I do what he says, but the only way I can sit on his lap is if I straddle him. At least I’m in jeans, but I still feel awkward that I’m sitting like this in the middle of a tattoo parlor. Ben’s hand comes to rest on my waist and he squeezes. I can hear the buzz of the needle and the slight difference in the sound once it presses into his skin. He doesn’t even make a face other than giving me a tiny smile. I do what I can to distract him, so I continue the small talk we shared on the beach.
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Malachite green.”
I make a face. “That’s a very specific green, but okay.”
“It’s what color your eyes are. Also happens to be my favorite mineral.”
“You have a favorite mineral?”
“Do now.”
I look down to avoid him seeing my embarrassed smile straight on. I feel his hand squeeze my waist again. I’m guessing the needle is distracting him more than I am, so I throw out another question.
“What’s your favorite food?”
“Pad Thai,” he says. “Yours?”
“Sushi. They’re almost the same thing.”
“Not even close,” he says.
“They’re both Asian food. What’s your favorite movie?”
“These questions are boring. Try harder.”
I drop my head back and look up at the ceiling while I think. “Okay, who was your first girlfriend?” I ask, bringing my eyes back to him.
“Brynn Fellows. I was thirteen.”
“I thought you said her name was Abitha.”
He grins. “You have a good memory.”
I raise a serious brow. “It’s not that I have a good memory, Ben. I’m just insanely jealous and unstable when it comes to your past loves.”
He laughs. “Abitha was the first girl I kissed. Not my first girlfriend. I was fifteen, dated her for a year.”
“Why’d you break up?”
“We were sixteen.” He says that like it’s a valid reason. He can see the question in my expression so he says, “That’s what you do when you’re dating at sixteen. You break up. What about you? Who was your first boyfriend?”
“Real or fake?”
“Either,” he says.
“You.” I watch his eyes closely to see if there’s pity in them, but it looks more like pride. “How many people have you slept with?”
He tightens his mouth. “Not answering that.”
“More than ten?”
“Nope.”
“Less than one?”
“Nope.”
“More than five?”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
I laugh. “Yes you do. In five years, you’ll be telling the whole world about us in your book.”
“Four years,” he clarifies.
“When’s your birthday?” I ask him.
“When’s yours?”
“I asked you first.”
“But what if you’re older than me? Isn’t that a turnoff for girls? Dating guys younger than them?”
“Isn’t it a turnoff for guys to date girls with scars on over half their face?”
His hand squeezes my waist and he eyes me hard. “Fallon.” He says my name like it’s an entire lecture in itself.
“I was trying to be funny,” I say.
He doesn’t smile. “I don’t think self-deprecation is very funny.”
“That’s only because you aren’t the self who’s doing the deprecating.”
The corner of his mouth twitches as he tries to hold back his smile. “July Fourth,” he says. “The whole country celebrates my birthday every year. It’s quite epic.”
“July 25th, which means you are officially older than me. I can safely pursue you now and not be considered a cougar.”
He runs his hand up my waist a couple of inches, and then his thumb moves side to side, slowly. “You can’t pursue the willing, Fallon.”
Oh, dang. He deserves a kiss for that comment, but there’s a guy with a tattoo gun two feet away and I’m not the type of girl who would make out with a guy in public. Apparently I draw the line at straddling them.
“There’s something I need to know about you,” he says with a poignant stare. “And when I ask you this question, I want you to think very long and hard about the answer, because it might make or break this connection we have.”
I swallow hard. “Okay. What do you need to know?”
He winces, just a little, and I’m not sure if it’s from the tattoo gun or because he’s nervous to ask the question. “Okay,” he says. “If you could only listen to one band for the rest of your life, which band would you choose, and why?”
I instantly relax. This is easy. I thought he was about to dig a whole lot deeper than my favorite band.
“X Ambassadors.”
“Never heard of them,” he says.
“I’ve seen them twice,” the guy with the tattoo gun says. Ben and I both look at him, but he’s focused on his work.
I look back at Ben and arch my eyebrow. “Why would my favorite band make or break us?”
“A lot can be said about a person through their taste in music. Pretty sure I read that in one of the books you gave me. If you would have picked a band I hated, it would have been a major turnoff.”
“Well, you might still hate them once you listen to them, so we aren’t in the clear yet.”
“In that case, I’ll never listen to them,” he says confidently.
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“What’s your favorite lyric by them?” he asks.
“It changes depending on my mood.”
“Well then, what’s your favorite lyric right now?”
I close my eyes briefly and hum one of the songs in my head until I get to the lyric that fits this moment. I open my eyes and smile. “You’re so gorgeous, ’cause you make me feel gorgeous.”
A faint smile works its way across his mouth. “I like that,” he says, brushing his thumb across the skin of my waist. We stare at each other for a while. I can see the rise of his chest becoming more prominent, and knowing he’s getting worked up despite having a needle piercing his skin makes me feel a little triumphant.