“Just trying not to get the family pissed at me,” I say. “Your brother is my brother-in-law. Your sister is my sister-in-law. I still have to see them on holidays.”
“Which holidays?” he asks. “Because I never see you at any of them.”
“My ma lives here, so we do most of them with her,” I say, then shoot him a grin. “But it’s nice to know you’ve been missing me.”
“You still live with your mom?”
“I have my own place,” I say, unable to keep from swelling with pride a little when I think about my posh apartment. “It’s nice as hell.”
“So… Were you planning on showing it to me?” He gives me a sly look from the corner of his eye, and I swear to god the guy is flirting with me.
“No,” I say, frowning at the steam rising from a grate.
Colt just laughs, like it’s easy, like it’s all meaningless.
It probably is. In the grand scheme, it’s less than nothing. I should just stop reading into it and fuck him. I would, if I knewthat I could, and it would end there. If it were anyone else, that’s exactly what I’d do. But things are never that simple with Colt.
Not for me.
Maybe for him they are.
“Then show me another one of your places,” he says. “Show me New York. Not the touristy shit. Another one of your rooftops.”
“Aren’t you flying out tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he says, checking his phone. “In the morning. Which means I still have eight hours until I need to leave my hotel.”
He’s so casual about it, like it’s no big deal to basically tell me he wants to spend the whole night with me. Like it’s a given that I’ll want to spend the night with him.
“So, what would you be doing if I wasn’t here?” he asks, pocketing his phone. “Take me to your favorite places. Show me what you do with your big, fancy life in the city.”
“I’d probably be at a club,” I admit, watching his reaction from the corner of my eye.
“Is that hard?” he asks. “With sobriety?”
“Nah,” I say. “Maybe at first, but you get used to it fast, and then you don’t need it. I don’t even miss it anymore. It’s just not an option for me. Never was.”
“You’ve never relapsed?” he asks incredulously.
“Not once,” I confirm. “When I was done, I was done.”
“Damn,” he says. “That’s impressive.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m actually pretty proud of that.”
“You should be.”
We walk half a block in silence.
“So, you go to the clubs to dance and meet men?” he asks.
“Something like that.”
“Well, you don’t need to meet a man tonight, so you’re already halfway there,” he says. “Take me to your favorite one.”
After that taste on the roof, I actually do need to meet a man tonight, but I can’t tell him that, how much one stupid kiss shook me. I can’t tell him that even though I love my life here, and I’ll never go back to Arkansas, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come—a good job, a sweet place, a better mindset and healthy body—sometimes I look at it all and wonder what’s missing. Sometimes, no matter how many clubs I go to and how many men I meet, no matter how many people live in a city this big, it’s not enough. The truth is, it can be lonely as hell.
I can’t tell that to Colt though. So, I take him to a club instead.
