“Thanks.”
“So would your intellect be available right now for, um, a consultation? See, I have this really hard…decision to make, and I think some heated discussion might help me…penetrate the issue. Gain some insight.”
“Really. You have a hard decision.”
He nodded. “So hard it’s painful.”
I smiled, feeling like I was on familiar ground again. Sex and games I could handle. “Well, I can’t leave a friend with such a pressing problem. Want to come upstairs for a pow-wow? I’ll try my best to wrap my intellect around your predicament.”
He slipped an arm around my waist, the other around my neck, and kissed me hard. “My predicament would be delighted to come upstairs, downstairs, or anywhere else you want it to.”
“So, did you miss me? You haven’t said.” Quinn turned onto his side and propped his head on his elbow.
I was stretched out on my back next to him. We’d just finished round two, during which I’d executed the Wheelbarrow and the Reverse Cowgirl, so I was winded as hell. (We’d been so impatient for round one, it had happened on the stairs with zero finesse from either one of us, although I’d probably have a bruise on my tailbone tomorrow.)
“I may have thought about you once or twice,” I teased.
“Once or twice, huh?”
I shrugged. “I don’t want you to get a big head or anything.”
He sat up. “Liar. You love when I get a big head. Be right back.”
Giggling, I sat up and hit him with my pillow as he got out of bed. “Jerk.”
He went into the guest bathroom like he always did, and I went into mine, thankful for the way he respected my need for space after sex. A lot of guys would have just used mine because it was closer. Quinn was considerate like that.
After using the bathroom, I took my pill and brushed my teeth. Believe it or not, I was actually contemplating asking him to stay the night, but when I came out of the bathroom, he wasn’t back in my room. The hall light was on, so I threw on a T-shirt and went out to the living room, where a shirtless Quinn was tugging on his jeans.
“Had to find my pants,” he said, his hair messy and flopping in his face. He pushed it back. “The rest of my clothes are still down there, but I brought yours up. They’re on the couch.”
“Thanks.” I stood there for a second, arms crossed, not wanting him to leave but not certain asking him to stay was right, either.
“It’s late, I better go. See you tomorrow.” He came over to me and kissed my cheek, and a moment later, he was gone.
I turned off all the lights and got in bed, fighting disappointment and angry about it. What the hell was with me? Had I missed him that much? Had I really been about to ask him to stay?
Thank God he left, said a voice in my head. You invite him once, he’ll think he can do it all the time. You’ve got a nice thing going here. Don’t ruin it.
I turned onto my side and hugged my pillow.
The voice was right. We might be casually dating, but once the dates were over, he belonged in his bed, and I belonged in mine.
Even if it felt empty without him tonight.
Nineteen
JAIME
“This is cruel. How am I supposed to get dressed for tonight if I don’t know where we’re going?” I had the phone tucked between my ear and shoulder as I surveyed my closet.
“It’s not cruel. It’s called a surprise.”
“Are you tricking me? Is this some kind of ploy to get me to go see a sappy movie or something?”
We’d been dating for a month now, and so far I’d avoided having to sit through any insipid romantic comedies or sweeping dramatic epics where two people fall in love and then she dies. We stuck to dinner dates, outings like museums or shopping or a Red Wings game here and there, and we also stayed in a lot, making dinner together and watching TV. I’d learned to accept Quinn’s desire to cuddle on the couch, and he’d perfected the art of “moderate cuddling” so that I didn’t feel smothered to death.
Every time we went out, he snapped a pic of us and posted it with his goofy hashtags. Someone invariably commented, Does she believe in love yet???, and he’d reply, I’ll ask her.
The answer was still no, usually accompanied by an eye roll or a sigh, and he’d have to report back with Not yet and a bunch of silly sad emojis. Sometimes he’d add something like, Still trying!
If he was still trying, he was being pretty underhanded about it, since other than the couch cuddling, he never tried to hold my hand or kiss me in public or talk about “where this was going.” Occasionally, he tortured me with the horrible nicknames, but mostly he respected my rules.
Still, today was Valentine’s Day, and I didn’t entirely trust him not to get mushy.
“No, sunshine, it’s not a ploy,” he insisted. “Just wear whatever. You look great in everything and nothing.”
“If I wear nothing, can we stay in tonight?” Because those were my favorite nights with Quinn. Sometimes we’d play games—we had this one where I was the landlady and I knocked on his door demanding the rent and he offered to be my slave to pay it off because he was a sexy starving artist living on a dream. Once he even painted my body with chocolate syrup and licked it off. (We went up to my place for that. I don’t think I need to tell you that Quinn doesn’t buy things like chocolate syrup.)
We had another game where he was the doctor making a house call and I was the proper Victorian lady besieged by hysteria (also known as sexual frustration) which could only be relieved by a paroxysm (also known as an orgasm) the doctor brought on with either his hand or my vibrator. (At first Quinn didn’t believe me when I told him that this actually happened in history, and that vibrators were, in fact, invented by doctors whose hands were cramping up from flicking sexually frustrated Victorian beans all day long, but I swear to God it’s true. Just another one of those fun facts stored up in my brain.)