A slurp, and then a sort of…smacking noise.
He turned his head, the briefest look over his shoulder that he could manage, but if he was being honest, probably not briefenough. Probably one second past polite, not that he had any real sense of what was polite anymore.
In his defense, this was certainly not part of any of his practice runs.
Two people who’d put themselves on the same side of their small table. Their woven chairs pressed tight together, their plates cleared or perhaps not yet come, their wineglasses empty and clearly long forgotten.
So that they could, apparently, focus fully on sealing their mouths as tightly together as they had their chairs.
Except for those brief, head-slanting half seconds where they…
Holyshit, that was so much of a stranger’s tongue he was seeing.
He looked back at Layla. This time, her eyes weren’t on him—they were over his shoulder, watching the couple kiss.
And kiss, and kiss, and kiss. He could tell by the slurping and smacking that it was still going. It was, admittedly, not the best sound to be party to, but even he could tell when two people were lost to themselves—when the feeling was too good for a thing like an accidental sound to matter.
He maybe heard a moan, and that’s when Layla’s gaze returned to him, her cheeks pinker now, the whole bare-skinned V made by her black top a delicate, blushing pink.
It was the slowest, softest way he’d ever been made to feel warm.
The first time in forever that he wasn’t worrying while someone looked at him.
The first time a phantom sensation in his lips wasn’t a pain signal.
Abruptly, she blinked and said, “We should go,” shoving backfrom the table and starting to stand when she was still on the wordgo, clearly not making much of a suggestion. Most times, when he’d seen Layla move, he noticed howcarefulshe was, how graceful and deliberate—the two notable exceptions being that one startled moment on the boat last night, and the stuttering step she’d taken into him for their dance today.
Both times, because of the ex showing up.
His eyes followed her as she rose: her head tipped down, her hair swooping forward, as though she’d commanded it to shield her from seeing any more. For a second, her hands fluttered uselessly—like she was looking for a coat she didn’t have, like she forgot how to pick up the purse that she did.
He followed her slowly. A punishment he couldn’t even admit to himself he was enacting on her—for taking away that warmth, for his lips still tingling pointlessly. When he stood, pivoting slightly to push his chair in, he couldn’t help but catch sight of the couple again: still at it. Older than he might have thought, fairly or not: the woman’s hair streaked with gray, the man wearing wire-rimmed glasses that didn’t have a chance of staying on straight with all that slanting, their clothes bland and casual. Not French, he suspected, but what did he fucking know after only a couple of days. Wedding rings on them both, plain yellow gold.
He thought,Sorry for staring, not that they seemed to notice, and turned back to catch up to Layla, to the long line of her back retreating from this restaurant.
The warmth in him was something else now. A familiar, frustrated heat: the way he felt when he saw her kneeling on that airplane floor. The way he felt when she opened her hotel room door to him. When she stood up from a table to save a sick woman she had every reason to stay away from.
Out on the street—her street—she turned to the left. Startedwalking, back the way they’d come, not waiting for him. Not even, maybe, remembering he was fucking there.
Erasing the memory of him from this night.
“Is that what you did?” he said.
Called it to her, practically, since she was steps ahead.
She didn’t stop.
So he called to her again. Didn’t care who heard. Who saw.
“Did you do that with him?”
That did it. She stilled, her spine straight, but he thought her shoulders rose in a steadying breath.
Don’t fucking do that, he thought.Don’t steady yourself for me.
“Is that how you were,” he continued, “when you were here on your honeymoon?”
She whirled on him then, quick enough that he took a step forward, in case she wasn’t as steady in those heels as she looked. In case the deep breath hadn’t worked.
