“Really?” I’m pretty sure he’s making this up to mess with me.
He nods. “Yeah.”
“Did mine?”
He hesitates. “Not really, no.”
“Well, what does that mean?” He looks so serious that I’m a little alarmed. Surely he’s not about to diagnose me with some awful disease just because my toes didn’t point down when he scratched my foot.
“I don’t want to worry you, Ally,” he says gravely, “but it means you’re ticklish as hell.”
It takes me a moment to realize he is just messing with me, but when it does, I spring up and reach for him. “How about you, Drew Malone?” I ask. “Are you ticklish?” I go for his underarms, which, in my experience, are a particularly vulnerable spot.
But apparently he’s not susceptible to tickling. And he’s definitely not laughing.
“Ally, stop,” he says, looking pained. “Ally?—”
I look down and realize I’m straddling him, and I’m inches away from his crotch.
“I’m sorry.” I feel like my cheeks are on fire as I twist away from him and retreat to the other side of the couch.
“It was my fault,” he replies, before disappearing down the hall to his bedroom. When he comes back ten minutes later, he avoids the couch and takes his laptop to the wing chair by the window. There’s no more commentary about the TV show, or about anything else. And half an hour later, he says good night and disappears into his bedroom.
EIGHTEEN
DREW
On Wednesday morning, Luke Carlton knocks on my office door.
“Hey, Drew,” he says. “Got a minute?”
“Sure.” It’s actually a welcome interruption, since I’m not making much progress on the research paper I’m supposed to be writing.
Luke closes the door and sits down on the other side of my desk. “So,” he says with a grin. “I heard you’re dating your assistant?”
I almost ask where he heard it, but I realize it doesn’t matter. After all, we wanted the news to spread so it wouldn’t seem like we were hiding a dirty secret.
“My former assistant,” I clarify. “She works for Heather Larkin now.”
“So it’s true?”
“Yeah,” I say, as though there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about this. “Ally and I are dating.”
“And Ally’s the woman you were getting coffee with last week?” Luke asks.
“Yep.”
Luke raises an eyebrow. “Right. Well done.”
It’s all I can do not to laugh. I’m pretty sure if Luke knew the real story, he wouldn’t think I’d done well at all. So far, I’ve coerced Ally into a pretend relationship, then convinced her to move in with me. And now I have a problem, since I promised I wouldn’t touch her but I can’t control my reaction to her.
But after I’d lied to the Tates, I’m not sure what I could have done differently. Once I’d seen the inside of Ally’s apartment and met her landlord, there was really no alternative.
And I can justify my other problematic decisions, too. Like when she asked me to lend her a t-shirt to sleep in, what could I say?
But now that I’ve seen her in my shirt, I can’t get the vision out of my head.
To make things worse, Ally hasn’t given the shirt back. I’ve tried to tell myself she’s probably not wearing it anymore. She’s got all her own clothes now, so she’s probably wearing pajamas, but who knows? She might still be sleeping in my shirt.
