AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but I’m just…grateful.
Grateful for Sam’s tall, solid self at my side as we navigate the crowd pushing toward the escalator leading down to the train. Grateful for a travel buddy so I don’t have to perform the “plunk my backpack in the empty seat beside me and scratch and twitch until all potential seatmates assume I have body lice and move on to another free space” routine.
Grateful for his hand warm on my thigh as we pull out of the darkness of the tunnels under the station and out into the sunny day, headed south toward the land of our youth.
That hand has me tingling all over and my panties in a state I should also probably be ashamed of, but I can’t bring myself to regret the chemistry between us. I haven’t felt this way in so long, not since the debacle of sophomore year of college, when I accidentally got high on what I thought was a normal gummy worm and ended up making out with my roommate’s little brother, who was visiting for the weekend from Schenectady.
But I could never be sure if it was the altered state of my brain or Walter’s kissing skills that had me in such a wrought-up state. I’m suspecting it was the former, considering Walter was just as nerdy and inexperienced as his sister, Wendy, and was only seventeen to my nineteen. Wendy teased me for months afterward about being a drug-dealing cradle robber, even though Walter was the one who slipped me the laced gummy.
Since then, I’ve made out with other boys and a few men, but no one who ever made my panties damp with a single touch. And certainly no one who could reduce me to an incoherent lust-puddle with a gentle squeeze of his fingers against my inner thigh and a whispered, “Do you want anything from the café car?”
“Um, w-what?” I stammer, even though I understood the question the first time. But a sick little part of me wants to hear him whisper the words again, this time hopefully a little closer to my ear.
“I was going to go grab a bagel and a tea, since I didn’t have time for breakfast before we left,” he murmurs, his breath warm on my neck, making my tingles ramp up to light-electrocution levels of intensity. “Do you want anything?”
“Coffee with cream and sugar, please,” I say, willing myself to get my act together, but my voice is breathy as I add, “And a banana if they have one. Or just…any kind of fruit that doesn’t look like it’s been rolling around in a basket for a decade.”
He chuckles, a low vibration that makes my nipples tighten inside my bra. “Got it. Be right back.”
He rises and moves through the seats to the front of the car, drawing appreciative looks from a college girl in an NYU sweatshirt still putting her suitcase above her seat. He stops to help her, even though he has a hurt back, and her look of appreciation becomes one of open flirtation.
Sam says something in return but moves on without lingering for more than a beat, clearly uninterested. Or maybe not even noticing the bat of her eyelashes. So far, it doesn’t seem like Sam is aware of the effect he has on the opposite sex, which would go a long way to explaining why he’s still holding on to his V-Card.
It may just be a matter of him needing to shift focus to notice the gorilla in the room.
When he returns from his mostly successful mission—no bananas were available, but he did manage to grab a decently fresh orange—I ask, “Ever heard of the gorilla experiment?”
Dropping his seat tray to set his tea and paper-wrapped bagel on top, he grunts beneath his breath, a thing I also find sexy, proving I’m probably suffering from some sort of hormone malfunction. “Is that the one about selective attention?”
“Yeah. The researchers told people to watch a video of people playing in the park. One group of subjects was told to just watch the scene unfold for a few minutes. The other group was told to count the number of times two people in the upper right-hand corner of the scene passed a ball back and forth. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to any of the participants, there was a person in a gorilla suit who came creeping into the frame on the left every few seconds before creeping back out again.”
He grins around a bite of bagel. “Best job in the experiment. Being the guy in the suit.”
“Obviously,” I agree. “But the interesting thing is that only a few of the people told to watch the scene unfold noticed the gorilla and none of the subjects watching the couple play ball noticed it. Not a single one.”
“We only see what we expect to see,” he says.
“And we get major tunnel vision when we’re focused on a piece of the puzzle instead of the whole.”
“The human brain is wild,” he says. “But I’m assuming that’s not your point.”
“What if you’ve been so busy with work you’ve failed to notice that women think you’re smoking hot man meat?”
His eyes widen and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows his gulp of tea. “What brought you to this theory?”
“That college girl was flirting with you.”
“She was not,” he scoffs. “She was just batting her eyelashes in my general direction.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t be dense. She was flirting. And who knows how many other women have been flirting with you throughout the years, but you haven’t noticed because you have tunnel vision on other things. You could have had gorillas throwing themselves at you this entire time. Super sexy, successful, interesting gorillas who are hot after everything you have to offer.”
He sets the cup down and shifts to face me more fully. “Your point?”
“Maybe you should consider that before we get too far down this road.”
He tips his head closer to mine. “And what road is that? The road to sleeping in the same bed one night soon?”
Tingles resurging with a vengeance, I feel my face flush as I confirm, “Yes. I don’t want to take advantage of a guy too focused on the couple tossing the ball to notice the gorillas.”
