“I thought you were someone with a lot more life experience.”
“News flash, my friend. Some of us pack more life experience into every day than other people have to.”
We’ve never talked about where we come from. Just where we are. But the little she’s said on top of what she doesn’t say is cluing me in to the fact that there’s likely a reason she’s never talked about where she used to live or what she used to do.
“And even if we don’t,” she adds, “age is just a number. It’s only a fraction of who we are.”
That sound?
That’s not wind. It’s not trees groaning under the weight of the snow outside. It’s not either of our hearts beating or the fire crackling.
It’s the sound of my brain catching up to the fact that she’s telling me I’m not too old for her.
It’s the sound of my cock catching up to the hint that she might be interested in me. “You don’t care how old I am?”
“The second time we were both at your house at the same time, you had a party where you did shots off an ice luge and jumped into your pool with all of your clothes on. I think it’s safe to say I don’t look at you and think you’re bound for the nursing home next week.”
I snort out a soft laugh. “I forgot about that.”
“Because you’re old.”
“Hey.”
She cackles.
It’s fucking delightful.
“I was trying to distract myself from following you around the party,” I admit.
I shouldn’t.
This is going nowhere.
But we’re stuck. It’s warm in front of the fire. And she’s so damn pretty with her hair down—brown now, what she insists is nearly her natural color—her face free of makeup, wrapped in loungewear.
It feels like home here.
Like someplace I could spend every day and never get tired of it.
She pulls her legs up to her chest and lays her head on them, still wrapped in her quilt, watching me.
“I wrote ‘Forget Christmas’ about you,” she whispers.
No.
No fucking way.
I scratch my chest, unable to reach where it’s actually itching deep inside, under my breastbone, approximately where my heart is located.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did. I didn’t want to do a Christmas album. I didn’t want to record twelve fucking songs about a holiday that’s given me nothing but bad memories. So I asked myself what would make me happy, and your face popped into my head. Because you’re my friend. And you’re hot. And I just…wrote it like you made Christmas better.”
“Aspen.”
“The day you knocked on the pool house door and the dishwasher had just exploded—you didn’t yell at me. I was sure you’d yell at me, and I was ready to yell right back, but you didn’t blame me.”
“You looked really good wet.”
