“No! I don’t know him. He comes in the café sometimes to get coffee before work.” She shook her head. “That’s all. He seems nice.”
“So what kind of coffee does he get?” Olivia asked.
“Just coffee. Normal coffee.”
“That’s dumb.” Roni snorted. “Ruby keeps a pot of coffee at Misspent all the time. She offered me some when I went in with Ashley Nelson to get her ear pierced.”
Olivia’s gaze swung to Daisy. “Is that so? Just regular coffee he could get at work but he pays for. At the café.” Her cousin leaned forward and tapped her finger on her chin. “Why would he do that, I wonder?”
Daisy felt her cheeks heating up again. “Shut up. He probably just doesn’t like how Ruby makes the coffee. Don’t make a big thing about—”
“He keeps looking at you,” Roni said. “He looks away, nods at his buddies—does the guy ever smile?—then he glances over here again.” Roni lifted her hand and waved. “Hi!”
Daisy slapped her leg. “Stop it!”
Olivia hissed. “Roni, don’t be a brat.”
Roni pouted. “Looks like I scared him away.”
Daisy’s head popped up. “What?”
“He’s walking out. See?”
She saw Spider heading toward the back door; she looked at the table. No one was bidding him goodbye, which probably meant he was just going outside for a cigarette or something.
“Roni, don’t tease her,” Olivia said. “She obviously likes the guy.”
“I don’t like him,” Daisy stammered. “Like, like him, I mean. I just— He seems like a nice person. He knows Emmie; he’s sweet and everything. With her. Emmie. He knows Betsy, remember? I saw him at the bookshop the other day, and he was kind of watching her.” Daisy reached for her drink, wishing suddenly that Nestor had ignored her request and given her a real beer. “Stop staring at me.”
“Daisy has a cruuuuuush,” Olivia whispered, “on the mysterious tattoo artist.”
“Get some.” Roni did a little dance in her chair and Olivia laughed. “Hey, what do you have to lose? You’re heading off to some fancy college next year anyway. You might as well have a little fun before you go.”
“Honestly, Daisy, you really do need to fool around with someone besides Johnny Rosa.” Olivia leaned closer. “I mean, did the entire experience even pass fifteen min—”
“Oh my God, please shut up and never mention this again ever in my life.” Daisy pressed her hands to her face, which felt like it had been baking on the surface of the sun. “I can’t believe I even told you it happened.”
“I didn’t hear about that!” Roni protested.
Olivia said, “Yeah, cause you were, like, fourteen.”
“Three years?” Roni was incredulous. “You’re twenty. Are you telling me—?”
“I have an idea.” Daisy felt desperate. “If I go out and talk to that man, will you two stop talking about my lack of a love life? For, like, the entire night?”
Olivia pressed her lips together and nodded, her eyes laughing.
“Oh man,” Roni whined. “That means if you go talk to him, we can’t ask you about it when you come back?”
Daisy nodded. “Correct.”
Roni looked at Olivia. “I can’t promise that; I might die.”
“Do it!” Olivia slapped Roni’s arm. “It’s only one night.”
Roni looked back at Daisy and narrowed her eyes. “You’re evil.”
“Agree or not?”
“How do we know you actually talked to him?”
Olivia jumped in. “You have to get his phone number!”
Fuck.
“Fine.” She could always write a random phone number on a napkin and pretend it was Spider’s. “I’ll get his phone number.”
Now Roni was looking at her with new respect. “I like this Daisy. We should take her out more often.”
“Oh, shut up.” Daisy slid off the stool and grabbed her purse before she headed toward the door where Spider had disappeared without a backward glance.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
She was heading out to the back of the Ice House, and she had to talk to Spider.
Kill me now.
She pushed the door open and felt momentarily lost by the sudden shift from light to dark.
The backyard of the Ice House was mostly a collection of old wooden picnic tables scarred from cigarettes and matches. There was a horseshoe pit in the far corner and a line of half-burned-out Christmas lights to illuminate the darkness.
Most of the tables were occupied with small groups of people sharing cigarettes and speaking closely. There were a few meshed shadows of couples making out.
“You don’t look like a smoker.”
Daisy spun and saw Spider leaning against the fence in the corner, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the shadows.
“I don’t smoke… much.” She blinked hard and drifted toward him. “I just needed some air. My cousins are… Yeah.”
“Huh.” He nodded.
Holy shit, she was having an actual conversation with Spider. Kind of. And it wasn’t about his coffee.
“Is that who you’re with?” He took another draw on his cigarette. “I didn’t know Nestor’s girl was your cousin.”
“Yeah.” She nodded and walked toward him, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets to hide the shaking. “She’s great, but my younger cousin is kind of a lot, so I was craving…”
You. Oh my God, I was craving you.
Daisy could feel his eyes on her, and she felt like her skin was alive. She wanted to grab him and kiss him. She wanted to strip his shirt off and run her hands over every inch of his skin.
The corner of Spider’s mouth turned up. “You don’t smoke.”
“I’ve smoked.” She tried to seem casual and tough.
“Maybe once or twice.” Spider pushed away from the fence and approached her. He held his cigarette away from her as he leaned closer. He smelled faintly of sweat, cigarette smoke, and fresh laundry.
Daisy blinked. It was an unexpected smell for a man, one that reminded her of home and sunny afternoons with Tia Imelda.
“But you don’t smoke.” He said it like a statement.
“How can you tell?”
He glanced down, and Daisy wished she were wearing a different shirt, something cooler, not a ruffle-trimmed blouse she’d thought would look nice with her jeans.
“Fucking cute,” he muttered.
Daisy blinked. “What?”
“Nothing.” He tugged at her arm until she pulled her hand from her pocket. Then Spider lifted it and slid his thumb lazily from her palm up the inside of her fingers, parting the index and middle fingers with his own.
Oh. Daisy felt something inside her start to burn. This is why people talk about sex so much.
“Here.” He teased the edge of her middle finger. “If you smoked, you’d have a tobacco stain here.”
She didn’t want to move, and she definitely didn’t want to move her hand. She stared at his full lower lip and the defined line of his mouth. “I tried it once, but honestly, it tasted pretty gross.”