CHAPTER 12
Isabella
My hand trembled as I lifted my ice cream cone to my mouth and stared up at the starry night sky. After the haunted house, Jimmy had suggested getting ice cream and then going up to Peachtree Peak to park. We were sitting on his tailgate stargazing while we ate ice cream. If I googled “perfect first date” I would expect tonight to be the first result on page one.
I wasn’t sure if the tremor was left over from the adrenaline that had flooded my system while going through Abernathy Manor, or if it was because of the coldness of the ice cream, or if it was because my hormones were on overdrive being alone, under the stars, sitting so close to Jimmy.
A drip of ice cream started to run down my cone and I twisted my head to catch it. As my tongue licked up the liquefied mint chocolate chip, I heard a moan beside me.
My cheeks heated thinking about what may or may not have inspired that reaction. If I had to guess, or hope, it would be the memory of my tongue sliding up his cone. If that were the case, we were both on the same page.
“So, the morning on the boat…” he began.
Yes.The morning on the boat, that’s exactly what I was thinking about, too.
“You said that it was your first time.”
My breath caught as anticipation fluttered through me. Jimmy had been the perfect gentleman during our date, and it was driving me a little—okay, a lot—crazy. While we were walking through the haunted house, I kept having fantasies that he’d pull me into a dark corner and devour me. I did make a note to myself that I’d been reading too many romance novels when devour was the first word that came to mind as a descriptor. But sadly, no romance novel nookie took place.
When he asked me to go out for ice cream after helping me into his truck, I was crossing my fingers and toes that he would lean forward and kiss me. He did not. After we parked and he took out a blanket for us to sit on, I was willing him to cop a feel when he helped me hop up and get settled. But my will was not done.
Sadly, he’d kept his hands and his mouth to himself the entire night. And although I was now living my life doing and saying what I wanted, that was a lot easier to do when the person I was with was a stranger. Now, that he was Cheyenne’s brother, I wasn’t so brave.
But hopefully, I wouldn’t have to make the first—or in this case, third—move.
“It was my first time.” My response came out a lot breathier than I’d intended.
“Cheyenne mentioned that you went to school together, and who your father is. I thought he did that 20/20 special from his yacht.”
I stared at him for a few seconds trying to fit what I was thinking into the sentence he’d just spoken. Why was he talking about my father?
Finally, my brain joined the party and informed me that Jimmy and I were not just on different pages, we weren’t even reading the same book. I was reading Fifty Shades of Grey while he was reading Moby Dick. Or, well… some other nautical book that didn’t have genitalia in the title.
“Um, yes, he did. But I’ve never been on it.”
He shifted, and his knee rubbed against mine. Feeling his denim against my bare skin was oddly erotic. Or maybe I just thought everything he did was erotic.
“What about friends? Didn’t they have boats?”
I couldn’t believe that we were alone, under a starry sky, and talking about boats. I thought for sure when he’d suggested driving up to Peachtree Peak that the least we’d be doing was making out.
As I stared at the man asking me about boats, the man I’d had two sexual encounters with and had yet to kiss, the man whose five o’clock shadow was making him even sexier than he was the day before, even though I would have sworn that was an impossibility—as I stared at that man, an unwanted thought occurred to me.
Jimmy may not actually be attracted to me. Not in a romantic way, at least.
A glaring detail had been staring me right in the face this whole time, I’d just been blissfully ignorant of it. But now it looked as obvious as Pinocchio’s nose. I’d been the one to initiate things both times we’d had any intimate contact. It was very possible that he just saw me as a friend.
From what I’d heard and witnessed with my own eyes, Jimmy Comfort was not in short supply of female attention. Maybe he enjoyed my company as a friend and I kept trying to take things in a different direction.
I tried not to be embarrassed or frustrated at his lack of interest. The friend zone wasn’t the worst place I could be. And I had enjoyed the night with him, even if I’d spent most of it expecting something to happen at any moment.
Determined not to let this derail a lovely evening, I finished off my ice cream and wiped my mouth. Sitting up straighter, I changed the dial in my head from “Let’s Get it On” and tuned into “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”
“I didn’t really socialize much. Cheyenne was the closest thing that I had to someone I’d categorize as a friend, and yesterday was the first time we’d ever done anything together off of school grounds.”
“You didn’t have friends?”
I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic, asking a rhetorical question, or genuinely surprised. It didn’t actually matter though because it didn’t change my answer.