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“Pfft, if only,” I joke, toeing the now full mattress to check its stability before I take a seat on it. “I met him after falling over my own feet. Ass-deep in the underbrush.”
“Well,” David laughs, producing a corkscrew from his pocket. The man is nothing if not prepared. He fills two cups with red wine. “At least you made an entrance.”
I didn’t tell Jess and Sasha about Caleb. It had felt somehow wrong to admit our arrangement over the internet. Especially as Jess would want details and Sasha would instantly start planning our wedding. David, on the other hand… Well, he’s someone I had always been able to talk to. Without drama or exaggeration. And sitting with him here on the floor of my new home, it feels acceptable to divulge a few secrets. Here, in the confines of my newly-bought privacy.
“I may have made a bit more of an entrance, ” I admit, drawing back my lower lip in an awkward wince.
“I presume by that little cryptic comment, you mean you’re sleeping with him?” There is no judgment in David’s tone. Just acceptance.
“Er, yeah.”
“Why ‘er, yeah’?” David demands, holding up his cup for me to tap with my own. Like we’re toasting to my recent brazen activities. “There something wrong with him?”
“No.”
“He married?”
“No!”
David shrugs.
“Then why the awkwardness? If I was sleeping with a guy that ruggedly handsome, I’d be telling anyone who’d listen. With sickening smugness.”
I laugh, picturing it exactly as David is describing.
I’d introduced him to Nick a few years ago, and the second they’d taken their will-they-won’t-they relationship to the next level, David had shared in abundance. My Snapchat still has yet to recover.
I sip from my cup, letting the velvety softness of the wine drift over my tongue and down my throat. “I guess because it’s not actually a relationship.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just sex,” I admit. “Nothing more.”
David is the first to know that I like to compartmentalize my life. I’m an efficient, in-control kind of person. But this is the first time I’d ever done it in the romantic sphere. Normally, if I’m with someone, I’m with them. None of this yes for sex, no for emotion.
Somehow, it feels a little dirty to admit.
“Does he know that?” David asks, his tone suddenly serious.
“What? Of course he does.”
Caleb’s words from the truck ride suddenly roll through my head. “About how casual this is…” Followed by the word he’d used last night: Unimportant.
David’s brows rise and his lips twist into the universal sign for “uh-huh.”
“Okay, we’ll get to that bit after we’ve had more wine,” he says, letting me off the hook, “but trust me when I say, you might wanna have a rethink on that whole sex-only thing. I’m not sure it’s going as smoothly as you might think.”
Dammit, it’s like the man is psychic, reading my fears from the last twenty-four hours like pages of a book. A really simple book. Written in crayon.
“Okay, so tell me about you and what’s happening back home then.”
The moment I say the words, I wish I could take them back. Take them back, swallow them down, choke on them, and then bite off my tongue for good measure.
The charismatic, carefree David seems to dissolve before my eyes. A nerve in front of his ear pops as he clenches his jaw and his eyes start to shine a little too bright.
“Dammit, David, ignore me. I’m being a total asshole. I shouldn’t have—”
“Shouldn’t have what?” David tries to laugh, but it doesn’t sound right. Less like an outpouring of joy and more like breaking glass. “Shouldn’t have asked me how it’s going? It’s a simple question, Liz, and I’m going to have to get used to answering it. Actually,” he swallows and seems to collect himself a little, “I have gotten better at answering it. I guess seeing you again already had me emotionally out of whack, so I was ill-prepared for a sec there.”
