I had my hand at her jaw and my body angled toward hers. Her mouth was right there, and she was waiting for me. She was waiting for me the way I’d been waiting for her since Friday morning at nine o’clock when she’d stood up in front of three executives in a charcoal blazer and held her ground against me with two words.
I let my hand drop.
I stepped back. One step. Two.
She didn’t say anything. Her chin was still up. Her hand was still hovering near her bag.
I made myself say the thing I’d been thinking for the last sixty seconds. “If I kiss you tonight, I won’t stop at a kiss.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t move. Her mouth closed. Then opened again. Then closed.
“Goodnight, Joss.”
She didn’t say goodnight back.
She turned and inserted her key in the lock and opened her door. Then she stepped inside and didn’t look back at me until she’d already started to close the door. When she did, it was one quick glance over her shoulder, half a second—the kind of look I’d think about later when I should’ve been sleeping.
The door closed. I waited until I heard the deadbolt turn, then I walked back to the elevator.
The car was empty. I got in. I pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed and the elevator began to move down. I stood there alone with my hands in my pockets and my reflection in the polished steel of the doors, and I thought one thing very clearly.
I’d come back tomorrow.
I’d come back tomorrow, and I’d come back the day after, and I’d keep coming back until she stopped letting me leave at the door.
5
JOSS
Istood with my back against my own front door, listening to Sutton walk away.
The deadbolt was still in my hand. I’d turned it when I heard him say goodnight, and I’d left my fingers on the brass after. Now I was leaning against the door I’d just locked, listening to the sound of dress shoes on the hallway carpet.
I could hear when he reached the elevator. I could hear when the doors slid open. I couldn’t hear when they slid closed, but I felt the silence after. That was when I let my head rest against the painted wood of the door.
If I kiss you tonight, I won’t stop at a kiss.
I closed my eyes.
I tried to find a single thought in my head that wasn’t that sentence. I couldn’t. The sentence had taken up residence behind my eyes and was now in the process of removing every other piece of furniture in there—including the parts of me that were supposed to be paying my rent and answering my messages and remembering whether or not I had any clean blouses for work tomorrow.
Eventually, I pushed off the door, moving through the entryway and into the dim living room without turning on a light. After dropping my clutch on the console table, I sank onto the couch with my eyes closed.
I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough that my breathing had almost gone back to normal. Long enough that I’d stopped feeling his thumb on my jaw and started feeling the absence of it instead.
The front door opened.
I’d forgotten about Hadley. The entire time Sutton was at my door, I hadn’t given a single thought to the possibility that my roommate would walk in behind me.
She stopped just inside the entryway. I opened my eyes.
She was holding her shoes in one hand. Her hair had come loose at the temples. Her lipstick was mostly gone. She took one look at me on the arm of the couch and her whole face changed.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
