Page 18 of The Plus One

She stared at me. “Don’t piss me off.”

I laughed. “See? Sober.”

“Exactly.”

She finished making the sandwiches and slid my plate across the island. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We sat across from each other. For a few minutes, neither of us said much. We just ate. And for some reason, that felt stranger than everything else we’d done tonight.

I’d been around Kema more times than I could count. Cookouts. Birthdays. Football games. Parties. Double dates when Kel was still pretending he knew how to act. But I’d never sat across from her at damn near two in the morning in her kitchen.

I liked it more than I should’ve. She took another bite before pointing at me. “You’re staring again.”

I didn’t bother denying it. “So?”

“So why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you keep looking at me?”

“I can’t look at you?”

“Not like that.”

I sat back. “Like what?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I did. But I wanted to hear her say it. “I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Nope.”

She put her sandwich down. “You keep looking at me like…”

“Like?”

She paused. I smiled. “Exactly.”

Her eyes rolled. “You’re annoying.”

“You’ve told me that already.”

“And I’m going to keep telling you.” She picked her sandwich back up, and I took another bite of mine. Then she asked, “You really think I’m beautiful?”

That caught me off guard. We hadn't even talked about that since we were in the car. I put my sandwich down. “Yeah I do.”

She looked at me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

My eyebrows pulled together. “How long what?”