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“Will be if it’s permanent.” His stomach grumbled. “At least my gut still works.”
“You should probably feed me.” Did he still have a refrigerator full of Indian food? Lego men holding his computer cables?
“I should.”
He snuggled that much closer and it made her smile, but she was starving and she badly wanted a shower and she needed to check her messages, text Cara. “Are you worried about what happens if we leave this bed?”
“I don’t have any clue about how things work. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be cool and let you go back to your life, or if I’m flayed by the sex or, yeah, I’m one hopelessly confused guy, so figured I’d keep you in bed where it’s warm and comfortable and I don’t have to admit I’ve never fed a woman lunch without there being a waiter around.”
She was the adult here and adults planned, established parameters and made people feel safe. “Would you like me to stay the night?”
“Yes. But I might want you to stay all the nights there are and I don’t know where that’s coming from. We don’t know each other.”
“As far as the rules of a thing go, that’s okay. We get to know each other and we either like what we see or the thing,” she shrugged, she didn’t have a good way to close out that thought. There hadn’t been a night with a man that wasn’t fueled by some kind of stimulant in a very long time. “The thing stops being fun.”
“I don’t want it to stop being fun.”
“Until it does.” Maybe she needed to teach him to be more closed up, like most men she knew. Like her own father. This putting it all out there stuff was oddly harder to deal with than strained silences. It was easy to shut the door on the silences without a backward glance.
“We come from very different worlds. The apartment I share with my friend, Cara, is a walk-up. It’s tiny. The kitchen is a galley. There’s a Korean restaurant beneath us so it always smells of kimchi. The fire brigade has been called to Se Jong’s three times this month. I catch the bus or the trolley or I walk. But there’s real sugar in our sugar bowl.”
“You’re saying different doesn’t work.”
“I’m an exotic dancer and if you’re not a drug dealer then you’re some trust fund douchebag who doesn’t know how to order a decorator service.”
He laughed, a gruff sound that came accompanied with a stomach gurgle. “Stay and let me feed you. I’ll tell you my story.”
“Tell me about this. She put her hand over the tattoo on his pec. Script decorated with scrolls and curlicues, a short-sided cross, stumpy like a plus sign, that had wings, flowers and a red heartbeat center, with the words twisted into the design: It’s your road and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
His stomach growled again. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but we need to eat.” He uncurled himself from her and sat. “You take the en suite. I’ll use the other bathroom. Meet you in the kitchen.”
Washed, dried, except for her hair, teeth cleaned again, a text sent to Cara who might think she was dead, and dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt, but barefoot, she met Reid in the kitchen. He was dressed too, in the same sweats and t-shirt he’d had on earlier.
He totally checked her out.
“What?” She knew what. The fact he wanted them naked again together was in his eyes, but she wanted to hear him say it.
“What else do you carry in that bag?”
She laughed, he didn’t like being predictable. Textbooks, her laptop, a burned-out hairdryer which she kept forgetting to ditch, a costume that needed washing, her robe, spare underwear, tape, Band-Aids, Biofreeze, butt glue, pole wax, makeup, hairspray, toothbrush, hairbrush, condoms, apartment keys, headache tablets and mints, and that was off the top of her head. She’d lived out of a sports bag most of her life and the habit sure came in handy at times like this.
She took the stool. “I like to travel prepared.”
“I like that about you.”
“Right now you like everything about me and I’m going to bask in that a while.”
He grinned. There were plates on the counter, forks. The microwave pinged. “There’s so much to like about you, it’s hard to know where to start.” He turned away and took a container out of the microwave and put another one in. Had he not learned the rule that men made women work for approval?
“You know you’re supposed to be playing hard to get, making me sweat for compliments and worry about whether you’re really interested in me or I’m just a warm body.”
He turned to face her, a hand to his head in a gesture of exasperation. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
It’s what most of the men she’d hung out with did. And every coach, even Costin. You got the approval when you got things right and not before. “It’s what people do.”
“Did I tell you I’m no good with people? I don’t do the things they do.”
She could see that. Not only his choosing to be alone and apart, he had that unnerving laser focus, direct manner and commanding nature, that confronting honesty. And he could be grumpy, sulky and moody, though he was none of those things now. He’d also lost that uncomfortable nervous edge he’d had when they were last in the kitchen together.
