“What do you want to know?” The neck of his shirt dipped lower as he unbuttoned his cuffs and began winding up the sleeves over his forearms, drawing her eyes to both the agile movement of his hands and the flex of tendons beneath the skin. “I’ll tell you anything.”
“You told me you didn’t date.” She hesitated, cowed by his intensity and the curious intimacy of seeing his arms bared in public. When she finally dared to look in his eyes, his expression was as potent as the drink in her hand. “Do you know what you want out of a relationship?”
The old Nick would have rolled his eyes and told her that none of that would have mattered as long as he could provide, before parroting his father’s sexist bullshit. But the man across from her considered her question thoughtfully, shifting so the light caught on the watch at his wrist.
“I don’t want to be alone anymore. Coming home to an empty house year after year—it wears on you. I want to see the world but only if there’s someone to see it with me. I’m fine traveling alone but I don’t really want to. I like having someone to come home to. Someone to take care of.”
“Lots of people could give you that,” Jay whispered.
He leaned forward, covering her hand with his. “But they aren’t you.”
The world around her seemed to come to a juddering stop and Jay could have sworn that part of it broke off and shattered. In the silence that followed, she could hear the tick of his watch.
“I—” She broke off, struggling to find the words she wanted while he was looking at her like that. “I didn’t know you felt thatway. The first time you told me you were in love with me, you made it sound like it was all about sex.”
“I was eighteen, Jay. I was a fucking idiot who didn’t know how to love you.”
The harshness of his admission made her reel back. Their fingers broke and Nicholas looked down at his hand before drawing away and taking a long, deep drink.
“So,” he said gruffly. “I saw the photo collage in your room. I thought you weren’t into photography.”
Jay blinked, disconcerted by the mercurial change in topic but perversely grateful for the reprieve. “I don’t really consider that photography,” she said at length. “It’s more like a scrapbook. I wanted to remember the good times, because sometimes you don’t realize how good they are until they’re over.”
“That sounds sad, blue jay.”
“Maybe it is.” She thought wistfully of her middle school friends, the nice strippers at the Beat and Tease. “I’ve let so many people pass me by and now I can’t even remember their faces. I didn’t want to forget anyone else.”
“You’ve never photographed me.”
Because I could never forget you.
Flushed from the alcohol in her drink, Jay considered him from across the table. The candle was throwing sinister shadows over his handsome face, giving him a distinctly villainous cast.
Was he jealous?
“What?” Nicholas said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Impulsively, Jay lifted her phone and snapped a picture of him before he could arrange his face. She looked at her screen,and smiled in spite of herself: frozen in mid-motion, with his eyes widening in shock, and a sullen tilt to his otherwise inviting mouth, he looked about as real as she’d ever seen him.
“There,” she said. “Happy?”
“Do I get to look at it?”
“No.”
A glint appeared in his eyes. “Do I get one of you?”
“You have one of me.” She spoke without thinking and his eyebrows shot up.
“I only get one?”
“You only have the one?” Jay retorted, and he gave her a wicked grin.
“I thought that subject was a sore point.”
“Oh my god, you totally do.” Jay took a bracing sip of her drink. “You’re such a little creep.”
“I think you actually find me quite charming.”
