"Not bad." I pointed back at the menu board. "What do you like here?"
"I'm leaning toward black raspberry," she said, her attention still trained on the wall. God, she was beautiful. Just fucking gorgeous. "But I'm also feeling that chocolate with pretzels. I don't think it would make sense to double up though. I don't want my raspberries melting into my chocolate, you know?"
"Yeah. That would be unpleasant." I studied the menu for a minute before looking back at Stella. "You get one, I'll get the other. We'll share. No raspberries in the chocolate."
"Ooh, that's perfect." She tapped her fingertips together under her chin like she'd hatched an evil plan of ice cream domination. "Okay, yeah. Let's get that."
I lingered at her side while she ordered. I didn't touch her but I didn't have to. She was close in a manner that announced she waswithme and that was everything.
With a loaded cup of ice cream in each hand, she gestured toward a long, narrow table tucked up against the street-side windows. "Stay or go?" she asked.
It was another late evening for us and the streets were dark. After this morning's spectacular turn of events, I wasn't going to complicate matters with walking and eating. I pulled out a chair for her. "Stay," I said. "Then we can go."
She dropped into the seat, letting out the tiniest yelp of pain when her backside met the hard plastic. I had a mess of thoughts about that. First and greatest—fuck yeah. I was the one who left her sore, I was the one who could draw a topographical map of her ass from memory, I was the one who knew how to make her scream.
Next up came the questions. Would she let me under that raincoat tonight? Would she let me taste her tonight? Would she let me keep her tonight?
"Dude, you gotta sit down," Stella hissed. "It looks like we're doing some kind of lady and her manservant role-play. That sounds fun but for someone else."
I yanked a chair out and sat. "Someone you know?"
"I'm willing to bet my boss plays lady-and-the-manservant every night. I bet he's the one keeping her wig in such great condition." She handed me a spoon as she laughed. "Listen, I'm not going to yuck all over her yum but I'm comfortable saying it's not for me."
I was wrong about not needing to touch her. Whatever I'd been thinking a few minutes ago was incorrect. I didn't have the patience or strength necessary to be this close to her without touching her. I'd waited months—yeah, that one was on me—and I didn't want to wait a second longer. I motioned toward her legs and then patted my lap. "Come here, sweet thing," I said.
"Don't mind if I do." She leaned back and settled her legs on me, her ankles crossed. "Careful, Cal. I could start to expect this every night."
"Careful, Stella," I replied. "I could start offering every night."
I glanced up from her legs at the moment her smile flattened, her dimples disappeared. Her eyes flashed dark. She stared at me, pointing with her plastic spoon. "It's always the nice ones. They're the most trouble."
I dragged my fingertips up her calf to the tender space behind her knee. "Is that how it goes?"
She met me with a wide-eyed nod. "Mmhmm. The bad boys have hearts of gold and the rebels just want to be understood. The nice ones though, they show up and cause all kinds of trouble."
"I don't know," I hedged. "I seem to recall you enjoying all kinds of trouble last night."
Bobbing her head from side to side, she replied, "That's where the nice ones nab you. They reel you in with the good-boy manners and complete absence of douchebaggery. Everything is fabulous until you realize you brought a throw pillow to the office because your ass hurts and you've seen him two nights in a row despite your personal commitment against agreeing to back-to-back outings." She drew a checkmark in the air with her spoon. "That's how the nice ones nab you."
I stared at her a moment, not sure which thread to pull first. She didn't make a habit of seeing the same person on consecutive evenings. That was an interesting nugget. Then there was the entire analysis of nice guys and our faults. Our penchant for nabbing otherwise hard-to-get women. I was starting to see Stella as just that: hard to get. It wasn't a prop so much as the set she'd chosen for herself.
If the past two days proved anything, it was that Stella wasn't nearly as unattainable as she wanted me to believe. And I was holding on to that interesting nugget.
I waved toward her seat. "I'm sorry you're uncomfortable today."
She scooped up a bite of black raspberry, smiling. "I know. You're a good guy. You give a shit about how I feel and you want to make it better when things are bad." She ate that spoonful of ice cream and went hunting for another. "You also want to destroy me on every solid surface in your apartment and meet my parents and build particle board furniture on your day off, and that's why you're trouble."
I couldn't square the circle she'd drawn for me. I was missing something here. "Try the chocolate," I ordered, pushing the cup closer to her. "Then explain why any of the things you just said are problematic."
She reached for the cup of chocolate ice cream and passed the black raspberry to me. "Don't you want to talk about sports?"
I narrowed my eyes at Stella, frowning. "I'm sorry, what?"
Still focused on the chocolate, she said, "I can talk about sports. I can tell you about the players I've met and the games I've seen. I can talk about coaches and stadiums and unusual team rituals and the best place to get a beer in dry counties in the South. I have thoughts on pro football and the changes we're going to see over the next decade as well as some of baseball's more asinine rules and reasons why women's basketball isn't getting the attention it deserves despite being the best game around." She set the cup down and looked up at me. "I can talk about all these things. We don't have to do the personal details and heavy emotional stuff. We don't have to do any of this."
I slipped my palms down the outside of her legs, pausing at her ankles. As far as talocrural joints went, hers were lovely. "Would you like to hear about the hearts or lungs I've fixed? I have thousands of photos of them on my phone. I can tell a damn good surgery story. Or I can talk about the hospitals I've worked in or the ones I've visited to observe or instruct."
Stella glanced out the window at the passing cars on Charles Street. "I think your profession is crazy impressive and I can't imagine how hard you've worked to reach this level in your field," she said, her words tipping into that serene tone I'd come to think of as her publicist voice. I wasn't sure whether she lapsed into it consciously or it had become as natural as a second native tongue. But it was clear she did it when she needed to remedy something. Yesterday it was to determine whether I was the creepy stalker I seemed to be. Last night it was putting McKendrick in his place. And now she was juggling the off-topic balls I'd thrown at her.
