“Okay.” He gently slid away from me. “Maybe we can take it slow.”
“Slow,” I repeated. That hadn’t felt slow.
“A contained explosion.”
“How do those work?”
“The hell if I know. It sounds good in theory, though, right?”
I understood him too well, for the first time. The problem had never been whether he liked me. It had been that this was inevitably going to end.
“We can take it slow.” My voice sounded faint. He reached over and laced his fingers through mine, then squeezed my hand. I leaned toward him to take another kiss, this timebecause I wanted one, and it caused a chain reaction to another, and another, and another…
He finally caught his breath, head against my shoulder, and then stood up, running a hand through his hair and facing away from me. “Okay, well I brought you the improv books…”
“You did.”
“I did,” he repeated. “And you have work today.”
“I appreciate your respect for the demands of capitalism.”
He gave a little laugh and then headed toward the door. I walked after him. He put one hand on the handle and then took it off and put it around my waist and kissed me again. His whole body was flush against mine, glowing with heat. One hand traced down my arm like a slow-moving electric current. When the kiss finally tapered off, he smiled a little.
“That counts as taking it slow, right?”
“Snail’s pace.”
“Perfect.”
He gave me a warm look and then slipped outside, and I stood there, trying to breathe normally, one hand pressed against the closed door for support. My legs were about to collapse beneath me.
Paul was absolutely right. That was not how I had expected that conversation to go.
He calledme that evening a little a little after 7:30.
“Hey, it’s Paul.”
“I know.” My voice sounded higher pitched than normal, like I was sixteen again, twisting my fingers through the phone cord in my mother’s kitchen.
“I wanted to call you after work, but it turns out that I’m dealing with some stuff for my mother tonight. She started sometrouble with the neighbors and I’m trying to diffuse it, but do you have any time this weekend?”
“Yeah, I think so. I can probably squeeze you in between the goat yoga and laser tag.”
I heard him laugh. “Great. Shuffle around the schedule and see what you can do.”
“Or you could come over tonight, after you finish the stuff with your mother.”
“Yeah, no, I’m thinking a proper date might actually be nice. So.” There was a brief pause. “I’m thinking we hang out, we take things slow. And hopefully that means if you end up having to ditch me the next day to head back to the States, it’ll be easier. Because I’m not very good at…” He muttered something.
“Was that casual texts? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that, Paul, if you could just repeat…”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
“I didn’t know nice Canadian boys had casual sex. I thought you hooked up one time and then asked her to marry you and live on the maple sugar ranch.”
“Did you say maple sugar ranch? A ranch?”
“You know. A big open space with trees.”
