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Walking out of the bathroom, he stood in front of her with that damn towel clinging to his hips while he wiped stray bits of shaving cream from his face. “What’s up?” He looked so cute, so vulnerable, with his clean shave and wet hair and bare chest dusted in silver-blond curls, that if she didn’t get this out right away, she feared she might melt into the couch.
She couldn’t melt. She needed to be strong, firm, unmoving as the mountain behind them. But she wanted to be nice about it too. First the carrot, then the stick.
Digging into her basket, she pulled out one of her gifts, tilting the bottle of golden liquid from side to side. “I think you should stay in your towel.”
“Is that?” His eyes swelled. “Massage oil?”
“You said you were sore.”
He tossed the hand towel he’d been using to wipe his face clean into the bathroom. “If I thought I’d ever be able to get back up again, I’d go to my knees and kiss your feet right now.”
Now for the stick.Gathering her nerve, and whatever willpower he hadn’t already charmed out of her with his smiles and broad shoulders and flat abs charitably covered with enough over-fifty skin sag that she didn’t feel too self-conscious about her own, she said, “But first we need to talk about what’s going on here, between us.”Like adults, she thought with a determined nod of her chin.
His head tilted. “Okay.” He said it calmly, carefully, like he was tiptoeing into a minefield. “Should I sit?”
She motioned to the edge of his bed, placing him directly across from her but at a distance safe for talking instead of kissing. Once he sat, however, he spread his legs, that damn towel sliding open over his thigh, exposing his knee, and she realized he was still too close. Across the room on one of the kitchen bar stools would have been better, or out on the porch, or in Idaho.
With her hands clasped in her lap, her posture so upright Ian’s piano teacher would’ve been impressed, she said, “I was surprised when you showed up the other day. In a good way,” she added when his shoulders fell a fraction of an inch. “But now that I’ve had some time to think about things, I just want to be clear about what we’re doing…with each other. So there’s no confusion.”
She paused, and while he waited silently for her to continue, a single drop of water slid from a wet curl down his neck, between his pecs. Tearing her eyes away from the southern journey the drop made toward the white cotton edge of his towel, she said, “If you want to keep doing this, hooking up, we need to be clear that it’s just sex.”
He sat up a little straighter.
“We’re obviously attracted to each other, but you still live in Seattle. I’m still here. It doesn’t make any sense to involve emotions in this.”
“You don’t want emotions.” He didn’t ask this; he stated it, his eyes staring steadily into hers.
She pulled her hair over her shoulder, wondering why this conversation that had seemed perfectly reasonable when she’d had it with herself in the car now felt wrong, somehow. “It’s just, we’re friends. Over the last month, you’ve come to mean a lot to me.” It felt a little clinical, a smidge understated, a lot like horseshit. “But we’ve both been through some stuff. I’ve been hurt before. You’ve been hurt before. And I just don’t want us to end up hurting each other. We only have a few weeks. I can’t go anywhere. And it’s not like you’ll ever move here.” Her laughter was uneasy. His silence was deafening.
Clutching the massage oil bottle so tightly she was worried it might explode in her fist, she said, “So, we’re only good friends having sex, right? Consenting adults taking advantage of a unique situation?” She probably didn’t need to ask, since it was probably all he’d thought they were doing in the first place. “No feelings. No weirdness. No attachments. Unless you don’t want to have more sex. Which is fine too.”
Aside from his left eye twitching once, he only stared at her for several long, nerve-racking moments. Finally, he said, “I understand. And I definitely want more sex.”
She slumped in relief, burying her face in her hands. “Thank you. That was awful.”
“Awful?” There was a faint trace of laughter in his voice. “I thought you did great. You stated your case clearly and provided sound reasoning, all while offering me no-strings orgasms. A+ execution.” Graciously saving her from having to overthink everything she’d just said to him, he opened his legs a bit wider, wide enough to fit her, and said, “Come here.”
Even though she’d had him inside her less than forty-eight hours ago, she was anxious, uncertain while she rose to her feet. She’d put it there herself, insisted on it, but with each step toward him, the gap between them stretched out long, like a shadow.
But then his arms wrapped around her waist and tugged, his forehead pressing into her stomach. His clean, soapy scent surrounded her, and she realized there was no gap. There was only Cole. The same Cole who’d sent her pictures of flowers and sunsets because he thought they were pretty. The same Cole whose voice had been the last thing she’d heard before falling asleep almost every night over the last several weeks. “Are you still sore?” she asked, running her fingers through his soft, damp hair.
Gazing up at her, he said, “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in this much pain in my entire life.”
She gave him a pitying look. “Then lie down on your stomach. Let me make you feel better.”
Slowly, still holding his towel around his waist, he rolled over, sucking air in through his teeth while he crawled up the bed until he collapsed onto his pillow. Turning his head to the side, he grunted, “Ow.”
“Can I straddle you?”
Only one corner of his mouth was visible, but when it curled, she felt his full grin all the same. “Mira, I could be at death’s door, and the answer to that question would still be a resounding yes.”
Grinning too, she climbed on top of him, carefully bracketing his legs with hers. Flipping open the cap, she poured a small amount of massage oil into her palm and rubbed her hands together. When she touched her fingertips to his skin, he flinched.
“I never knew clearing trails could make a person’s skin hurt.”
“Is it too much?” she asked. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Not if the world was ending.”
