But I was sure he and everything we’d done would replay enough in my head to stay fresh for a long while.
“I’m forty-two, so you’re close. And you’re thirty-three.” He lay next to me on the bed, propping his elbow onto the mattress and resting his head on his hand. After all the sex I’d had with this guy, and the ache between my legs from sudden overuse of my usually neglected lady parts, the sexy position he was in, combined with the playful gleam in his eye, still had me up for a lot more.
This really was a bitch.
“How did you know that?”
“I did quick math in my head. You said you were twenty when your thirteen-year-old sister was born.”
“Ah, yes. Good for you for paying attention.”
Forty-two. How was a man like this still single?
He’d even said he had no one at home to worry about and had sounded a little sad over it.
“Do you have to sell your house when you go home?”
“I rented an apartment, so I just need to figure out how to break my lease. My ex-wife took the house, so I downsized when I went on my own,” he said, swiping another Danish from the plate between us.
Ex-wife. Divorced. That hadn’t come up last night. No intimate personal details, even though we’d been very intimate in other ways.
My instincts were skeptical enough to always doubt everyone, especially men, but it was odd how much I didn’t doubt that whatever Silas shared with me was true.
If he was leaving out anything that would upset me, I was fine with not knowing. I wanted to take the good feelings about him with me after I left his hotel room since I couldn’t take anything else.
“I haven’t had Danish for breakfast in a long time, probably since I was little.” I gulped the last bit of coffee as the sting from another memory twinged in my belly. “If my mother saw me eating anything sweet, when she was actually around, she’d tell me how I needed to watch what I ate because no one would look at me if I stayed this chubby.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed in rage. “What kind of mother says that?”
“The kind she was. A crappy one.” I shrugged with a sad sigh. “I’ve always been around this size,” I motioned down my body, still naked other than the sheet draped over my torso. “Even after I became an adult, she’d always say if I just lost a few pounds, maybe men would want to date me. That was the only real sort of guidance she tried to impart. Even when I was small and would be watching cartoons, she’d say, ‘Don’t you want to put down that cookie so that you can be skinny and pretty like a cartoon princess?’”
I hadn’t spoken about my mother taunting me over my weight in a long time. I was happy with how I looked, and my lackluster love life had nothing to do with the extra pounds and everything to do with the extra baggage she’d given me.
I lifted my gaze to Silas’s, his eyes still thinned to slits. The weirdest thing about last night was the moments like this. The transcendent sex was rare, yes, but I’d told him things that surprised me when they fell out of my mouth. I didn’t tell him my last name, but I’d confessed feelings that I wasn’t sure people who’d known me all my life were even aware of. I trusted Silas in ways I probably shouldn’t have for someone I’d only just met, but talking to him seemed more natural to me than to anyone I’d ever known.
My mother hadn’t given me a body complex. It was just another way of her showing how little I meant to her, and when my sister came along and she’d treated her the same way, it hadonly made me resent her more. I made sure to encourage Taylor every chance I got to try to turn it around, and watching her grow up a mostly happy kid was the best reward.
But even though I’d learned to mostly self-soothe at a young age, it was too late to turn off that nasty voice in my head that would taunt me at all my lowest moments.
“I can tell you with certainty that plenty of men wanted,want, to be with you. I think most guys are like me—we’d rather Jessica Rabbit than a cartoon princess,” he said, a sexy smile coasting across his lips as he slid his hand up my thigh. Tingles from his touch ran up and down my leg even through the sheets. “And please tell me you get that reference.”
“I do,” I said, a laugh escaping me. “Although I’m not sure I’m Jessica Rabbit. She had a killer body?—”
“And so do you. Trust me.” He jerked his head toward the damp corner of the bed.
I darted my eyes away from his , my cheeks flushing hot. I’d been uninhibited enough all night and this morning not to let all we’d done sink in, but now that the sun was turning the black sky outside the window a pale pink, the light of day was already killing my buzz.
Reality was creeping up on us, and although I’d expected it to, I still hated it.
I almost hadn’t taken today off from work. Something had told me to take the extra day, even though I tried to save all my paid time off for my sister. It felt like a gratuitous luxury, but maybe fate was prepping me for a slow reentry into real life, even though I’d only escaped it for less than twenty-four hours.
I swung my legs over the bed, steeling myself for ripping off the Band-Aid and forcing myself out of this hotel room. Had I ever done a true walk of shame? Where I’d have to wear last night’s clothes home because I’d spent an unplanned night somewhere else with someone?
Even when I’d had casual sex in my younger days, I couldn’t recall waking up in someone else’s bed, other than the times I’d stay with my best friend Auden after a night of drinking to make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit.
I’d kept men at arm’s length for as long as I could remember, yet I’d broken my own rules with a stranger.
I’d called last night a walk into an alternate universe, but really, I’d morphed into a different person. A person I wished I could be if this were another life on a different timeline.
