Ruby
“There’s a band playing at the park,” Tenor said over the steak wraps he’d made for dinner. He’d insisted I see that he could cook. I really didn’t care. Good food was good food.
My weekends with him had spoiled me so much that when I was home, I subsisted on sandwiches and takeout. I couldn’t face cooking my own mediocre meal and then eating it alone.
“Do you like them?” I asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m sure they’re fine. You wanna dance?”
I mimicked his casual shrug. “Only if you want to.”
He set his wrap down. “Would you rather stay in and watch me paint again?”
He made it sound like the bottom-shelf selection, but it actually sounded really nice. It was the middle of July and the area was gorgeous. Still green, not yet too dry, the picture outside Tenor’s window was paradise. If that was the backdrop to my evening? “Sounds like a fine date to me.”
He wiped his fingers off. “You had a lot of fun at the street dance.”
I smiled. “It was fun, but you don’t need to recreate it every time we’re together. I like quiet nights in too.” Most of the time. I pointed to my empty plate. “Especially when it comes with good food. But there is one thing that is missing.”
He lifted his brows. “What?”
“A glass of bourbon.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Bourbon’s best enjoyed with family and friends.”
“And what am I?” When his expression froze, panic rose in my blood. What must he think of me? He’d said casual. No definitions, and here I was, a week later, asking him to define me. I picked up my plate to take to the sink. “I want to study some accounts, and I have a new book. I can pour us some drinks. You don’t even have to tip.”
“Ruby.”
His soft tone got me to stop. “It’s okay, Tenor. Which bourbon do you want?”
“Your pick,” he said quietly.
I took two rocks glasses out of the cupboard and bent to select a bottle that I hadn’t tried yet. He had a bottle from the Copper Summit seventy-five-year anniversary special barrel five years ago.
When I rose, he was standing in front of me. He was working his jaw back and forth like he didn’t know what to say.
I set the small, squat bottle on the counter and put a hand on his chest. “I didn’t mean to make anything awkward.”
“You want more.”
I did. And he wasn’t promising more. It was me. I moved too fast, got too serious, and read too much into the men I dated. But Tenor and I weren’t exactly dating. We were sleeping together.
Yet he’d asked me if I wanted to go to the park. That was date-like.
Confusion swirled in my brain. He wasn’t hot and cold, but he was... stop and go. I couldn’t force him to see me as a green light. He’d crashed and burned before, and for whatever reason, he saw me as a potential head-on collision. Meanwhile, I was stuck in a traffic circle, going round and round. Maybe in twenty-five years, he’d be sending me memes about romance novels. And I’d be my mom, giggling at them, knowing damn well I had never gotten over him.
I’d stay on my circular path until Tenor took a turn. Because I liked him, and there was a chance. I just needed to give him time and not ruin this. “I want to enjoy being with you and doing things that friends don’t do with each other.”
He clasped his hand over mine, holding it to his chest. A divot formed between his brows. Gradually, it went away and his gaze darkened. “What—exactly—is it that friends don’t do with each other?”
The air between us thickened. He gave me an out and I took it. “They don’t think about you naked when you’re painting your models.”
A brow arched. “Is that all?”
I licked my bottom lip and his gaze tracked my tongue. “They don’t get off in each other’s beds.”
His pupils dilated and he crowded closer. “It was only you in my bed.”
