I pushed my hair behind my ear. “I’m not ashamed or anything. Leo might not be as cool with things as you’d like, though.”
“How do you mean?”
“I was talking to him on the phone the other week and he made some joke about how I shouldn’t hook up with you. You know Leo—he didn’t mean anything by it—but I got the impression he would feel uncomfortable if something did happen. I was a little defensive about it.”
Shawn titled his head to the side and tightened his lips into a smile. “You got defensive?” he asked, clearly happy with the idea.
I leaned back in my seat and gave him a good look up and down. He liked that, and weirdly, I liked him liking that. It made me feel protective over Shawn, as though he were signaling to me that it was okay to see him as mine. I gave him a slow nod as I studied the light in his eyes. “I did,” I said. “You know me. I’ve never really liked people telling me what to do.”
“Yeah, me either, actually.”
Seeing how shy he was and knowing we might not talk about this again for a while, I wanted to make sure he heard me. I was still figuring out what those new feelings meant to me, but I needed Shawn to understand he wasn’t a mistake or a regret. It was nice to circle each other in that big old house and spend our days together, and I would hate to mess that up by giving him the wrong impression.
“That’s one of the things I like about you,” I said. “Always have. You’re on your own page. Some of those kids were such assholes to you in high school, but you never changed. You just kept doing your thing.”
Shawn laughed and slumped forward onto the table. “I don’t know if I could have changed if I tried. I’ve always just kind of been me, for better or worse.”
“I’d say better.”
He smiled. “Thanks, Cass. And thanks for, um, talking to me about this.”
“I’m not going to risk letting a little dry humping make a nice thing between roommates awkward just because we didn’t talk about it.”
Shawn laughed. “You don’t have to teach me that lesson twice.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
He slapped his palm to his forehead. “Not the story I meant to tell right now.”
“But now you started.”
“It’s not that interesting.” I gave him a look, and he kept talking. “End of freshman year of college, my roommate and I were watching a movie on his laptop one night. I guess we both got kind of worked up and ended up getting off together.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
He scoffed. “Except he avoided talking to me at all afterward. You should have seen how awkward it was when our parents came to pick us up. He acted like he’d never met me before.”
Well, that explained a little more why he ran away from me. I resolved to myself that I wouldn’t treat Shawn as an experiment like that, no matter what ended up happening between us. “Sorry your roommate was an asshole.”
“People aren’t very good at talking about sex. Myself included.”
“You’re telling me. Something about being a drummer in a band like Twice Shattered, women always assume I’m not looking for anything more than a quick hookup. I know it’s weird to complain about getting laid, but it was a pain in the ass when I was looking for something more.” I drummed my fingers on the table. It was easier to share this kind of thing with Shawn than it was with most people, but I didn’t want to dump all my feelings on him. “A couple of catches like us,” I joked. “What the hell is wrong with everyone else that we’re still single?”
But before Shawn could try to answer, the waiter appeared with our food, and the conversation drifted away.
* * *
Since we were in the city anyway, I convinced Shawn to stick around the bar a little longer. There was a dart board in the back, one of my favorite ways to pass the time, and I managed to convince him to play.
Sure, he didn’t offer much competition. The way he yanked his arm back and heaved the dart, it clattered against the board as often as it stuck, although he did throw it a hell of a lot harder than I expected. But I wasn’t complaining. Just watching him wiggle his hips and stick his tongue out the side of his mouth was entertaining enough.
And damn, were those hips doing something for me. I could see the flash of his belly when his shirt rose up, and every time Shawn turned, my eyes were drawn to the small of his back and the soft curve of his ass. We hadn’t talked about hooking up again, and I definitely didn’t want to push him on anything, but now that I had a taste, my cravings were only stronger.
“Excuse me,” a woman with pink hair said, appearing behind us. She had a pierced nose and eyes that flashed green when she stared at me.
“How’s it going?” I took my beer from the table, the one drink I allowed myself before the drive back. “Do we know each other?”
The woman glanced at Shawn, now watching us, then back to me. “Aren’t you the drummer from Twice Shattered?”
