Page 77 of Offside Angle

I probably should recognize that as a warning. I don’t.

“Because he tried to kiss me last year when he was drunk. And obviously Shane is hot, so I figured he was a good control group.”

Santi slowly raises an eyebrow.

Maybe control group is generous considering the group consisted entirely of Shane, but that’s not the point.

“So I made him kiss me.”

The towel stops moving.

“You kissed Shane.”

“Yes, but that’s the good part.”

Santi looks at me for a second, then finishes cleaning my foot without comment. Somehow the silence feels more threatening than if he’d actually said something.

“I felt nothing,” I continue, because he clearly hasn’t grasped the scientific significance yet. “Nothing, Santi. Nada. Not even a flicker. And you cannot tell me Shane isn’t objectively hot.”

“That so.”

“Very.”

He reaches into his bag, pulls out a pair of socks, and starts rolling one onto my foot.

I watch him do it with increasing confusion. There are a lot of things happening this morning that apparently require no explanation.

“So yeah,” I continue while he puts the second sock on me, “that’s how I know. Shane kissed me, nothing happened, then I came here and kissed you and—”

Santi looks up.

I stop. Something about his face finally gets through the excitement. “…what?”

He rises from the floor and places one knee on the mattress.

Oh.

Then the other.

Oh, shit.

I start leaning backward as he moves toward me, mostly because there’s nowhere else to go, until my shoulders hit the pillows and Santi is above me.

“So,” he says, bracing himself over me, “let me make sure I understand your very scientific experiment.”

I swallow.

“You kissed another man this morning.”

Technically—

“Before coming here to kiss me.”

Ah.

When he says it like that, the methodology does have certain flaws.

“Oh God.” I grimace. “Okay, I’m sorry. I know that sounds bad, but I needed to know.”