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“Where’d you go?” Charlie asks, and I turn back to him.
“Um… Relationship Melancholy Island,” I say, trying to joke. “I was marooned there for a lot of last year and I have zero interest in returning.”
“Oh, I’ve been there,” Charlie says, as affably as if we’re talking about a real trip. “Great drinks, though.”
I laugh. Something tells me that no one has ever spurned Charlie Fox, but I appreciate him pretending, all the same.
“You want to make a dive for it?” Charlie jokes, nodding out at the water. “Maybe I can find an old door, if you promise not to push me off.”
“The Titanic was a horrible tragedy, Charlie.” But I’m fighting a smile, and he knows it. “You know, I tried to get Miles to do so many of my New York bucket list items—including a sunset cruise. Now, I’m so grateful he was ‘too busy’ with school. I still have city firsts that aren’t ruined by painful memories.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Charlie says. He holds out the last of his cocktail to mine. “To having more New York dreams ahead of us than behind us.”
“Aww,” I say quietly, genuinely touched. “Cheers.”
Once we’reon dry land, he calls us a car. “C’mon. Let me give you a ride home.”
The sky’s dark now, and the city is still bright, flickering and alive as we drive back, falling into an easy conversation. We swap our worst subway mishaps and the drunken antics of being twenty-two in New York, and by the time we
pull up to my aunts’ shop, I wish the ride could last a little longer.
Like, New Jersey kind of long.
Charlie gets out to open my car door, as always. “Thanks for the evening,” I say awkwardly. “Hopefully the next event won’t have quite so many reminders of my tragic romantic past. Lord knows, you’re not paying me to pull papaya duty all night.”
“Hey, wait,” he says, before I can bolt inside. “Those two deserve each other, being idiot enough to lose you from their lives. You’re a catch, Sommerville. You know that, right?”
Oh.
Charlie is staring directly at me, his gaze hot in the streetlights. And just like that, every lustful instinct in my body comes roaring back to life in one bone-deep, spine-tingling surge.
God, I want him.
I swallow hard, my breath quickening, and I swear, his gaze falls to my mouth.
“I should… Umm…” Charlie mumbles, raking a hand through his hair.
“Me too…” I don’t move. And, God help me, neither does he.
The moment seems to last forever, suspended there on the sidewalk with my blood running hot and my pulse skittering and that delicious fizz of anticipation rising higher, waiting for the moment when he’ll reach for me, kiss me, surrender to this chemistry and take me upstairs to do unspeakable things—
“Bye.” Charlie blurts, tearing his gaze from mine. “Sleep tight!”
He bolts back to the car, and, just like that, he’s gone.
11
GRACE
I barely sleep a wink.Can you blame me? After that Moment-with-a-capital-M with Charlie, I’m all wound up with no place to go.
No place except straight to my nightstand to spend some quality time with my vibrator, imagining Charlie the whole time. Touching me, urgent and demanding. Moving his body against mine.Thrusting, hard and deep inside me…
But it’s not him. The finest sex toy manufacturers in the world have yet to make a model that can make me feel like Charlie did, his fingertips barely grazing my back through my dress, but still managing to set my whole body on fire.
They can’t recapture the look in his eyes, turning my insides to jelly.
And even when I climax fast, moaning aloud, I know, it’s nothing compared with the way Charlie would draw out my orgasm with expert strokes, making me beg for more.
