“Fábia, leave 'em alone,” Reid complains, though it's a halfhearted effort. The girl's never going to learn to play nice.
I glare at my friends, because they're really not fucking helping. It occurs to me that none of this is coming as a surprise to them, the kiss aside, like the fact that I'm mad about Ibbie isn't news to them at all. I guess I haven't been as good at hiding my feelings as I'd thought. From everyone except Ibbie, that is.
“Why didn't you just say so?” Ibbie demands, ignoring Fábia. She's still clinging onto that last little shred of anger, but it seems to have faded some now. “How do you expect me to just know when all you ever do is act like a butt head?”
Overwhelmed by the need to touch her, I reach out to grab her hand. She doesn't pull away. “Can we please just go somewhere private to talk now?”
She glances over at the others watching us, then down at our clasped hands in surprise. When she looks back up at me with those big, blue eyes, I can no longer find any trace of anger in them. “Okay.”
+++
WITH AN UNSPOKEN agreement, we make our way back to Ibbie's apartment in Hell's Kitchen. In fact, we don't speak at all the entire journey home. Not walking down the street, not on the subway, not in the elevator in her building. We do hold hands though. . .the entire time. That gives me more hope than anything ever has.
Her cousin, Sabrina, is sitting on the sofa when Ibbie lets us in. Her blonde hair is piled haphazardly up on her head and a pair of glasses have slipped down to the end of her nose as she studies a pile of papers scattered around her. Even at such a later hour, she's still working away. She arches a shocked eyebrow when she sees me standing next to Ibbie, our hands entwined. “I thought he wasn't allowed back here after the underwear incident?” she says to Ibbie. “You said if I let him in again you'd snap all the heels off my Louis Vuitton's.”
“He's. . .” Ibbie sighs, sneaking a peek at me and blushing. “He's the reason for the pink shirts.”
This makes no fucking sense to me whatsoever – though not much does when it comes to women – but clarity suddenly dawns on Sabrina's face. Her eyes widen knowingly. “Ohh. Really? Him? Never saw that one coming.”
Ibbie gives her a tiny smile. “Me neither.”
Sabrina gathers all her papers up and stands. “Well then. Guess I'll be in my room. Holler if you need me. But try not to need me.”
We watch her go, then turn to face each other in silence. For the first time all evening, Ibbie lets go of my hand. My fist clenches, missing her contact. The main lights are off, but Sabrina had a couple of lamps on and they cast a warm, low light around the room. In the background something is flashing on the TV, but the volume is turned down so low that I can barely even hear it.
“You okay?” I ask her doubtfully.
“Just ducky.”
She opens her mouth to say something else, but I interrupt before she can. I need to get this out there. “When I met you, you threw me for a loop. You drove me crazy,” I confess. “and I didn't handle it well – which you probably noticed. When I'm unsure about something, I usually just act like a dick.”
“Yeah, might've noticed that,” she replies, a sparkle in her eyes.
“You made me feel things I'd never felt before. When I realized that I liked you, I. . . Fuck, I didn't know how to act around you so I just kept being an ass. I fucked up. I'm sorry, Ibbie.”
“That might be the first time you've ever apologized to me.” She smiles impishly. “I'm sorry too. I'm not exactly faultless either. Though you totally had it coming.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, no one's ever given me my shit right back like you have.”
“How long?” she asks suddenly, surprising me.
“How long what?”
“Have you liked me? How long?”
Blowing out a puff of air, I rock back and forth on my heels. “A while. A really long while. I just had know idea what to do with it.”
She takes a deep breath then, psyching herself up, and steps closer until we're toe to toe. When she looks up into my eyes from beneath those long lashes, my heart skips a beat. “Well maybe you shoulda tried something like this.”
And then she leans up on her tiptoes and kisses me softly, sweetly. Almost innocently. No part of our bodies touch except our lips, though every inch of me feels like it's ablaze. I'm scared to move, scared to hope.
When she pulls back, those pink dots are back on her cheeks.
“Ibbie. . .” I swallow. “Don't. . .if you don't. . .'cause I can't. . .if you don't really mean it then. . .”
“I mean it. I mean, I'm not really sure what I'm doing right now,” she professes, reaching out for my hands. “But I know that you've been on my mind ever since you kissed me. Well, you've been on my mind every day for the past year – but this time for good reasons.” We both laugh at that. “But I really like the Walt I met the other night. So I mean it. I really mean it.”
I close my eyes, tugging her closer so I can rest my forehead against hers. “So what now?”
“Well right now I just want to explore this further,” she tells me. “I can't think about anything beyond that, not yet. Let's just. . .get to know each other. Can that be enough?”
Letting go of her hands, I grab a hold of her hips and pull her against me. Can that be enough? It's more than I ever fucking dreamed I'd get with her. So much more. And the rest of it, the falling in love with me part, it'll come later. I'll make damned sure of it.
“That sounds incredible,” I assure her, and then I press my lips against hers.
Chapter 11
Ibbie
THINGS BETWEEN WALT and I are new, tentative, exciting. I'm reluctant to call what we have a relationship at first, still wary of the past, but as the weeks pass by Walt wins me over and I warm to the idea. Walt Vega is officially my boyfriend – he made me promise to stop calling him my bae.
And what we have. . .I like it. I like it a whole lot.
Walt isn't perfect, he never will be. He's still grumpy and sarcastic with almost everyone he meets and we still make fun of each other all the time – though our cuts are much less harsh than they used to be. And me, I'm not perfect either. The two of us are perfectly imperfect, and I think that's what makes things between us so. . .perfect.
It turns out Fauna did forgive Aleix after he'd explained everything to her. Well, sort of. She made him take back his engagement ring, but she agreed to date him on a trial basis. He's working hard to earn her forgiveness.
Fauna came up to the city to meet with me one day to make sure I knew that she held none of the events against me. She wanted to make certain that things were good between us since it's likely we're going to be in each others lives for a really long time. Somehow we ended the afternoon as pretty tight friends. It's probably the strangest way I've ever befriended someone, but I think it all worked out pretty well.
I saw Aleix again too. Since I'm dating his brother, it's not like I could avoid him for the rest of our lives so I agreed to go to lunch with him so he could apologize to me. When I saw him, I felt. . .nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not sadness, not regret, not even anger. I don't know if it was because we'd only dated a few weeks, or if it was because I'm sort of majorly into someone else now, but it was pretty frigging great. Walt glared daggers at his brother the entire time, but I forced them to make up in the end. I don't have siblings so I've never really experienced that bond, but I'd hate to be the reason two brothers grew apart.
As much as I really like Walt, I keep firm to my one month wait when it comes to sex. A girl's gotta stick to her principles, after all. And Walt, he is seriously awesome about that in ways that other guys I've dated were definitely not. He doesn't push me, doesn't guilt me into giving more than I'm ready to, doesn't ever even try to take things further than the boundaries I've set. To me, that just makes him sexier.