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What in the Bad Idea Jeans am I doing?Hadn’t we just agreed not twenty-four hours ago to keep our relationship firmly in the Friend Zone? Naked fantasies were off-limits in the Friend Zone, as were booty calls.
Forcing the image of Donal’s naked body out of my mind, I tapped out a neutral reply to his text.
Tess: I am.
Donal: Still working?
Tess: Not exactly.
Donal: What does not exactly mean?
Tess: Just surfing the internet.
Instead of texting me back, he sent a request for a video call.
I accepted without thinking about the fact that I was wearing pajamas and no makeup, with my hair piled up on my head in a disheveled bun. And not one of those cute messy buns like twentysomethings on Instagram wore, but a truly disastrous rat’s nest that had canted neglectfully to one side.
But I didn’t have a chance to worry about that, because Donal’s face filled my screen, and my stomach started doing a weird fluttering thing when he broke into a grin that showed off both of his devastating dimples.
“Is that code for watching porn? Please tell me I interrupted you watching porn.”
I tried not to smile and utterly failed. “Sorry to disappoint, but I was researching knitting patterns.”
“That’s not nearly as much fun as watching porn.” His hair looked damp, and I wondered if he’d just taken a shower. He also appeared to be shirtless, which did nothing to help me avoid thinking about him naked. Nor did the fact that we were talking about porn.
“No, it definitely isn’t,” I agreed, feeling my face flush with heat—along with other assorted parts of me.
The way his eyes seemed to darken as they swept over my image on his screen made me desperately want to know what he was thinking. “I never knew you were a knitter,” he said anticlimactically.
I exhaled, simultaneously relieved and disappointed he’d steered the conversation away from sex and into safer territory. “I’m thinking of taking it up again.”
His pensive silence reminded me he’d seen the half-finished baby blanket at my apartment, which meant he’d probably figured out what had prompted my newfound interest in knitting.
Feeling uncomfortably exposed, I attempted to cover the awkward conversational lull. “Did you know that in World Wars I and II, spies sometimes used encrypted knitting to smuggle military intelligence? The US and UK even banned the printing of knitting patterns during WWII because they were afraid the Germans might hide code in them.”
“Like the old woman inA Tale of Two Cities,” Donal said, surprising me.
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
“We read it freshman year in Mrs. Whatshername’s class.”
“Mrs. Vassallo. And I’m shocked you actually read the book.” I used to get so mad at him because he almost never did the reading for English. He’d skim the Cliff’s Notes instead, and half the time he’d end up getting a better grade than me. He’d even scored higher than me on the AP English exam, which wassounfair, but Donal had always been lucky like that. He had a knack for performing well on tests, which had allowed him to skate by without putting in as much work. It was how he’d nearly beat me out for valedictorian despite his sloppy study habits.
Back when school was my whole life—and the only thing I was any good at—things like that had seemed so important. Now it felt like a silly, pointless thing to care about. Being good at studying didn’t make me any smarter than being good at taking tests made Donal. They were two different skills, each useful in different applications.
“It was one of the few books I actually bothered to read,” he said, reaching up to run a hand through his damp hair. “I thought it sounded like a cool wartime thriller, but then it actually turned out to be this tragic love story. Kind of likeCasablanca.”
For some reason, talking about tragic love stories made me almost as uncomfortable as talking about porn. “What are you doing up, anyway? Were you working late again?”
“I just got back from the gym. I needed to work off some tension.”
Well. That explained the shirtless dampness.
“Bad day?” I asked, trying very hard not to picture him nakedandsweaty.
“Longday.” He was walking across his apartment holding his phone. The image on my screen bounced around, making me vaguely seasick. “I was stuck in back-to-back meetings almost the whole day, which meant I didn’t get any actual work done. So tomorrow I get to play catch-up—in between even more meetings. I need to clone myself so I can send one of me to meetings while the other one stays in my office reviewing SEC filings and redlining contracts.” When the camera finally stopped moving, there was a headboard behind him.
Oh great, now he was in bed.
