‘You can be grumpy whenever you want.’
She paused, her laughter fading as she watched him. She ran a finger around the rim of her mug, and Elliot tracked its path with his gaze. He thought he might like to be under Daisy’s finger like that, traced, touched.
It had been so long.
‘Thanks,’ she said, biting into another cookie. Crumbs stuck to her bottom lip, and Elliot imagined wiping them away with his thumb. Maybe he would press into the plushness of it, maybe he would follow with his mouth?—
He shook his head.
‘So, you never tried going by November?’
‘It doesn’t really roll off the tongue.’
Do not think about Daisy’s tongue. Or yours… licking off those crumbs…
Elliot shifted in his seat.
‘And it’s not really something you can coo at a baby.’
‘Little Novie?’ He teased, trying desperately to get back on track here. This wasfake. He was not starting a real relationship with Daisy. He wasn’t equipped to start a realrelationship with anyone.
And then Daisy crinkled up her nose in that cute way that he’d already grown to like too much, and he lost the thread all over again. His brain was telling him this was fake, but his body was feeling very real things about Daisy at the moment.
She twisted apart her Oreo halves and, God save him, she licked the cream with one long swipe of her tongue. Elliot swallowed hard. Had Oreos always been so erotic?
Why had his dick chosennowto awaken from its two-year slumber? Why not on that date his mother had set him up on with the daughter of an old friend… he couldn’t even remember her name and at the time he certainly hadn’t felt like licking anything off of her. Or with that woman he’d met on one of the few times he’d attempted to go to the gym. She was dressed in practically nothing, and he could not have cared less.
It was like his sex drive had left when Leigh decided to end things and now it had decided to storm back in. How inconvenient.
‘What about you?’ Daisy asked, breaking through his thoughts. ‘What’s your middle name?’
It was his turn to hesitate, which made Daisy lean inacross the table, her eyes glinting with excitement. Theposition also caused her to press against the table, the top curve of her breasts rising above the neckline of her tank top, and Elliot had to look up to the heavens for strength.
‘Ooh, it’s a bad one, isn’t it?’
He shrugged, still not looking at her. Luckily, she thought it was just embarrassment about his name and not the inconvenient rise of lust rushing through him. ‘It’s not great.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t think it’ll come up.’
‘I told you mine! You have to tell me.’
‘Okay, fine.’ Elliot sighed, bringing his gaze back to hers. ‘It’s Milton.’
‘Ha!’ A laugh burst from Daisy’s mouth. ‘Little Milty!’
‘Absolutely not!’ he said, but Daisy was laughing too hard to hear him and soon he was laughing again, too. It felt good, laughing with Daisy. Like he was finally breathing again,living, after so long being dormant.
‘Novie and Milt, those are some pretty weird pet names,’ Daisy said between giggles.
‘Should we have pet names?’
She nibbled her bottom lip, looking at him thoughtfully, like she was deciding what she might call him if they were in a real relationship. ‘Like what?’
‘Sweetie?’ he ventured. He and Leigh had never had pet names for each other. Was that some kind of red flag he should have noticed from the beginning?
‘My grandma calls me that.’
