All I see ✔️

8: HOT ENGLISH MEN AND WATTPAD BOY

Alexis

"I am absolutely not doing that!" Aaron looks like I asked for both of his eyes and his inheritance, in return for a measly fake date.

"Take it or leave it, Richards."

We are at this quaint and urban bookstore called Bookers where I part-time on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Mondays. It is owned by a sweet old lady who used to run this shop with her husband, until he died; after which she glammed up the whole shop, into a modern and spacious store instead of the dark and vintage that it used to be. I prefer the old one, but it's funny how she waited until her husband was dead to revamp it.

I cracked the jackpot by getting to work here- the pay is moderate, I get to work in a bookstore, alone for three hours for three days. It sounds like heaven and it feels like one too.

"Are you sure you don't want me to do anything else?" Aaron groans.

"Nope." I pop the word and continue scrolling through my Instagram feed, my feet propped up on the make-shift footrest in front of me.

My phone is snatched from my hands and I grunt in protest, "Give that back, Richards!"

"Not until you listen to me, Blondie." He dangles the phone in front of me, with an amused smirk on his face. I look up to see the wall clock behind his head reads one twenty in the afternoon, ten more minutes till I am free from his claws.

Aaron came in the bookstore about fifteen minutes earlier, looking fifty different shades of handsome, in his red full-sleeved t-shirt and dark jeans, wearing his glorious panty-melting, shit-faced grin.

He greeted me with a cheery 'What's up Babydoll!' and lost his playfulness as soon as I told him about the tutoring thing. Life is comprised of magical moments like those.

"Fine, keep the phone." I grit out and pick up the pile of magazines and go over to the center of the store to arrange them, Aaron at my heels. A Vogue magazine peeks out from the bundle, starring a very sensual Gisele Bündchen. Hmm, interesting, I thought she had disappeared off the face of the earth.

"I could drive you around wherever you want to go, for a whole month." Aaron offers desperately.

"I don't need a chauffeur."

He snorts, "As if I'd ever be. I was offering as a friend and I use that term in the loosest definition of friends."

"Or you could tutor me."

"I don't want to spend my time in a locked bedroom with you studying. I like my limbs attached to my body."

"Then keep the bedroom door open." I can practically hear him rolling his eyes at my lame retort and I am all smirks and smugs until I feel him behind me.

"Not the thing I thought we would be doing in a closed bedroom." 

I stiffen.

"Too bad you don't have enough brain cells to think I'd do anything with you, you jerkwad!." Two can play at this game.

"Or" he whispers in my ear and I can smell him so strongly, I am intoxicated. He smells of citrus and sandalwood along with faint laundry detergent and it's so strong and so him, I feel dizzy.

"Or what?" not surprisingly, my voice sounds wobbly.

"Or, I could pay you." The playfulness is back in his voice and so is the distance between us. 

He sprinted away from me and I didn't realize how warm and comfortable I was until he moved away; now I am suddenly cold, even though it's a simmering hot outside. If you ask me about what happened to my brain that I think Aaron's body space was warm and comfortable, my answer would be that I don't know either, only that it's very alarming and I need a medical opinion.