“Like what? Someone more middle-aged, maybe?”
“I was trying not to say Nancy fromNightmare on Elm Street, but since you keep insulting yourself, you’ve forced my hand. So you better not say anything else about it. In fact, just pretend I didn’t tell you.”
She immediately went to laugh and ask him what the problem with that was. After all, it was a nice thing. It was a cute little compliment, no big deal. But then her brain made the connection, and oh. Oh. Oh no, she didn’t know how to react then.
All she could do was stare, head full of how he had once thought of Nancy. He had spent almost a whole summer obsessed with her. Watched the movie over and over, talked endlessly about how lovely she was, how cool she was. Hell, she even remembered him drawing her, in his algebra notebook. Then tearing out the page, to keep in his wallet.
She had been his number one final girl.
His favorite, unquestionably.
And now he had said that she looked like, or was like that, in a way that would be easy to read too much into. So obviously, he had tried to head that off at the pass. He was still trying now, in fact. He was looking at her like come on, just get what I’m saying.
And though it took her a second, she did.
She shook off that weird feeling she got, when the memory of those drawings and that love first struck, and shrugged. “I don’t have to pretend. I know you don’t mean anything by it. I know you don’t mean anything by any of this. You’ve just been addled by supernatural sex nonsense, and so should therefore feel free to say whatever you want about how hot I look in a nightdress,” she said.
She even managed to look mischievous on the end.
Like this was all a big joke. A goof.
“Kind of liked hearing it, huh?” he asked, and so she kept that joke going. She held two fingers a tiny bit apart.
“Little bit.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d like it too, if you told me what I look hot wearing.”
“Well good, because I was thinking of suggesting those sweatpants of mine.”
“You mean the ones that are three feet too short?”
“The three-feet-too-short thing is what made them sexy,” she said, and she could see a response on the tip of his tongue. A question, she thought.
But then he clocked her awkward blush—the one that gave away that she hadn’t meant to confess her attraction so plainly—and she knew he realized what she’d meant. His expression slid from puzzled, to that heavy-lidded, lusty gaze she was starting to find very familiar. And if she was being honest, enjoying way too much.
Doubly so when it came with a side of low, soft words.
“So you liked that, then. You liked seeing what I got,” he said.
And this time she didn’t even wonder if she should be honest. Honesty just came out of her.Desirecame out of her. Like it was winning the game of what’s okay to do, in her head. “I think I came within an inch of running my hand over it.”
“Want to try sliding your hand over it now?”
“If you want me to,” she said, and for a second she really thought he was going to say yes. He took a step toward her, until he was close enough that she could feel the heat rolling off his body. She could smell him—all summer skin and winter furs.
But then he stopped and took a few calming breaths. He forced out some frustrated-sounding words. “I do. Oh god I really do. But see—this is the other issue. Everything is just way too fast. It goes from zero to seven thousand, every time, and I don’t know. I think maybe we should try a five hundred first. Or maybe even an eighty-seven,” he said. Which was annoying, given how close she had come to racing headlong into this, without as many worries. And how hungry his words had made her feel, for something she was so close to getting. A little more, and her almighty ache would end, it would be over with, she wouldn’t have to tremble through it another second.
But the problem was, his idea also made sense.
“Okay, so what do you consider an eighty-seven? Third base?”
“Maybe not quite third base.”
“So you’re thinking more like heavy petting.”
“Honestly, even that is a little bit more than I was going for.”
“But I don’t even know what there is before that, screwing-around-wise.” She spread her hands, palms up, and let out a short, frustrated laugh.
