“Hmm. That—that’s not a bad solution,” I admitted. “That gives us time to get rings too.”
“We could drop the news the week school finishes for the summer. When we head to Vegas for that awards banquet. We’ll have a media circus on our hands and Stella might strangle me but she’ll have time to prep.”
I set the basket on a chair and crawled under the covers. After a moment, I asked, “You really want to do this with me?”
“I wouldn’t do it with anyone else.”
Warm pressure filled my chest and spread down to my belly. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t fake-marry anyone else either.” I heard him shift like he was stretching and then a pained grunt. “Did they push you too hard or is your conditioning that bad that you’re suffering from a few days of workouts?”
“I’m all right.” His tone suggested otherwise. “Long day, that’s all. I just need to soak in some boiling water.”
I nestled deeper into my blankets. “I’ll let you go.”
“Fuck no, you won’t.” I heard him moving around and then the rush of water. “Talk to me while I turn into stew. I need to hear about the makeup trial. Was there a winner?”
“We have some strong contenders though it’ll be a game-day decision.”
“Risky but I respect it.”
He hissed and I heard water lapping around him. It occurred to me that he was quite naked on the other end of this call and…I did not dislike that. “You never did stick with the planned plays.”
“Because I knew the play they wanted me to run wasn’t going to work against the defense read on the field,” he said.
“So sure of yourself,” I mused.
“Well…yeah,” he replied, a touch of hard-earned prerogative in his voice. “I know what I’m doing out there.”
I wanted to say something quick and quippy, but instead, I let out a sad sigh. “Grace is leaving. She got a new job for next year.”
“Shit,” he murmured. “Are you okay?”
“It doesn’t feel real yet. It probably won’t until the new school year starts up and I have to be nice to the stranger who takes over her classroom.” I brushed some hair away from my face. “But I don’t want to talk about it right now. My feelings are too messy.”
“I don’t care. Be messy.”
I was quiet for a moment, busy twisting the bedsheet around my finger and letting it go. “It just hurts, you know?”
“I do.” I heard the water shut off. “It sucks when people leave, even if they leave for valid reasons.”
“Yeah.” We didn’t say anything for a minute but the silence was comfortable. It was easy. I decided to shatter it with, “How’s the tub there? Designed for your oversized species?”
A surprised huff burst from him and then, “What?”
“I mean, I’m only asking because it’s not like you fit in the average bathtub. I’m just picturing those gangly limbs of yours packed in there while you sit in an inch of water.”
I heard water moving around him as if he’d scooped it up and let it splash over his body. His chest, probably. Even if it was a huge tub, he probably wouldn’t have room to sink all the way to his neck. Which meant—at this very moment—beads of water were rolling down the broad expanse of his chest, curving around the rise of his pecs and snaking between his abs toward?—
Oh.
Oh—no.
“It’s more than an inch,” he said. “But I think you already knew that.”
I ceased to exist.
The pulsing between my legs seemed to suggest I was very much alive but the rest of me was deceased. And my firstrealization in the afterlife was that flirting was new for us. We didn’t do this. There’d always been affection between us but this was something different.
And I liked it.
