He’s one to talk. At least I’m wearing clothes. The ripped jeans and old red college T-shirt I’m wearing did nothing to protect me from the blast of winter weather that arrived while I was gone. When I left last week, it was forty degrees warmer than it is now.
“I’ll make some coffee.”
My head darts up when he makes that announcement. Who offers to make a pot of coffee at two a.m. when they’re wearing nothing and their lover is probably waiting in her bedroom for another round?
My gaze skims over his smooth chest until it lands on the faux fur blanket he’s wrapped around his waist. His left hand is resting on his hip, the blanket’s edges bunched into his fist.
“I didn’t startle you, did I?” He looks down and into my eyes. “It’s dark in here. You probably didn’t even notice I was standing over there until I said your name.”
It’s not that dark.
He’s unaware that I was staring at him when I first walked in. That means I won’t have to awkwardly try and explain to my roommate why I was checking out her nude lover.
At least now he’s grabbed the blanket from where it’s usually placed over the back of the leather couch. I use that blanket to wrap around myself when I watch my favorite shows in the evening. Now, I’ll always think about the fact that it touched his naked body.
I shake that thought from my head. “I should get to bed. It’s been a long day for me.”
He nods. “I understand. There’s nothing better than sleeping in your own bed after a trip.”
I reach to pick up my suitcase before I head toward my bedroom. He’s wrong. The only thing better than sleeping in my bed after my trip to San Francisco would be sleeping next to him. Although, after seeing him naked, sleep would be the last thing I’d want to do.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Matilda,” he calls from behind me.
The pleasure is all mine. It’s technically all Lisa’s. She’s the one who gets to enjoy what I just saw.
With any luck, I won’t hear the two of them together. After the week I just had, the last thing I need is a reminder that there are men in the world who know how to a fuck a woman raw.
I have no doubt that the naked stranger in my living room is one of them.
CHAPTER TWO
Tilly
“Pay attention, Frannie,”I scold my identical twin sister as I adjust my phone in my hand until my face comes into full view of the camera. I hate video chatting, but it’s one of Frannie’s favorite things to do. She tells me she misses my face. I tell her to look in the mirror and she’ll see exactly what I look like. “I need to call Maya. Can we talk later?”
Frannie shakes her head from side-to-side. That sends her long brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. We may be twenty-five-years-old now and live on opposite sides of the country, but we still share the same hairstyle.
One visible difference between us is Frannie almost always has her blue eyes rimmed with a dark liner to make them pop. I opt for a sheer shadow and two layers of mascara.
It’s barely past the crack of dawn in San Francisco, but my twin already has her hair styled and her makeup applied, even though the most pressing thing on her schedule today consists of a visit to the zoo with her husband, two daughters, and our parents.
“I’m still upset that you left early.” Frannie takes a sip of coffee from herWorld’s Greatest Sistermug. It was a birthday gift from our older sister, Maya. I got one just like it, along with one of a matching pair of white T-shirts with the words ‘Happy Birthday to Two’printed across the chest in pink font. Frannie is wearing hers now. I stuffed mine into the bottom of my suitcase where I’ll leave it for eternity. “Why do you need to talk to her? Does it have to do with the reason you ditched us?”
I didn’t ditch. I took off because I’d felt completely out of place. Frannie married her high school sweetheart, Grant, before she finished college.
I was the odd woman out at our birthday dinner and my parents both made a point of mentioning it every chance they could.
There wasn’t an extra bed at Frannie and Grant’s place, so I ended up stuck on the sofa bed at my parents’ condo. Waking up each morning to weak coffee and a discussion on how to find a husband gets old after five days.
It didn’t help thatmyhigh school sweetheart and Grant’s friend, Boyd, dropped by Frannie’s house for a piece of birthday cake. My parents called it fate when they saw our hands touching. I called it an accident since it happened when I was handing him a slice of cake on a small dessert plate.
It’s not like I’m going to live the rest of my life single and alone. I have a few decades left to find my soul mate. I wish my parents could see that.
Since they can’t, I called the airline, switched my flight and left San Francisco with an excuse about needing to get back to my job as a vet assistant at Premier Pet Care.
Work is not part of my plan this week. I’m going to spend the rest of my time off pampering myself with bubble baths and window shopping.
“You’re zoning out, Tilly.” Frannie leans toward the screen of her tablet. “What’s going on? You left in a rush and it’s the middle of the morning there. If you needed to get back to work, why aren’t you at the clinic?”
