She shrugged. “I don’t know. Dinner? Texting? Talking frequently.”
“We met, what? Two? Two and a half months ago?” he asked.
She nodded and pressed her lips tightly together. She looked like she was bracing for bad news.
“About two months or so.”
“So this is the longest relationship you’ve ever had?”
“Abby, you are the only adult relationship I’ve ever had.”
“I don’t— But you— You’ve been with other women, right?”
His lips twitched. “I didn’t take a vow of celibacy—I just swore off relationships.”
“How does that even work? You find some random woman whenever and then never see her again?”
“I wasn’t hiring sex workers, if that’s what you’re asking.” He couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped.
Abby smacked him on the chest. “Stop laughing. I’m serious.”
He cleared his throat and tried for a serious face. “Sorry.”
“I’m trying to understand how it worked.”
How had it worked? His last hookup had been a good six months before he met Abby. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“I don’t know. There wasn’t ever any plan,” he said. “I’d meet a woman, we’d hook up with the mutual understanding that it was just sex. The longest…arrangement I had was around three months.”
“What happened?” she asked.
Tinker shrugged. “She started trying to make plans and hinting she wanted more than just sex. I told her it wasn’t working anymore.”
The little line between her brows appeared. “Were you in an arrangement when you asked me out?”
He shook his head. “No. Hadn’t been for a while.”
“Why did you ask me out if that’s not what you normally do?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
He said it before thinking, but with the look of hurt that flashed across her face, he realized how it sounded. Tilting her chin up, he kissed her softly.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, but I really don’t know what made me ask you out. Your friend Lindsey made that joke about carrying your books home, and I couldn’t get the image out of my head. I showed back up at the school and told myself I’d give it fifteen minutes. If you came out, I’d ask you out. If you didn’t…” He shrugged.
“What?”
He smiled, finally admitting the truth to himself. “I’d have waited another fifteen minutes.”
Her smile was worth the admission. “That’s really sweet.”
“I will deny everything if you ever mention it to anyone I work with. I have a reputation to protect.”
“What reputation is that?”
“Stoic loner.”
The corner of her eyebrow went up.
