“I sure don’t.”
“You’re telling me you don’t know the pizza-delivery-guy scenario,” Ben asked, incredulous.
“Oh, that,” I nodded sagely. “Yeah, of course.”
“And the porn stache, and sax music,” he added.
“Okay, maybe I know more than I realized,” I laughed.
It was odd that talking about antique dirty movies finally made me feel comfortable being alone with him. It put some distance between us and the Very Big Possibility looming in front of us. Orbetweenus, since we were now both stretched out on opposite sides of his bed.
But laughing about sex made it feel like whatever was simmering between us was our own trope. Two people who didn’t want to admit how badly they wanted each other, alone in a hotel room with nothing to do,ha-ha, let the bom-chicka-wow-wow commence.
And then there was the almost-kiss just a few hours before that we were both trying to ignore.
“Hotel bedspreads are gross,” Ben said. “We should take it off.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “That sounds like something someone would say in a porn.”
“Oh? So you think I’m trying to seduce you by mentioning dirty linens?”
“Areyou trying to seduce me?”
I blurted it out before I could stop myself, and my body went numb from the tidal wave of embarrassment.
“Yes,” he replied. “I mean, no. But only because of—”
“The agreement,” we finished in unison.
But... we were in the liminal space of a hotel room, during a snowstorm. A break in real life before I was back to regimented daily sameness. Maybe the rules didn’t apply here? I took a deep breath as an insane idea infiltrated my good girl brain.
I sat up and leaned against the headboard. “Is it possible to amend the agreement?”
Ben tipped his head. “Depends.”
It was out of character for me to eventhinkit let alone say the words out loud, so I forced myself to keep going.
“Let’s call it the Blizzard Clause.” I prepared for mortification and pushed on. “One night. You and me. Then we never discuss it again.”
Ben sat up slowly, his eyes wide from disbelief. “Quinn, hold on. We can’t—”
“Why not?” I demanded.
I was so desperate for him that I didn’t care that I was verging on begging him to sleep with me.
Ben looked adorably flummoxed. “Well, for all the reasons we’ve talked about. Focus. Distraction. Goals.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling like I was an attorney about to give my closing argument. I crossed my legs on the bed. “I hear you. However, we already have an agreement in place that we’re doing a fine job honoring. True or false?”
“True, I guess?” Ben answered slowly.
“Exactly. Which means that if we were to introduce an amendment to it we wouldn’t have a problem honoring it as well.”
He frowned at me. “That’s sort of a leap of logic. And there’s no way I want to put anything in jeopardy, Quinn.”
“Oh my god, Ben!” I smacked the bed. “Don’t gatekeep sex!”
He laughed at me, which made me even more determined to prove my point.
