“Thanks, Reg. I’ll owe you one. Bye.”
I hung up before I risked Reggie going off on a tangent—the man loved to talk, and Iggy was still standing in the doorway, starting to look cold.
“You’re leaving,” he said as I approached, shrugging his robe off to wrap it around his shoulders instead. It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t quite an accusation, either.
Just a statement of fact.
I wish you were my boyfriend, I didn’t say. I wondered if hearing me say he wasn’t hurt him, if he would’ve wanted me to say he was.
“Not until tomorrow morning,” I said. “I mean, unless you’re kicking me out. I can go, if that’s… if you’d rather…”
Iggy shook his head, wrapping the robe tight around himself.
I love you, I also didn’t say.
Not again, anyway. Iggy would’ve forgotten last night. He wouldn’t remember saying it to me, and he definitely wouldn’t remember me saying it back.
“You’re always welcome here, Harv,” Iggy said.
I nodded, starting to feel the cold myself now that I didn’t have the robe to protect me from the elements.
“Thanks,” I said. “Just the one more night. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Iggy’s lips curled into a smile that didn’t meet his eyes, head tilted down and away from me. “You’re not in the way,” he said. “But I know you’ve gotta go.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it’s an important job with a big new client. Reggie’s been talking about it non-stop for months. He needs me. So. I gotta go.”
I stopped myself from sayingit’s been fun, or anything else that sounded final like that. It had been fun, but the whole point of asking for a late start had been to carve out just a few more hours with Iggy.
I didn’t want to talk about it like it was over yet.
I wanted to pretend it wasn’t.
“Okay, well,” Iggy straightened up. “I was gonna put some pants on and take Theo for a walk. Wanna come?”
“I’d love to.”
I’d love to walk Theo every single morning with you, I thought, but I wasn’tallowedto think that. Iggy wasn’t mine to keep. Never had been.
I’d promised him that this was temporary. No strings attached. Just for fun, for the two of us.
Pinky promises wereserious. I couldn’t go back on it now. Not when I knew I was leaving.
Iggy didn’t want me to be his boyfriend. I’d never be home, and he wanted to settle down. He’d built this cabin to settle down in, with someone who came home every day.
No. This was for the best.
But I wanted just another few hours of him, because I was selfish and greedy and this was perfect forme. Iggy was perfect for me.
It was just that Iggy being perfect for me didn’t mean I was perfect for him.
I wasn’t going to think about that now, though. Right now, we had another few hours of playing pretend, and I was planning on making the most of them.
“Maybe we can have another swordfight?” I teased.
Just like that, the dark cloud lifted from over Iggy’s head, and he bounced forward to press a kiss to my mouth. “I meant it about that blowjob,” he murmured. “Later.”
I laughed as I followed him inside, determined not to mope on our last day together.
