“You’re playing this game wrong.”
He crumples the foil wrapper from his calzone into a ball and stuffs it into a bag. “Sorry. These’re the answers you’re getting, I’m afraid. You wanna go back to my place for a while? I’ve got a cheesecake in the fridge I know you’ll love.”
“Ah.” I twist the hem of my dress into my lap, fiddling nervously. “Maybe another time. It’s getting late.”
As we drive back to my house, I squeeze whatever juice I can manage out of our few remaining minutes left. “What are your nights like? What are you going to do when you go home?”
“Think about you.”
“Okay, but what are you going todo?”
“Lie on my couch and think about you.”
“Alex. I’m talking activities.”
“Some of the thinking will take place in the shower. I will be thinking about you strenuously there.”
I’m exasperated. “Alexander!”
“Romina!” he returns happily.
“You’re talking about me. I want to hear about you. Talk about Alex.”
His grin dissolves as he stares at me. Weeks ago, his eyes were intense, guarded whenever they landed on me. Now, they’re wide-open, radiating perfect contentment. His entire body language has unwound, the tightness of his muscles, spilling from straight lines into easy curves, not a care in the world. The countenance of a man who thinks he’s manifested exactly what he wanted.
“Iamtalking about myself.”
“No, you’re not. Come on, there’s so much I don’t know. I wanna know it all.”
He leans back, scrubbing a hand over his hair. Snaps the seatbelt that crosses his chest. “Well, shit, you already do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t? How so? You know me. You know how to make me laugh, how to get on my nerves, how to bring me out of my head and into my body. How to makemefun, which I don’t think I usually am—that’s a side of me you bring out. I likeplayingwith you. I can get kinda tense sometimes, and you loosen me up like nothing else. You make me feel... lighter.” He parks his truck on the curb in front of my shop, unfolds the playlist from his pocket. Jots down whatever song is softly playing from the radio. Then he climbs out and walks me around the alley to the back door.
“I moved to Oreton,” he continues, “because it hurt to breathe,being here, seeing all the places we’d been together, driving by those memories, seeing an imaginary younger me and a younger you at every turn. It’s only bearable now because I badly want to make more memories with you rather than run from the ones that bleed.”
He takes the key from my stiff hand and unlocks my door. I cannot seem to form a reply.
“You want to know what’s going on with me? Then start thinking about Romina some more, because that’s all I’m able to do. I can’t talk about me without talking about you.”
“Oh,” I say, almost silently. You could knock me over with a whistle.
“Yeah. So you can go on and think aboutthat.”
I glance at my door, then back at Alex, and it’s an electric shock.Every time. Every time I look at his face, I’m startled by a tug that begins in my throat, branching to my heart, my tingling fingertips, between my legs, to the soles of my feet. Even if we’ve been together for hours, all it takes is for me to move my attention away for a split second, then I meet his eyes again and it’s like being slammed up against a wall.
On impulse, I take his face in my hands and kiss him. Hard.
He reacts instantly, gathering me up in his arms. My body seeks him out, curving to fit his. Eyes closed, pulse thrumming, his body heat flaring over me, everything else in the world falls to the void. He’s so wonderful that it hurts. Ithurts. Emotions likes these aren’t sustainable. They’re going to kill me.
When I let him go, he moves away slowly, breathing labored. I don’t have to wonder if he feels that electric shock, too, because I see it burst behind his eyes every time I smile.
“You can think aboutthat,” I say. His eyebrows raise, an astonished, crooked grin unfurling.
He’s halfway to his truck when I call his name.
He turns. His profile glows under the streetlight.
