“I’m so lucky,” he murmurs, lifting his chin and leaning his forehead against the column of my throat, “to be with you.”
He’s treating me with so much tenderness. I think about how deep I’m in with him… I’ve fallen so far that I can’t even see in front of me.
What if… Stop overthinking.
For once in my life, I try to banish my racing thoughts to the back of my mind and focus on the sensation of him instead.
Gio, who seems to always pick up on the slightest shift in demeanor from me, immediately asks, “Are you okay? Do you want me to pull out?” He props himself up on his elbow and searches my eyes.
“I don’t want you to pull out,” I answer truthfully, not wanting him to go anywhere, maybe ever again. “I’m just thinking. This has been… Honestly, it’s been kind of life-changing for me.”
He leans forward, planting a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Life-changing, huh?”
I shake my head at his playful tone. “Okay, well?—”
“Look at me. It’s important.”
I cautiously find his eyes again, which are gazing into mine, determined. “I’m not the best at communicating my feelings, so I hope you’ll forgive me for using a work analogy. But, it’s what I know best.” He strokes me with the pads of his fingers. “You once said that it must be my ‘biggest challenge’ to bead intricatepatterns into fine silk. But that’seffortlesscompared to the challenge of pretending I haven’t been utterly enamored with you for years.”
Enamored. My heart flutters first at his words. Then, those thoughts that I tried to shove down a moment ago resurface. “But… but you made me sit and wait whenever I visited your shop on an errand.”
“Because I want to spend more time with you.”
“But you always moved the bell to hit me in the head.”
“Hit you in the… Tessa, I’ve been moving it over and over again so itavoidshitting you in the head. But you wear all these different heights of heels every day, and the doorframe is smaller than most. It’s a frustratingly lost cause.”
I pause. “But you always wrote things down while I talked, like I bored you.”
“Because I’m trying to understand you. I didn’t grow up here. I write your references down and look them up later. I don’t want to be like…” He looks up to the ceiling, like he’s trying to recall something. After a few moments, he snaps his fingers. “Like Summer Roberts, not getting Seth Cohen’s nerdy jokes from The Orange City—the TV show you like.” He grins proudly, having made a reference he knows I’ll get.
I raise an eyebrow, curious.
“I’m going to pull out now, okay? To show you something.”
Gio moves out of me, and I frown. It turns out, after being with him, I don’t like being empty. He clocks my pouty face and smirks. “We can do it again in a minute, greedy girl.”
He pulls on his boxers and grabs his notebook from the nightstand, handing it to me. “Here. See for yourself.”
We both sit up in bed and flip the notebook open.
Wide receiver role. Someone who catches the ball.
Weaponized incompetence: a man does something wrong on purpose to make the woman do more work
Camp Rock,military base?A movie about a music camp for teens.
