“What?” He sounded confused and bewildered. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m right—” Sloane sounded like she’d just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. She cleared her throat. “I’m right here.” Her face was somewhere around his rib cage, and she didn’t feel like moving.
“Ugh, don’t be down there,” he said, and then he was scooting down the bed until they were face-to-face, pink still high on his cheekbones, his hair a complete disaster. “What the hell.”
His face was an inch from hers, and he swiped one thumb under her right eye. Sloane blinked a couple times in rapid succession—she tended to tear up when she gave blow jobs, depending on enthusiasm—and Max kissed her, slow and soft and sweet. It was…nice? Nice in a comfortable, cozy way she hadn’t quite expected. Nice in a way the men she hooked up with weren’t always. Obviously Sloane didn’t fuck the not-nice men more than once, but it could be hard to tell beforehand. People were surprising.
Max was surprising, for all his sharp-edged teasing and hair-pulling. He held her face gently for a moment, brushing his thumb along her cheek, then dropped his hand to stroke her spine. It was lovely and soothing and kind of made her want to take him up on his offer to go down on her some more, but that was probably greedy and besides, the moment was over.
“Better than beach ghosts?” she asked, because that felt safe and normal. Max laughed and kissed her again twice: a peck on the mouth and then on the forehead.
“So much better than beach ghosts,” he agreed.
Chapter Eight
Max woke up alone the next morning. Which was exactly what he expected, given that Sloane had politely declined his offer to stay over, pointing out that her room, which included her book, pajamas, sleep mask, and skincare routine, was about ten feet away. He’d escorted her home nonetheless, which she seemed to find very funny.
If he hadn’t woken up alone, it would’ve either been very alarming or proof of ghosts. Or both.
Sloane answered the door mid-yawn, one hand covering her mouth, took one look at Max, and held the door open.
“Is that coffee?” she asked, like the paper cup in each hand was going to be something else.
“No, it’s rat poison,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.
“Is it caffeinated rat poison?” she asked, taking one and pulling the lid off to peek inside.
“Should be.”
“Great,” she said, then glanced from the coffee to Max’s face in surprise. “Just cream, no sugar?”
“That still how to you take it?”
“Did you text me and I answered you in my sleep?”
Max grinned, glanced around, and settled back against the hotel desk next to the TV. Her room was a mirror image of his, just with more beds. “Nope. I remembered is all.”
Sloane blinked. She was wearing a T-shirt that said UCLA VOLUNTEER DAY on the front, so old it was nearly worn through in spots, and cotton shorts that looked comfortable. The shorts weren’t very long, the shirt was pretty see-through, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. Max made a heroic amount of eye contact while wondering how he was going to make it through the day.
“From Sarah and Andrew’s wedding last year,” he said. “Remember how a bunch of us wound up crashing at the house that her sister had rented and their great aunt talked us all into doing Fireball shots?”
“Oh, god,” Sloane said. Max sympathized. He’d also never done a Fireball shot again. “Yeah, that was…a night.”
“You wanted coffee with cream and no sugar the next morning when we all woke up,” Max said, shrugging like he hadn’t been half-dead the morning after the wedding, when he woke up face down in a recliner. To date, it was still the second-most uncomfortable place he’d ever slept an entire night.
“And you remembered that?” she asked, and a weird look crossed her face. “I don’t remember how you take your coffee. To be honest, I mostly remember, uh. Vomiting.”
He shrugged again, like it was a fluke that he’d remembered and not because—before the Fireball shots—they’d spent a while arguing about Bigfoot, then a while dancing, and if they hadn’t made those poor, Fireball-related choices, Max would have very much liked to leave with her that night.
“Sometimes I remember weird shit,” he said, and took a long sip of coffee. Thankfully, it was good coffee, which wasn’t always the case in hotels.
“Apparently.”
“I came over to give you coffee and say that breakfast is in my room whenever you’re ready,” he told her, standing up straight again.
“There’s breakfast?”
“I brought tiny boxes of cereal and milk,” Max admitted. “Fancy hotels always think they’re too good for free breakfast. There’s also yogurt and bananas.”
