I was still on top of her—I recognized that in a vague corner of my brain. It didn’t occur to me to get off of her, for some reason. I would lament that later. Instead, I kept staring into her eyes and wondering whether, if I kissed her again, it would feel the same as it had more than a week before. The energy between us was charged. It was as if we were both waiting for someone to throw a match on accelerant.
She was the one who finally grunted and shifted. “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but things are starting to hurt.”
Anxiety shot through me. “Should I call 911?”
“I think just getting off me so I’m not pressed into the pavement will work.”
“Oh.” Then it hit me what she’d said. “Oh!” I scrambled to get off her. In my haste, my fingers brushed against her torso. Okay, it was her breast, not her torso. That had me choking as I jerked my hand back. My movements were so hasty I toppled backward, away from her.
She burst out laughing when I hit the ground, though I hit hard enough I momentarily saw stars. I rested there, catching my breath, and only looked over when I heard her on the pavement.
She’d abandoned her bag and crawled over to me. The back of her shirt was dirty from being on the ground, but otherwise, she looked none the worse for wear. Her eyes glittered with delight. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure.
Geez, she was really beautiful. How had I not noticed that when we’d first met? All I could think about back then was howevil she was. She’d ruined my life. I wanted to blame her for everything that had gone wrong.
It hadn’t been her fault. Everything that had gone amiss that day was on me. All I’d had to do was laugh it off. I’d been too nervous for that, too worked up about making sure people saw me as an important figure on that panel. I’d done everything wrong.
Sure, she wasn’t perfect. She could have apologized. Instead, she made jokes to lighten the mood. I should have taken my cues from her back then. Things might not have spiraled if I hadn’t gotten lost in my head.
How different would things have been if I hadn’t freaked out?
“Are you okay?” she asked as she loomed over me.
I nodded, fighting the urge to lift my finger and touch her cheek. I knew from the kiss outside Vic’s that her skin was ridiculously soft. But it wasn’t my place to touch her. We weren’t dating. Were we even friends? At best, I could say we were friendly.
“I’m fine,” I assured her.
She held out her hand. “Can you sit up? Did you hit your head?”
I took her hand but only because I wanted to touch her and feel that tingle. She pulled me to a sitting position and studied my features.
“You didn’t hit your head, did you?” she asked softly.
“No.”
We were close. Not as close as the night we kissed, but she was right there, and I was having trouble not imagining a life where this happened and she would kiss it and make it better. In that version of my life, we could joke about it forever—something we still might do but not in the same way—and itwould always result in breathy kisses and maybe ice cream in bed.
It was weird, but when I looked at her, I imagined doing mundane things together—going to the market, sharing a cart to this exact place so we could sit at separate tables and write. It would be a joint activity but one where we could both still be productive. My heart hurt at the idea of us packing up our iPads and heading out for ice cream on the way home. A home we shared.
I had to shake my head to dislodge the onslaught of images threatening to have me flopping back down again. “We should be on the comedy circuit,” I said.
Her eyes were as soft as her mouth as she regarded me, and for a split second, I wondered if she thought about the same things I did when we were together. Heck, I’d started thinking about these things even when we were apart. When I wasn’t writing, she was the only thing I could think about. It was odd yet somehow wonderful.
I just wished I knew how she felt about the situation. Nothing she’d said suggested she looked at me differently from the way she had when we’d first crossed paths again weeks before. She was friendly enough. We’d had amazing conversations. She only flirted inadvertently and stopped when she realized what she was doing. I very much doubted she was dreaming about going to the grocery store with me so we could get the ingredients for a twilight barbecue. I was making all of this up in my mind. I needed to stop.
“I am really sorry,” I said, meaning every word. “I’ve never been all that coordinated.”
“You don’t say?” she drawled, grinning. “And here I thought you had a choice between being a professional tennis player and an author.”
That made me laugh. Then I thought about it. “Tennis player?”
She nodded. “I have a weird thing about tennis. I find it fascinating as a sport.”
“Why?”
“Because the players are completely on their own. Well, unless they’re playing doubles, which I don’t watch. I do watch Grand Slam finals all the time, for both men and women.”
“Because the players are on their own?” I was desperately trying to understand how her mind worked.
