“West.” Reluctantly, he faces me again, still grimacing. I shuffle out of my chair until I’m in his lap, straddling him. He watches warily as I rest my hands on the back of his chair, bracketing him in so he has nowhere to look but at me. “As I learned last night, you are very good with your words when you want to be. Use them. Tell me what just happened.”
He releases a frustrated sigh. “It’s nothing. I’m being unrealistic.”
“About what?”
His jaw clenches as he searches my face. A moment later, the tension bleeds from him. He kisses my forehead, then tilts my chin with his finger. “If you think there’s a chance in hell that I’d have you for a week without trying to impress you, I worry thatDroughtdidn’t land the way I intended.”
I tilt my head in question.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he promises as his hand smooths a path up my spine. I push off the chair, but West grabs my waist, trapping me against him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“You told me to get dressed,” I remind him as he shifts my hips closer to his, lining my center up against him in a way that makes my breath hitch. I brace my hands on his shoulders as my eyes flutter closed.
“Did I?” he asks as he sucks the skin below my ear. I nod breathlessly against his mouth. “You have to get undressed in order to get dressed. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.” He runs his hands under my shirt and draws it over my head, leaving me naked in his lap.
West packs apicnic, and we hike Saguaro National Park, hopping over streams formed from the weekend rain and winding among the cacti. When he sees how giddy I am from the blue sky and the sun on my shoulders, he takes it upon himself to do a live reading of New York’s weather forecast. He sits me down on a large boulder, clears his throat, and delivershis line: “Forty degrees and rain for the rest of the week.” I suppress a shudder.
We stop for fruit slushies at Eegee’s after our hike, and the nostalgia sugars my blood as we pull the car over on Tucson’s Astro Trail and eat them lying in the bed of his truck with pillows and blankets. West tells me that the trail is named for its proximity to observatories, planetariums, and national parks. It’s designed for stargazing on clear, dark desert nights like this one. He positions me between his legs and pulls me back against his chest, and I enjoy the silence as we wait for the stars. By now most of the surface conversation has been scratched away, leaving us both with the understanding that we have bigger discussions in our future. I’m in no hurry to move out of the bubble we’re in now, however.
“Why did you think I was there to meet you at our spot on the first day of the festival?” I ask, slowly putting together that first conversation now that I have more context.
West removes a spoon from his blue raspberry–stained lips. “Just a thought I had,” he says cryptically as another pleasant quiet settles between us. “Do you have to work this week?” He drags his fingers deliciously through my hair.
“Hmm, not really. I should stop neglecting my inbox sooner or later. And I have emails to send, appointments to reschedule. It’ll only take a couple of hours.”
He nods. “Use the office. I’ll clear out a space for your things.”
“Don’t bother. I can send emails from anywhere.” I rarely work at a desk even at home. I write from my bed as often as not.
His chest tenses against my shoulder blades. In a blink, he’s relaxed again. “I’d like to take you on a date tomorrow.”
I lift his arms and wrap them around my middle as I fight an inevitable smile. “That can be arranged. Under one condition.”
“Name it.”
“I get to plan Wednesday.”
“You’re on, Darling.” I settle my head against his chest under a canopy of stars, and we watch the sky turn from purple to navy to black, my fingers tracing lightly over his forearms while his draw lazy swirls down my neck, across my thighs, and under my shirt.
“I haven’t seen stars like this in years,” I say, mesmerized by the glow above us.
“I thought that might be the case.”
“Thank you, West. I’ll miss this view when I’m back to freezing my ass off in the city.” I can’t remember the last time I felt so content. My brain is usually taken up by an endlessly repopulating list of things I should be doing.Drafting. Editing. Reading. Promo. Here, my mind is blissfully quiet, and the only thing that dampens my mood is the regret I already feel that this perfect, stolen week will have to end.
He motions between us. “Is there anything about our new situation that makes you nervous or unsure?”
I lift my chin and press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “Right now? No.” He hums lightly in response. “What about you?” I ask.
“Fuck yes.”
“What?”
“Next week,” he says bluntly, tiptoeing right to the edge of one of those big conversations.
I cinch his arms tighter around me, and we quietly watch the stars for another hour, neither of us daring to ruin the perfect moment.
When West knockson his own bedroom door the next evening, my nerves are out of control. I kicked him out after our joint shower so I could get ready without the distraction of his hands and his mouth and his body, and in sixty short minutes I became a wreck.How does one go on a date with the man they’ve been in love with for more than a decade?
