Learning to be Beautiful

Learning to be Beautiful ~7~

As soon as we ran into my mother, she shoved a cupcake into Linc’s face—frosting and all, grabbed the black dress from my arms, then shooed us out the door so that we could get to the agency for that day’s photo shoot. Linc wasn’t very happy about the frosting on his face and didn’t try to hide that fact as we exited the store and made our way to his car.

Once we started driving, he steadied the steering wheel with one hand, and used the other to wipe the sugary goodness off of his face, and I whipped out my phone to call Gavin.

“You have reached a stud-muffin,” he greeted after three rings.

“Hey, stud-muffin,” Linc’s eyebrows shot up at that, “you still coming to the agency today?”

On the other end of the line, I heard Gavin groan and I imagined that he had just run a hand down his face. “That was today… crud.”

I laughed, “I’m going to assume from the ‘crud’ that you’re not coming.”

“I’m really sorry, Ais.” He said, his voice full of remorse, “Rain check?”

“It’s cool, you’ll just owe me big time.”

“Slave for life?”

“You know it!”

We both started laughing, “I’ll talk to you later, Ais,” Gavin said between chuckles.

“See ya,” I punched the ‘end call’ button, and put my phone back in my pocket.

Linc looked at me sideways, his mouth twisted into a confused pout, “Stud-muffin?” His accent paired with the utter bewilderment in his voice made the term sound even more comical when he said it than it had to begin with.

“Stud-muffin.” I reiterated, nodding my head in affirmation.

“What on earth is a stud-muffin?” He asked, turning to fix his eyes back on the road.

I began to tap my chin with my forefinger as I tried to find the best way to describe it to him, “A stud-muffin is… uh…” I racked my brain for any British slang I could possibly use as an equivalent but came up completely blank. “A stud-muffin is a very attractive guy.”

“Uh huh…” One of Linc’s eyebrows remained higher than the other, but he didn’t say anything else.

An awkward silence descended on us, only broken by the steady blowing of the air-conditioner. It was set on its coldest temperature and highest blow-rate. As you can imagine, it was getting colder in the car by the second.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Linc clench his jaw, almost as if he were steeling himself against the cold. Smirking a bit to myself, I thought Wimp, just as a shiver tore down my spine. His usually straight mouth twisted into a smirk of its own and I frowned. Wrapping my forearms around myself, I attempted to keep as much body heat as I could. If he wasn’t going to lower the amount of air flowing out of the vents then neither would I. Beside me, Linc pulled his elbows in closer to himself and it looked like he started to regulate his breathing.