Nathan Cross had been in my apartment last night.
Nathan Cross had saidfuck itand kissed me against my wall and I had ended up on my knees on my hardwood floor sucking his dick and Nathan Cross had made a sound that I was going to be thinking about for the rest of my natural life.
Here’s what else I knew:
Something had gone wrong afterward. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just quiet in that Nathan Cross way, the way he shut down when something crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.
And yeah. I’d crossed it.
What went wrong was after.
What I’d said.
What I’d tried to fix.
Because of course he hadn’t wanted it to mean anything. Of course he hadn’t. That wasn’t how Nathan Cross did things. Rules. Professional lines. Careers that didn’t survive stupid mistakes made in messy apartments with players who didn’t know when to stop pushing.
So I’d made it easier.
That was the thing that kept looping in my head.
I’d made it easier for him and told him that he didn’t have to worry about me reading into it or making it weird or screwing up his life any more than I already had.
Which had been the right move.
Obviously.
So why did it feel like I’d screwed up something anyway?
But mostly, if I was being honest, I was still thinking about the look on Nathan’s face when he left.
Which was complicated. Given the door. GivenI understand.Given the fact that I had texted Nathan this morning—hey—and gotten nothing back, which was not nothing, which was Cross having read it and chosen not to respond, which I was not spiraling about.
I was spiraling about it a little.
But also. The sound. The way his hand had come up to my—
"Morrison?"
I turned around.
The guy from the bar was standing there with a garment bag over one arm and a professional smile that was warmer than professional smiles usually were. For a second my brain did the thing where it tried to place someone out of context and came up slightly slow.
Then it placed him.
Good shoulders. Easy manner.Didn't get to finish that kiss.
Of all the ballrooms in all the hotels in all of Boston. He had to be working with us on our media day.
“Hey,” I said.
"Hey. Small world," he said. Not weird about it.
"Apparently," I said.
His name was Caleb, he told me, again, while he went through the rack with the efficient authority of someone whoknew exactly what they were doing. He was a stylist, had worked with three other teams.
He got me into a charcoal jacket that fit correctly in a way my own clothes rarely did and made some adjustments at the shoulders with complete professionalism and zero drama about the bar, about the text, about any of it.
