“Just curious to see what it looks like from above,” she says.
“You bet.” He nods. “We can go do that now, if you’d like.”
“What a good idea,” she says, grinning and raising her eyebrows lasciviously when Hudson isn’t looking.
We say goodbye to Cam and walk across the street. Hudson’s place is as clean and sleek as I imagined it would be, but there are touches of warmth. Framed photos of vacations with his family. A knitted blanket thrown over the back of his brown leather couch. “My nana,” he explains when I mention it.
Hudson and I stand at the floor-to-ceiling living room window, and he does as Camryn’s asked.
When he’s finished he sends me the photos, then slides the phone into his back pocket.
“Thanks for doing that for her,” I say, hyperaware of the way the late afternoon sun burnishes his face, making him even more handsome. “I should get going.”
But I don’t move. Neither does he.
“Avery.” The low volume paired with the husky way he says my name makes me take another step into him.
He palms one side of my head and grips my hip, gently tugging me flush against him. He leans down just a little more, until his lips brush mine. “Do you want to stay?”
I nod against him, needing not a moment to consider. I want to be held, kissed, to feel like a woman again. Is that so wrong?
I’ve imagined this a hundred times,after Gabriel, what this might be like with another man. In those instances, I felt nothing but guilt for daring to imagine myself with someone else.
And so, I wait for the guilt. It does not arrive.
Not when Hudson leads me by the hand into his bedroom.
Not even a few hours later, when he orders pizza for us, and we eat in his bed, and he asks me if I want to stay the night.
The guilt finally comes the next morning, and it has nothing to do with Gabriel. I feel guilty over the absence of guilt. Over what that might mean.
Am I over Gabriel?
No.
Never.A person doesn’t get over something,someone, like that.
But I understand this is normal. Natural. Stagnation is suffocating after a while. I need to press on.
Hudson leaves for work wearing crisp navy slacks and a silk-blend shirt. He kisses me where I lie in his bed, and asks if I’m free for dinner. We agree on a place, then he tells me to turn the bottom lock on my way out.
I dress slowly, sore in places I forgot existed. I stop at Gem for coffee, knowing my sister will be there. Knowing she will see me in yesterday’s clothes.
“You’re welcome,” Cam says when she spots me.
I laugh, shaking my head as I wait for her to make my usual. “It’s like you dabble in witchcraft.”
She scoffs. “Hardly. I could smell the attraction coming off both of you. You just needed a push.” She hands me the paper cup. “Was it good?”
I wrap my hands around the warm cup and sip for an extra moment, pausing to think about my answer. It wasn’t just the sex. Hudson and I laughed. We talked long into the night. We brushed pizza crumbs from his sheets and had sex a second time. “Yes,” I finally answer. “It was really, really good.”
Cam stands on the other side of the slim counter, palms pressed on the quartz. “Was it weird?”
“No. And that’s the weirdest part of all.”
She smiles proudly. “You needed this. You needed to see that moving on doesn’t have to be monumental. It doesn’t have to be moving boxes and buying houses. It can be small steps, too.”
I touch her hand. “Does Dani know how dangerous of a woman you can be?”
