09:11 Matthew:Lauren, please, I need to know you’re all right. I’m going a little crazy here.
09:12 Matthew:Fuck, Lauren, do you have any idea what could have happened to you on the streets last night?
“Don’t even start with that,” I muttered. The role of Overbearing Male was already filled, and the Commodore had two promising understudies in Will and Wes. And it wasn’t as if I couldn’t handle myself.
09:18 Matthew:Lauren, please. Talk to me.
What was there to say? I didn’t go home with guys I’d known for all of one hot second? Or I didn’t knowhowto have a one-night stand? Or it hadn’t been weeks or months since last having sex, it had been years.
Or maybe this was the time to tell him I was a hot messy mess and between crying in stairwells and stumbling around like a wobbly drunk girl, I was failing at damn near everything.
Or perhaps he wanted to hear that last night scared me. It was all well and good to flirt your pants off, but there was nothing flirty about the shit that went down between us. That kind of sex required agendas and protocols and some kind of how-to guide.
09:22 Matthew:I need to hear from you.
09:24 Matthew:I will meet you anywhere at any time. I’ll come to you.
09:26 Matthew:Please just let me know you made it home.
09:27 Matthew:Lauren…please. I just want to make sure you’re alive.
09:27 Matthew:and I know your phone is never more than 3 ft away from you so if you don’t respond soon I’m going to assume you’re dead and not ignoring me.
I could hear the tension coiling between his shoulders with each message, and though I wanted to unknot every muscle, I wanted to smack some sense into him. Roaming the streets while female didn’t require a chaperone.
I stared at his phone number alongside the string of texts, debating whether I should add him to my Address Book. The gesture was inconsequential but after last night, it was loaded with significance—I was deciding whether I intended to communicate with him ever again, and while I considered this, I barely registered the knocking at my door. I didn’t consider the holey yoga pants and tank top I was wearing when I answered.
I probably should have.
“You left a few things behind, Miss Halsted.”
Matthew leaned against the doorframe, and hanging from his fingers were my panties. My very expensive, very pretty panties. They glared back at me, all judgey and sanctimonious. It was my karmic punishment for sneaking out, for leaving a perfectly scrumptious naked man, and I could hear those panties condemning me.
“Unless, of course, you wanted me to keep them,” he said, a playful edge creeping into his voice. “I’ll take good care of them.”
“I don’t even want to know what that means!” I said, snatching the skivvies from him and tossing them into my apartment. I couldn’t burst into those flames quickly enough, and that was before I determined what he’d do with my undies. “What are you doing here, Matthew? How do you even know where I live?”
Straightening, the mischievous glimmer in his eyes vanished. “I wanted to make sure you made it home, Lauren, and your address is on your business card.”
“Fine, so that proves you didn’t inject me with a tracking device. Magnificent.” I shook my head and pointed to my door. “I’m home.”
He glanced inside my apartment, and nodded in that direction. “Can we talk, or…something? We were going to hang out today.”
Why couldn’t he let me crawl under a rug and die, like I wanted? Why did he need to show up holding my panties and looking adorable? This had to violate numerous one-night stand rules.
“Before you say no,” he said, holding up a hand. “Just say yes instead.”
Part of me wanted to close the door on him, close the book on this whole encounter, but another part of me wanted to kick it wide open, and I knew we’d be naked within five minutes if that happened.
And if I stepped back from it all—the chaos in my head, the ache between my legs, the swaying in my stomach from the tequila, chocolate, and not enough sleep—I wanted the naked option.
I also wanted a croissant, and if there was one thing I knew well, it was playing the trade-off game. Matthew was my treat yesterday; today it would be a croissant.
Easy enough.
“All right. But not here. No, you can go and, um, I’ll meet you at the Frog Pond in a little while. Practice not being a creeper.”
“Half an hour,” he said. It was delivered as a statement, a warning:I won’t wait for you all day. “Oh, and sweetness? You might have those panties back, but this?” Matthew’s hand dipped into his pocket, and in an achingly slow movement, like a lurching movie in my mind, too slow to be real, he held my rose quartz necklace up by the chain. “I’m keeping this.”
