelet and a frittata? Who’d never even been inside a kitchen unless it was to sneak cookies from the pantry? Who’d never eaten a waffle until he was eighteen?” I stared at him in disbelief. “How on earth did you manage to deliver orders?”
Bash dropped his forehead into his palm. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he muttered, groaning at the memory. “Though you’re right — the first few weeks were pretty brutal. It’s actually amazing they didn’t fire me after my first shift. I spilled an entire pot of coffee, accidentally gave an order of huevos rancheros to a vegan, and mistakenly charged someone’s credit card for another table’s order.”
“Oh my god.” I snorted. “And they chosenotto fire you because…?”
“I begged the owner for another shot. She was a great lady. Plus, it’s hard to say no to this face,” he joked, winking at me.
I laughed and rolled my eyes.
“After graduation, I got lucky. National Geographic had an opening doing some foreign correspondence stuff overseas. They needed someone young without any attachments back at home — someone who’d be willing to drop into dangerous places to shoot photos, with the knowledge that they might never come back. Frankly, at the time, it sounded perfect,” he told me, some of the light fading from his eyes as he thought back. “And for a while it was. I saw pretty much all of the Middle East, and a lot of Asia. Some of Africa, a few cities in Europe. I didn’t come back to the States for almost three years.”
“Sounds amazing,” I murmured.Sounds lonely, I added in my thoughts.
“It was.” He looked over at me. “Though if I never eat rice or see sand again, I’ll die a happy man.”
I laughed again and this time, though he seemed almost uncertain how, he joined in with me. His deep chuckle resonated through the room in perfect harmony with my own giggles, and filled me with an unrelenting joy. I watched his face alight. Unbeknownst to him, his expression revealed his own surprise at the sound of years of shored up laughter spilling out into the air around us. It was clear he’d not laughed like this for a long time — perhaps so long he’d become convinced it was no longer possible.
I’d forgotten how wonderful it was to laugh with Sebastian. I savored the moment, memorizing the sound of his rumbling laughter, the warm look in his eyes, the faint smell of his aftershave. I bottled up the memory and tucked it away in a far corner of my mind so that one day, when he was once again just a thread in the fabric of my past, I could replay it, relive it, as many times as I wanted.
When our breaths grew short, we finally fell silent, staring at one another across the sofa. We’d ended up in identical poses, with our bodies turned inward toward the unoccupied cushion between us, our sides pressed against the couch back, and our heads leaning against the fabric.
He reached over slowly, his hand moving to my shoulder blade where the thin strap of my silk tank had fallen down over my left shoulder. His entire body moved toward mine, and I held my breath as he entered my space. I pressed my eyes closed when I felt his light touch on the skin of my upper arm, and shivered lightly when he dragged the strap back intoplace. The graze of his finger was featherlight as it traveled down the length of the strap to the space below my left collarbone, where it stilled abruptly and pressed into the skin with more pressure than before.
“A tattoo?” His voice was husky.
My eyes flew open.Shit. He could not see my tattoo.
With my inhibitions dulled by the wine and — fine, I admit it — the pull of his presence, I hadn’t realized that the small line of script was visible near the edge of my tank top. Only a portion of the last word, but still — enough to make him curious about the phrase I’d inscribed in ink over my heart.
My hand came up to cover his, shielding the tattoo from his eyes.
“It’s, uh, it’s nothing really.” My mind searched desperately for an excuse to keep him from seeing the mark, and when my eyes landed on the small door to my bathroom, I blurted the first words that popped into my head. “I have to pee!”
I jumped to my feet as Sebastian laughed, my abrupt admission clearly a case of over-sharing. God, I was such a dork. I averted my eyes from him and hurried for the door. “Be right back!” I called.
He was still laughing when the door closed behind me. I leaned against it and sank slowly down to the floor, the cool tiles chilling me through the thin fabric of my pants. I curled my knees to my chest and proceeded to smack my forehead repeatedly with the open face of my right palm, hoping it might knock some sense back into me.