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“Good night,” he said, reaching out a hand to tug his jacketfrom my shoulders before walking past me, tossing the coat he had just casually removed from my body over his shoulder. I felt frozen, rooted in place, as he left the apartment with his jacket on his finger, the door closing behind him with an audibleclick.
Dear God, I was literally—literally—light-headed.
“Is he your boyfriend now?” Larry asked, setting down the book and walking into the kitchen. “Because that man isfine.”
“No,” I said, picking up Joanne, following him, and taking a seat on one of the kitchen stools as he put on a kettle for his evening cup of Sleepytime. I took a deep breath to shake out of my lustful haze. “Believe it or not, he’s the guy I paid to stop my wedding.”
“Shutup.” He looked at me with wide eyes. “How in God’s name did you reconnect withhim?”
I’d told Larry the story one night but hadn’t really talked about Max, just the way things had gone down with Stu. “He needed a favor.”
I told him all about the weddings we’d stopped and how we were purposely flaunting our fake-but-not-so-fake friendship for our personal gain. It wasn’t until I got to the part about the kiss—I only mentioned the first one—that he got thatLarrylook on his face.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Soph,” he said, slowly shaking his head.
“What?” I scratched behind Joanne’s ears. “Can you be more specific?”
“You can’t fuck around with chemistry, you silly little asshole. If it were possible to just kiss someone you don’t give a shit about and move on, don’t you think everyone would be doing it all the time? I’d goHAMon Roger in produce at Russ’s Market if that were the case.”
“People don’t say HAM anymore,” I corrected as I heard amreowand Karen jumped onto my stool. “And it wasn’t like that. It wasn’tnormal kissing with feelings involved. It was an experiment that we both signed off on.”
“That you really liked, right?” he asked, waggling his silver eyebrows. “If you both really liked it, you’re gonna do it again. You’re gonna goHAMon making out—I’ll fucking say what I want to say, thank you very much—and you know it.”
“So?” I set my hands on both cats’ backs so they’d sit. “If we’re in agreement about the fact that it doesn’t matter, whynotdo it again?”
He shook his head like I was an incorrigible child and said, “Because feelings eventually come with chemistry whether you want them to or not.”
“Bullshit,” I argued. “It’s a conscious decision, not an inadvertent reaction.”
“You keep telling yourself that, poopsie.”
“Poopsie?” I put my hand on Joanne’s back as she started doing circles on my lap again. “Really?”
“You’re like the damn language police tonight. Maybe talk to me when you haven’t been out playing ‘taste the tonsil’ with Julian the Hot.”
“Have I told you lately how much I love you?”
“Keep it in your pants, Soph. I’m far too old for you.”
twenty-two
Sophie
“Hello?”
I opened the fridge and grabbed the orange juice, holding the phone between my head and my shoulder. “Hey, Maxxie.”
“What the fuck?” he growled, sounding like he was eating the phone. “Soph?”
“Are you still sleeping?” I asked, opening the half-gallon jug and pouring juice into my cup. “What time is it?”
Since the breakup, I’d become a terrible sleeper. I usually went to bed early around nine, then woke up every few hours until I couldn’t take it anymore and just got up for the day around four.
I missed the days of good slumber.
“It’s fucking five forty-two on a Sunday, you psychopath,” he said, his gravelly voice full of irritation. “Is this an emergency?”
“Oh, my God, no—I guess I thought it was later than that. Just call me when you’re up.”
