“Huddy, by everyone else.” He gazes at me through those long lashes. “By you? Hudson.”
I feel his answer down deep, between my navel and a part of me that disappeared a while ago.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Avery.”
“Avery,” he repeats, his voice deepening.
Please do not say A Very.
He doesn’t.
Something happens to the air between us. Suddenly it’s heavy, thick, as if we’re in the south in the dead of summer. Hudson looks at my lips. I touch them automatically, gently pinching the lower between two fingers. His gaze lifts, and he focuses on my eyes.
The tele-doc says the word ‘rash’ and I want to throw Hudson’s scone at her.
Annoyance flickers across his face. “Do you want to get out of here?” He stumbles on those last two words, and I find it endearing.
I point at his full coffee, his open laptop. He looks to where I’m indicating. “I don’t care about any of that.”
I swallow, hardly able to believe what I’m about to say. What I’m about to do. “Then, yes.” I haven’t thought about another man since Gabriel, but it had to happen sometime, right? I wasn’t prepared for that sometime to be today, but I don’t think I’d ever be prepared, so…here we go.
I close my computer, tucking it back into my bag. Hudson does the same. I head for the small counter where the used dishes go, sliding my cup across the wood grain.
Hudson appears at my side. He’s taller than I would’ve guessed. I watch as he deposits his uneaten scone and full coffee beside my empty cup.
I turn to him and touch the sleeve of his soft sweatshirt. “My sister and her girlfriend own this place. The next time you’re here, tell them you know me, and I said your order is on me.”
He nods and opens his mouth to say something. Whatever it is, he changes his mind.
He leads the way out of Gem. Camryn must be somewhere nearby, because I feel holes burning into my back.
We walk out front, and Hudson motions to a restaurant nearby. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry.”
Hudson smiles. “Greek ok with you?”
I nod, and send a quick text to Camryn telling her where I’m going, then I silence my phone.
The food is good, and the company is better. Hudson tells me he works in commercial real estate. He’s training for a rim-to-rim Grand Canyon hike. He has a secret affinity for old western movies, and he’s named after the Hudson River because hisparents lived in Manhattan when he was conceived. Now they live across the river, in New Jersey. Hudson came out here for the sunshine and never went back.
There are sparks, and plenty of them. It’s not like it was with Gabriel, where the attraction was more like rapturous magnetism. Hudson’s fingertips graze the top of my hand while I talk about my dad and Cam. Something inside me awakens. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched.
We leave the restaurant, and Hudson points up at a newly constructed condominium building. It’s modern, with large glass windows and vines growing down the sides. “I live there.”
“Nice place.” I have to look up to talk to him. He has to look down to talk to me.
He says, “I’d like to see you again.”
We see each other three more times after that. A movie, another dinner, and a long drive to Green Haven in search of an antique dresser for his mother. He FaceTimes her while we’re in the crowded, musty store, and when Hudson trains the phone on me, I say, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Donahue.” Then he shows her the dresser he has found. I give him a wide-eyed look, and he winks back.
On our fourth date, we go back to Gem and I buy Hudson the coffee and scone he abandoned two weeks prior.
Cam comes over to meet Hudson. I’ve told her all about him, including how he’s kissed me at the end of each date, chastely on the lips. The frustration and desire I feel at his reticence reminds me of another time, and I do everything I can to forget that.
Hudson passes Cam’s test, laughing in the right way at the right time when she makes her irreverent remarks. When he tells her he lives in the new high-rise across the street and his living room window faces Gem, she asks him if he can take a few bird’s-eye pictures of the shop.
