Anything in particular?
Yes.I want to focus on you picking me up and throwing me against a wall.
No, no, no.I literally facepalm.
It’s just been way too long at this point.
After a deep breath, I go with the safer, more rational option:
“Uh, how can I get abs like yours? I feel like that might up my dating value.”
He laughs.
“That’s easy,” he says. “Play football every day until you’re twenty-five and then have a career-ending injury.”
My stomach drops, the heat gone. Guilt replaces it like ice water.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I blurt. “I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
He shrugs, still smiling, but it’s softer now.
“It’s fine, not like you knew. Happens to athletes. I’m good.”
Then he adds, with that familiar spark of humor returning, “But seriously—abs? Totally doable.”
“Like how?” I ask, still trying to sound casual. Still tryingtoo hard.
He drops into a lunge, eyes forward, form clean, shoulders steady. “Like this. Even when you’re doing non-ab exercises, you want to engage your core.” He taps just below his sternum. “Feel mine, here.”
I blink. There’s a perfect off-ramp here where I sayno thanks.
I don’t take it.
My palm meets the cotton of his shirt. The contours are unmistakable even through fabric—strength I’ve been walking past for weeks pretending not to see. It’s absurd how much life can leak through something as innocent as a hand on a torso.
My body wakes up first, brain trailing behind. A slow fizz starts low in my stomach, rising warm and dizzying.
I pull back a little too late. “Anything else?” I ask, voice thinner than before. Hope and dread braided in the same breath.
He looks at me with a soft smile.
Not like my ex did—with checklists and silent sighs and polite avoidance.
But like he just saw me, standing in the light of my own hallway.
“Yeah, I say. There is.”
And it is an incredibly mortifying thing to admit to a man who looks likethat.
I want a nice butt.
But saying “butt” to him feels…illegal.
So my brain picks the worst possible solution:
“I want to firm up my…uh…”
I swallow.
