As I shift my hips, the comforter rustles, and the noise snaps me back into reality.
What just happened?
The gin must be getting to me, or the unexpected apology, or maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t been in the proximity of an objectively attractive male body attached to an objectively smart and, accordingly attractive, brain in a long time.
Whatever the reason, my synapses seem to be going haywire.
Lewis lowers my hand onto the empty square of comforter between us, runs his fingers over my knuckles once, and then, eyes flashing at the darkened window, says, “I think it’s stopped raining,” as if we’re in the midst of a regular conversation and not at the tail end of a strangely intimate moment that colleagues, even if they’re in a fake relationship, shouldn’t be having.
His touch echoes against my skin. My insides are molten with the memory of his gaze, and now the room feels even smaller than when we entered it, like a tiny little shoebox that is too small to allow me the arm’s length at which I like to keep him, apology or not.
I have no clue how to define what just happened, which is why I need to get out of here. Now. I surge from the bed and pace across the room where, to my relief, the rain has indeed stopped drumming against the window.
“I should go,” I announce, rummaging through my bag for my phone.
“Sure. Should I order you a car?”
“Already on it.” My thumb flies over the screen, and I’m glad for the excuse to avoid looking at him. “It’ll be here in a few minutes.” I keep my head down as Lewis slides his legs over the edge of the bed, his sweatpants riding up to reveal abare ankle, and dear god, I need distance to talk some sense into my hormonal brain. “You don’t have to walk me downstairs,” I rush to say, my voice panicked.
“I—”
“Please.”
I must sound desperate enough, or maybe he notes my choppy movements as I pull on my sneakers, still wet from the rain, because he stops insisting and watches me instead as I tie the laces. “You know, it wasn’t a joke.”
My head whips up. “What?” I swear I can feel the beat of my heart against my vocal cords. What just happened didn’t feel like a joke to me, either, but I’d still rather not talk about it.
Lewis clears his throat but pauses long enough for me to grab my purse and the bag with my wet clothes. When I straighten, he looks down at his feet. His eyebrows slot toward each other. “The stuff about studying business and playing golf.”
Back in the elevator, the same generic jazz music that was playing when we walked into the hotel washes over me, but I know something monumental has changed since Lewis and I rode up to his room together.
Now, I’m wearing his clothes, wrapped up in his scent.
Now, I’m relieved, intrigued, and confused where the shift we’ve undergone tonight is going to take us.
Chapter Eleven
When I walk up Broadway the next morning, Lewis is waiting in front of the Korean grocery store and drinking his takeaway coffee with the devoted attention of someone who hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in years. A pair of sunglasses sits in the cushion of his hair, and he’s paired his tan chinos with a white-and-blue-striped shirt, the collar crisp and, to no one’s surprise, the top two buttons undone.
Does he even know about the existence of those two buttons?
I spot him before he notices me, and as I approach, my brain slides right back into the spiral it started last night, when I shot him a simpleI got home okaytext and didn’t hear back. All night, I’d gone back and forth over the events of the evening. It’d felt so good to finally vent my anger at him, hear his apology, and understand he’d wanted things to go differently, too. I know all of this should be more important than what happened after, but it was the pressure of Lewis’s lips and the nip of his teeth that burned in my memory and kept me tossing and turning in bed until early morning.
Why did he do it?
And why did I like it?
“Frances,” Lewis calls and waves, though at this point I’m already standing in front of him. It’s as if his limbs are operating at a ten-second lag. “Hi.”
I switch my bag to my other shoulder. “Hi,” I echo, and he leans forward as if to kiss my cheek, and I stretch out my hand to hug his shoulders, but in the end, we just hover around each other.
“Uh,” I say, wondering if smooth Lewis, who ate straight out of my hands yesterday, was a figment of a few misfiring neurons.
Lewis clears his throat and blushes. I resort to plucking his coffee out of his hands, if only to end this horrible moment, but he shifts back, sending my fingertips to brush against his stomach. At the contact, my belly loops into a somersault.
“Uh,” I repeat. Believe it or not, I have a PhD.
Our awkward dance doesn’t end there. Lewis tries to pick something up from the floor but fails to account for how closely we stand together, and his chin hits my shoulder, while his nose skirts over my skin in the V of my silk blouse.
