Not protesting the unfairness of it all. Just... sharing his feelings with me. As if I were somehow worthy of his confidence.
“There’s prejudice here, too.” Like he needed me to point that out. My hot face got hotter.
“Yes,” he said simply. “But my roots are here, too. My boys are here.”
His sons, I remembered, living with their mother near Fort Bragg.
I wondered how he’d met his ex-wife. How long had they been together? When did they get divorced? I wanted to know him better, beyond the bare facts of a Google search or the speculation in the kitchen. What was he looking for? But we didn’t have the kind of relationship that I could ask.
We ran to the rail yards and back, a mile, a mile and a half, occasionally dropping into single file to pass a mother with a stroller, a tourist with a camera, an old couple holding hands. Always drawing level again, our shoulders rubbing, bumping companionably, the rasp of our breathing like a conversation without words. The sun painted a broad, broken swath of light across the river, splashing the tops of the towers with gold. Half a mile to go. Almost home.
I picked up my pace, pushing myself. Challenging him. Our rhythm changed. Our running transformed to something raw and alive, our breathing hard and ragged, our muscles hot and loose. My world expanded and contracted to the rush of my blood and the thud of our footsteps. It was exhilarating, like flying or swimming or sex.
When we reached the access stairs to the street, I pulled up, panting, perspiring, high on endorphins. Chef stopped beside me, radiating heat, his chest laboring in and out. I was laughing. He was not. Sweat trickled in the crease of his ear, under the curve of his jaw. I’d never minded sweat as a general thing. The body’s coolant and all that. But now I wanted to lick his neck.
So this is lust,my mind said brightly. Good to know. Pay attention to how it feels so you can write about it someday.
Our eyes met.
I was drenched, my heart pounding. “Do you want to come to my place?”
That green gaze sharpened, bright as a broken bottle, all his fierceconcentration focused now on me. “For breakfast,” he said. Asking a question? Or setting a boundary?
My lungs burned. I could barely breathe. I’d never invested much energy in emotional entanglements. Relationships were messy. Demanding. Distracting. I tugged on my ponytail. “If that’s what you want.”
“What do you want?” he asked evenly.
Obviously he wasn’t seized by a desire to drag me back to my place and rip off my clothes. Maybe he was afraid I’d accuse him of sexual harassment. Or maybe he had more self-control, more consideration, than any boy I’d ever been with.
My heart jerked.
He waited. Leaving the choice to me. Making my decision that much harder. That much easier.
“You have to follow your heart,”my mother had said at Thanksgiving. “No matter where it leads.”She’d been referring to Beth’s audition, obviously, not my sex life. But she could have been talking about my move to New York. About taking a risk, about making a choice, about going for what you wanted with everything you had, even if you failed.
Chef Eric Bhaer was a risk. A bite of life I wanted desperately to take.
“I want you to come home with me,” I said.
His smile—warm, approving, intimate as a kiss—started in his eyes. “I am hungry.” His smile deepened mischievously. “Not for breakfast.”
I led the way quickly back to my apartment, afraid to look at him in case he disappeared. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, and why I was even thinking about that now, I did not know. But he kept up with me, the way he had on the High Line. When we stopped to cross the street at the light, he took my hand. Startled, I glanced at him. Sex was one thing. Holding hands—in public, too—was something else, another level of intimacy, more Meg’s thing than mine.
But his big, rough chef’s hand felt so good holding mine. I held on, at least until we reached my building.
Climbing the steps to my apartment, I was aware of him behind me.Not too close, just... There, muscled and sure, moving lightly, confidently up the stairs. I could feel his eyes on my butt. Or maybe that was my imagination.
I unlocked the door, squeezing to one side to let him enter.
Ashmeeta and I had chosen to sacrifice space for location, the way you do in New York. Even so, our studio apartment had always been big enough for the two of us. She’d had a bed by the window; I slept on a mattress on the platform above. Now that she was gone, I’d turned the alcove where her bed used to be into a space for my desk.
My desk.I threw a panicked glance at my laptop. Closed, thank you, Jesus.
Chef turned slowly in the center of my... Well, not a living room, exactly. One chair, two lamps, shelves crammed with books, cooking supplies, and photos from home. He was so much larger than Ashmeeta. Like a fire burning in the middle of the room, sucking up all the available oxygen.
What was I thinking, inviting him here? Into my space.
What was I supposed to say?Want to climb a ladder and have sex?
