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"Yeah, seems like you have trouble controlling yourself," I fired back, half-kidding.
"When it comes to you, you better believe it," he replied, and his voice was low and sure and made something in me stir to life. I ignored it.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why what?" He replied, raising his eyebrows at me.
"Why do you want to be with me so much?" I asked, and I was more than a little nervous of the answer. "I mean...you could have any woman at all that you wanted, you have to know that. There isn’t a girl in this town who would turn you down if you gave her the chance to get to know you."
"I want you," he replied, as though it should have been obvious. My heart skipped a beat.
"I’ve had a crush on you since high school," he explained, working on my feet once more, pulling his gaze from mine for a moment.
"I was always pissed that I didn’t end up in any of your classes, but I guess I can see that’s a good thing now," he remarked. "You would have recognized me right away."
He took a deep breath, and then carried on.
"I always had a thing for older women, after I saw you back then," he remarked. "That’s why I had the age range set higher on my dating profile. I was always looking for someone like you. And then I saw you turn up on the page and I thought – I thought it must have been a mistake or something. When you actually started talking to me and you agreed to meet with me and all of that, it was like a dream come true. Really. You have no idea how long I’ve dreamed about..."
He had to catch himself before he went any further, and I had to catch myself before I asked him to keep going and tell me just what he had been thinking about me all that time. I knew that it was crazy, but I loved the idea of him fantasizing about me. I had never been someone’s fantasy girl before but I could tell from the way that he looked at me that he wasn’t making this up, that he truly felt that passionately about me. How hot was it to know that you were someone’s ultimate one-day dream? It was enough to make my head spin. No wonder every moment with him felt so precious; that was just how he was treating it, too.
"And I want you to know, even if you never want anything else to do with me again," he continued. "I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got your back."
"You mean that?" I asked softly. It had been far too long since someone had said that to me and I had actually believed it; normally, I was the one people had on their back burner, ready to tap into when they needed me. Not their first choice. Not the girl they came to when they had an option to go elsewhere.
"I really mean that," he murmured. "I mean, don’t get me wrong, sleeping with you for the first time, that was pretty fucking incredible. But I’m here if you don’t want to do that, or if you do. I know you can feel something between us just the way that I can, but I’m not going to push it, Abi. It’s all on your terms. I want you to know that."
I gazed at him in silence for a long moment. I had no idea what to say to what he had just told me. I wanted to throw my arms around him and thank him for saying the words out loud that I had never known I needed to hear, but that would have been too much too soon.
"Will you stay here?" I asked him, without thinking. "Tonight?”
"You want me to stay?" He asked, and he seemed surprised. His hands stilled on my feet for a moment, but I could still feel their comforting warmth through my stockings. I nodded.
"I don’t think we should...I mean, I don’t want to have sex," I told him. It was only somewhat true, of course – I wanted to slide into bed with him and see what he could do with that amazing body of his once more, but I knew that I had too much to figure out on my own terms before that happened again.
"That’s fine," he assured me. "Anything you want, remember? I mean that."
I smiled at him. He was so warm and genuine, in a way no man I had ever been with had been before. Just the way he touched me, the way he talked to me, the way he bared his soul to me, he was making it clear that he had nothing to hide. I liked that. Made me feel safe around him. Like anything could have happened, but he had me rooted safely to the ground where I belonged.
"Let me make you something to eat," he suggested. "If you haven’t had dinner yet, I don’t want you to be going hungry because of me..."
And with that, he got to his feet, gently laying my legs down on the couch, and headed through to the kitchen. I didn’t even know what I had in there, but the fact that he didn’t even wait for my okay, the fact that he was so keen to look after me – that was something profound.
I lay there on the couch and watched him as he went to work, taking care of dinner for us, cooking something quick and light – some pasta dish that he managed to construct from the store cupboard bare essentials that I had kicking around. I knew there wasn’t much there, but he whipped up something impressive in no time. It was amazing what this man could do when I gave him the space to flourish. Maybe I should have taken that as more of an indicator of what he was capable of.
When he was done, he brought me out a bowl of steaming pasta drenched in a healthy serving of a thick, rich tomato sauce. It smelled fantastic, and my mouth watered as soon as he handed it to me.
"This looks great," I told him, and I inhaled deeply as it arrived in my hands. "Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"Mum taught me," he replied. "She didn’t want me going out into the world not knowing how to take care of myself, that’s all."
"That makes a change from every other man I’ve dated," I laughed, and he cocked an eyebrow at me.
"Dated?"
I glanced away from him quickly. I couldn’t let him, or myself, think of it like that. It was far too dangerous. I needed to gather myself, keep myself together, remind myself that this was never going to happen and that he was just here because he was doing me a favor.
We ate together, and we talked a little – about nothing in particular, his work, my work, what had dragged me out of my warm bed to be out in the middle of nowhere like that. I was tired, but being with him, it made me feel like I had been shot through with a warm, bright energy. Like I could have taken on the world in that moment. I wondered if he felt it, too. I wondered if he felt as alive as I did when we were close to each other.
