"The ceiling is — it's...there’s a yellow undertone. You want something cooler there; it'll open the room up."
"Bennet."
I exhale and close my eyes.
"I never really recovered from it the way I should have; I handled it by becoming someone else entirely. New city, new name, new everything. And the someone else I built didn't date, didn't get close to people, didn't.” I pause and take another deep breath, and exhale. “I didn't do much of anything except work and perform for the press because performing felt safer than the real version."
I press my palms into my eyes. "The girl in the prank, she's back in my life."
"Does she know who you are?"
"No."
"And the not recovering," she says carefully. "Hownotrecovered are we talking?"
This is the part I've never said out loud. Not to anyone except Rosalie, and even with Rosalie it came out sideways, incomplete, hedged into a half-truth easier to hold.
"I'm a virgin." I keep my head back and my eyes focus on the ceiling again. I can’t bring myself to meet her gaze.
“You’re very quiet.” I say, and it comes out a bit more somber than I’d like.
"I know." She blows out a breath. "I just needed a second."
"Take your time."
I sit up and finish the rest of my wine in one go.
When I look up, her eyes are hooded and her bottom lip has slipped between her teeth, her gaze raking slowly up my body.
"Gotta admit, Sullivan." She wiggles her eyebrows. "I'm having some pretty inappropriate thoughts about our friendship right now." Then she beams that smile at me.
My head falls back with a laugh.
Fuck. I needed that.
"We're going to finish these drinks," she says, standing to refill my glass. "And then I'm going to show you that not everyone is her." She crosses to the couch and sits beside me, pulling her legs up underneath her again. "And you're going to let me. Because that's what friends do."
I look at her.
"Without the running commentary," she adds. "On tongues or otherwise."
"I make no promises."
"Bennet."
"Fine." I put my hands up in surrender. "No commentary."
"Chug," she says. "Then talk. Then we'll figure out the rest."
We throw our wine back like shots.
Then she slides over to me and straddles my lap.
The barely there dress she wore to dinner rides up just enough and my brain short circuits completely. Like a fuse blowing — just gone. Whatever intelligent thought was forming evaporates before it can finish.
"How many women have you been with," she asks, settling her weight on top of me. "Not sex, of course. Other stuff."
I put my hands on her thighs because they're right there and it seems like the correct response to the situation, then immediately question that decision and remove them.
