"Ell … ee … ot," she mumbled around my tongue. "What … are … you-"
Mum giggled. "Ooooooh! Look at you two no longer hiding in your closets. JEANETTE, are you seeing this?"
Danielle squirmed just like my eleven-month-old nephew did when I picked him up for a hug, but when I softly and meticulously stroked her tongue with mine, her fight waned and she fell limp against me. Victory.
In that moment, the world faded away. There was no mum, no Jeanette, no fake Chris, and no barking dogs. It was just Danielle and I, like when we were kids, except we'd never been this close, enough that I could feel her breath on my face, thread my fingers through her hair, and clench my hand over her hip … close enough for her nails to dig into my skin like a Velociraptor. Jesus Christ!
Fighting the pain shooting up my arm for as long as possible, I persisted against her sudden attack. But I was only human - a human that could bleed and probably was.
"What are you doing?" I groaned, pulling back to assess the damage she'd inflicted to my arm
"What am I doing?" she growled, quietly. Danielle fired an embarrassed, sweet smile toward our gawking mothers then turned back to me, her sweetness gone. "The question is what are you doing?"
"I'm kissing you. What does it look like?"
"Did I say you could kiss me?"
I rubbed my arm and fake chuckled for the purpose of keeping up our ruse. "No. I didn't know I needed a written invitation?"
"Well … " she paused, her chest huffing, her face gorgeously flushed. "You do."
We stared at one another for a few moments more before she turned on her heel and stormed off, and, thankfully, it was in the opposite direction of our grinning mothers.
Over an hour later, she hadn't returned. I was worried, and not because I thought she'd confessed my excellent lie. I was fairly sure she hadn't, seeing as I was still alive and kicking and that my mother wasn't in tears nor giving me her silent treatment. So I was confident our secret was still … secret. What I wasn't confident over was Danielle's whereabouts or frame of mind, and I honestly felt like a bucket of shit as a result.
I'd come on strongly because I hadn't been able to help myself. I hadn't seen her in so long and it had made me a little needy. She hadn't changed and yet she'd changed so much. She was a woman now; a feisty, sexy as hell woman that drew me to her like a moth to a flame. There was just something about her, about our connection and our past that fizzled like a firecracker between us. And it couldn't just be me that felt it - forces and feelings such as those were never singular.
Plunging my shovel into the ground, I pushed it in further with my foot before levering what felt like my billionth scoop of dirt before dumping it into the wheelbarrow beside me. I couldn't complain, though; the constant movement was keeping my balls from freezing solid. I adjusted them, for added reassurance, then pushed the wheelbarrow across the garden site toward the skip bin, slowing when I heard distant music that sounded like a ringtone.
Lowering the handles to place the wheelbarrow down, I pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees, heading toward the sound, a heavy drumbeat, which I soon recognised as the theme song to Game of Thrones. Humming along to the tune while scouring the ground in front of my feet, the song's volume increased with every step I took until I spotted a phone.
I reached into the grass and picked it up, answering it. "Hello?"
"Who's this?"
"Who's this?" I replied, smiling, her voice sounding familiar.
"Lots?"
"Danielle?"
"Why do you have my phone?"
I shrugged like an idiot. "Because I just found it."
"Where?"
"On the ground."
"Crap."
"It's fine. Still works."
"Clearly," she grumbled. "Crap. Crap. Crap. I need it."
I scratched my head. "Where are you?"
"At home."
My scratching stopped. "Really? You left without saying goodbye?"
"I was in a hurry." Bullshit! 'In a hurry' my arse.
I didn't believe her. She'd bailed because she didn't want to admit she'd just experienced the best kiss of her life.
"DAMN IT! I really need my phone."
"Then come back and get it."
She let out a long, whiny moan. "I can't be stuffed driving all that way."
"All that way? Where do you live?"
"Essendon." Fair enough.