Page 46 of Offside

My bag was in my hand and the afternoon sun was warm on my shoulders. “That’s a terrible idea,” I said with not much conviction, because I really wanted to kiss him again.

“I know.”

“Griffin—” It was like nine years ago when we almost kissed. Griffin. The reason it was a bad idea then was the same as it was now and of course I brought it up again; I was scared.

“I know.”

“We work together.”

“I know that too.” He held my gaze. “I’m having a hard time caring about any of those things.”

Whoa, what?

I studied him for a long moment. The light was catching his hair, the blond gone almost amber. I thought about the plane, about it’s a date said quiet enough it was only for me, about lying awake in the dark waiting for regret that never came.

I closed the distance between us.

He met me halfway. His hand came up to my jaw the same way it had the first time, warm and sure, and this kiss was nothing like the careful driveway version. This was both of us knowing exactly what we were doing and doing it anyway, in a parking lot in Tempe on a Saturday afternoon in October, bookstore bags at our feet, the whole ordinary world going on around us and neither of us paying it the slightest attention. His other hand found my waist and pulled me in and I grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him back with everything I’d been holding since the pool party kitchen, since the plane. Hell, since nine years ago, when all I wanted to do was crawl on his lap and crush my lips to his.

He’d been like this at Jensen’s pond nine years ago too. Quiet and thorough, registering everything and disclosing nothing. He’d given me the sweatshirt off his back like it was a logistics problem to solve. He’d held still on a truck tailgate in the dark with his hand on my knee and his forehead pressed to mine and we’d said Griffin’s name like a decision we had made before either of us said it. I thought about that moment for far longer than I’d ever admit. The restraint of it—the effort it took to hold a line when everything in the moment was asking both of us to cross it. I understood all of that now in a register I hadn’t had at eighteen. I knew what it had cost him to pull back. I knew what it had cost me.

When we finally pulled apart we were both breathing differently. I was aware of his heartbeat under my fist, fast and real, telling me he wasn’t as steady as he looked.

He rested his forehead against mine. His thumb traced a slow line along my jaw. I had my fist still wrapped in his shirt and the afternoon was going on around us. A car passing on the street, someone’s music from an open window above, the whole world completely indifferent to the two of us standing here having just done something we couldn’t take back.

“Well, that was…” I trailed off, unable to qualify what was happening between us or how I felt about it.

“Yeah.” His voice was lower than usual and he pulled me in close and rested his chin on top of my head while we embraced.

I loosened my grip on his shirt and smoothed the fabric. “This could be complicated.”

“I know.”

“We should probably talk about it.” I tipped my head back to look at him. “Not right now though.”

“Not right now,” he agreed.

I stepped back. He let me go, but slowly. His hand trailed from my jaw to my shoulder before dropping. We picked up our bags and got in the truck, and I plugged the address into his navigation app and he pulled out of the lot, and for a few blocks we didn’t say anything.

“Ruth told you to keep me,” Ryan said, breaking the silence.

I turned to the window at the passing street. “Ruth has opinions.”

“She seemed confident.”

“She’s never wrong about books.” He let that sit. “Or people, actually.” I smiled.

I felt him look at me with a grin, brief and warm, and turned back to the window and let myself smile where he couldn’t see it.

Outside, Phoenix passed by in the October afternoon light, golden and easy, the truck quiet around us like I’d have expected when two people had just said something that changed things and were sitting with how large it was.

The truth was that I knew my own patterns. I’d spent the eight months since my breakup with Josh taking them apart with thoroughness, determined not to repeat them. The way I moved toward people who needed managing. The way I made myself smaller to fit what someone else needed. How I gave and gave until I was running on empty and still calling it love. I’d promised myself the next time I let someone in, it was going to be different.

I’d choose someone who showed up, who asked questions, who saw me. Josh had never once asked me a question he actually wanted the answer to. Two years, and I could count on one hand the times he’d made me feel like the most important thing in the room.

Ryan Lindqvist had remembered, from a red-eye flight, I’d mentioned a bookstore in passing three weeks earlier. He’d handed me the book I was looking for before I’d found it myself. He’d said I want to like it was simply true and I deserved to hear it plainly.

As complicated as this was, I found I didn’t mind the trouble at all.