Written by Six de los Reyes for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge.
Jett is a character from Feels Like Summer. Rhys is a character from Just For the Record. They both may or may not appear in other de los Reyes band/summer romance books near you.
***
Jett was testing her patience.
But that wasn’t new. Anyway, Rhys has had her whole life perfecting the art of not giving a flying fuck and that included ignoring any and all distractions to maintain her mien of No Fucks Given. At the moment, Jett was very much challenging Rhys’s cool but that was the thing about having roommates. More often than not, they were purpose-built to utterly demolish one’s concentration.
“Stop looking at me.” Focus? Laser sharp. Rhys kept the tip of her pencil on the page. Mostly, she accomplished scribbles. Scribbles counted as lyrics too, didn’t they?
“I like looking at you….work,” Jett teased. “I like watching you work. You get this knot on your forehead that makes you look like a pissed off gremlin.”
Even without looking up, Rhys just knew Jett was smirking at her. It was given away by tone in her voice, that sweet, sticky quality of Jett’s voice that reminded Rhys of condensed milk on toast. “Bite me.”
“Can I, really?”
Violent was not the word to describe the way Rhys crossed out an entire verse, not even close. A closer approximation would be determined. Because she was determined to maintain her bubble of peace and quiet. Rhys kept to herself. She’d built herself a tiny nook in their shared apartment just for writing or composing, and one would think the many, many sticky notes and vinyl stickers spelling out mild to overt threats would keep the uninvited away. Unfortunately, Jett apparently gave no fucks either.
“How are the mangoes?” Jett asked.
From the corner of Rhys’s eye, she saw Jett stretch out languidly across the yoga mat. No yoga was being done, just for the record. The mat was there so Jett could lie on the floor as much as she liked when the weather was relentlessly hot like this. In a muscle shirt too large or just right. Terrible. “Like mangoes,” Rhys answered, stuffing her mouth with fruit.
Sweet. Sticky. Tart.
“Don’t mangoes increase the length and intensity of your orgasms?”
Rhys choked on the mangoes.
It seemed like the only appropriate response. It was totally undignified and the blood rushed to her face and she felt the tingles behind her ears. Naturally, Jett was in one of her giggle fits, throwing her head back and exposing the smooth column of her neck. Rhys wiped her lips with the back of her hand, conjuring the willpower to ignore Jett and focus on her lyrics. But it’s too late because now Rhys was too distracted.
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet,” Rhys said, composing herself.
“That’s what the scientific method is for,” Jett shot back, “someone should test out this hypothesis.”
That was most definitely not an invitation.
Was it?
No. Rhys decided it was not. Jett was just being Jett—impossible. Forever the harbinger of conflicted and often disastrous emotions.
“Go test your hypothesis then,” Rhys mumbled, picking up her pencil and pressing the lead against the page. “Over there. Don’t bother me. I’m busy.”
“You’re the one who had mangoes. It stands to reason that you be the test subject for this experiment.”
Snap.
What were the chances Jett did not notice the lead of Rhys’s pencil breaking off and falling to the floor? Yeah. Fun.
“Are you volunteering? It sounds like you’re volunteering. You’re volunteering, aren’t you? You can do the thing where you say something but mean the opposite.”
Oh, yeah. Jett noticed.
“I’m not volunteering.”
“Is that code for I should just go over there and kiss you?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “Just get your mangos and—what are you doing?”
Jett rolled over to her stomach and pushed herself up on all fours and crawled toward her. Rhys busied herself with flipping the pages of her notebook, trying and failing to plug in her headphones, anything just to pretend whatever was happening was not happening but it was too late. Jett was pulling herself up next to Rhys, the fabric of her muscle shirt grazing the sensitive skin on Rhys’s thighs.
“You didn’t really answer how the mangos are.”
“I did,” Rhys mumbled, pushing the plate toward Jett and away from her.
Jett leaned in too close, and Rhys inhaled the citrusy shower gel they shared. “For science.”
Just on principle, Rhys refused to let her eyes shut when Jett closed the distance between them and softly traced the outline of Rhys’s lips before grabbing the collar of Rhys’s shirt and pushing her against the backrest without hesitation. The kiss was warm but cool, and the only reason Rhys’s instinct was to recoil was because melting was not an option.
But anyway, the kiss was sweet and it was sticky, and resistance was maybe probably futile so, like, what was even the point?
“You’re right,” Jett whispered into Rhys’s lips. “Tastes like mangos. Now how about that other hypothesis?”
End
Prompt: Friends sila na may secret crush sa isat isa. Flirty banter ang mode of conversation, pero friends lang daw sila.
Also a prompt: This quote from an essay I was reading the other day: “Don’t mangoes increase the length and intensity of your orgasms?”
And i imagine Jett blurting it out during a casual conversation between “”friends””, habang nananahimik yung isa, deep in thought, umiinom lang naman ng mango shake or nagsnack on sliced mangoes while scribbling song lyrics on a notebook.
The essay: https://www.autostraddle.com/anatomy-of-a-mango-skin/
#RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge thread this way for more ficlets of your Romanceclass faves.
