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He sits back on his heels and looks up at me, through the lenses this time. “What would you say then?”
I’d say hell yes, when, where, and how quickly can I get there? I look down at my foot still on his thigh. It throbs in time with the beat of my heart. Or maybe his heart. Or maybe they’re both beating the same rhythm.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say quietly. “Because that’s not how it is.”
He lifts my foot off his leg and places it on the floor, his hands firm yet gentle on my ankle and calf.
Then he slides up onto the bed next to me, making my heart shimmy. “Just put reality out of your head for a second.”
Our upper arms are so close the heat from his warms my skin. I can’t look at him. But out of the corner of my eye I can see he’s turned his head to look at me.
“Picture it,” he says. “We don’t work together. I’m not your boss’s brother. We’re just people who met randomly, became friends. I spend almost four years teasing you. Then I ask you on a date.”
I dig my fingers into the swirly purple comforter and force myself to take long, slow breaths to calm my galloping pulse, to turn down the heat rising within me, to stop the throbbing between my thighs.
“What would you say, Charlotte?”
I look down at the shoe in my lap. Oh God. “Yes.”
The admission releases a pressure valve within me, like a shaken bottle of champagne when the cork is popped.
My shoulders relax, my fingers let go of the comforter, my whole body gives in to itself.
Elliot turns a little to face me more. His knee touches mine, and he doesn’t pull back. Neither do I. The air between us is so full of sparks I can’t believe the fire alarm hasn’t gone off.
“And what would we do?” he asks. “Where would you want to go on this date?”
I’m not sure I can speak. But I know for sure what I’d want to do. I swallow hard and force out the words. “Central Park. For a walk.”
He lets out a gentle chuckle and rests his fingertips on my knee. An electric charge zips up my thigh and zaps me right in my clit—my aching, desperate clit that won’t listen to the plan to stay friends.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because…” My voice falters. I clear my throat to form an actual sentence. “Because when I first moved to New York and was crashing with a friend, that’s where I’d go to get out of the apartment. I was broke and couldn’t do much else. So I’d go to the park and walk for hours.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, his thumb glances over my knee. “Then what would we do?”
With all the courage I can muster, I turn my head to look at him. Those brown eyes. The way that one rebellious tuft of hair always sticks up a bit at the front. The defined points of his cupid’s-bow lip. The hint of evening stubble.
“Maybe go for a pizza and a beer.” His thumb moves slowly back in the other direction. “And not throw it up.”
My eyes lock on his mouth as it curls up into a warm smile. “Not throwing up is my favorite kind of date.”
Watching his lips form the words is like watching a magic trick—how can they be real, and how can they be talking to me from just inches away?
“And what would we do after the pizza and beer?” the lips ask.
I lift my gaze till my eyes meet his. I must have looked at Elliot a thousand times. But on this one thousand and first time, I know my eyes have found their home. Looking into his is where they belong. Where they’ve always belonged.
The realization is so overwhelming I could cry. It’s exciting and thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. But these are the eyes I want to look into every day. They are the eyes I want to look into right before I go to sleep at night and as soon as I wake up in the morning.
“You’d walk me home,” I whisper.
He rests his other hand in the small of my back. “And what would happen when we got to your front door?”
“I would thank you for a lovely time. And your lovely company.”
His gaze doesn’t budge from mine. “And then what?”
