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My heart stops beating.
“Which do you prefer?” he asks me, handing the glasses over, his fingers grazing mine.
I can’t answer until I find my heart again. It’s wandered off into 2009 somewhere. Every inch of skin, however, is firmly in the present.
“I prefer to see clearly,” I announce in that haughty tone again, the one I use whenever I’m covering for the fact that I am only pretending to be a functional adult who knows what the hell she is doing with her emotions.
“Don’t we all?” he asks in a tone that says there’s more to that statement.
“Yes,” I say slowly, unable to look away. “Yes, I think we do.”
I didn’t know you could live for nine thousand years and not blink.
Somehow, that actually happens to me, standing in front of my new desk on my first day as Will Lotham’s contract employee.
And then his phone rings.
Spell broken.
In a rush to answer it, he grabs the phone out of his pocket, losing his grip. For a former quarterback, he’s remarkably clumsy as it flips and flops in his hands, falling in one big arc–
Straight into my cleavage.
Quarterbacks have a physical precision that moves beyond exceptional eye-hand coordination and well into the realm of sheer magic. It’s more than alchemy. More than discipline and practice. It takes muscle memory and endurance and raises them a level–one that Will demonstrates as he stops his hand, fingertips mere millimeters from diving between my breasts to grab his phone.
Magic, though, bleeds.
You cannot conjure the divine and ask it to do a simple task. Once unleashed, it seeks a challenge. It does not respect boundaries. Spells are notorious for breaking the laws of physics. Why would a power source stay within the confines of lines drawn by others who fear a world they cannot see or understand?
Will’s body is pure magic. Reflexes like that don’t come from following rules.
They come from playing with fire.
The cold metal case with a glass face makes the soft, warm valley of my boobs feel impersonal, like a speculum in the wrong place. A simple error, born of a fumble.
No big deal, right?
His eyes are glued to my chest, the phone vibrating between my girls in an insanely, embarrassingly pleasurable hum, his jacket lapels moving up and down, wide and narrow as he breathes, so close to me that I feel his warmth. With a steady hand I reach into my shirt, pull out his phone, and start laughing.
Hard.
Everything is a blur at normal distance, but it comes into sharper focus when I look at him this close. I’m nearsighted. You have to be an inch or two from my face before I can see all your edges, all the lines that separate you from the rest of the world. Objects blur until the perfect range makes them distinct.
That range is different for everyone.
But we all have a focal point for clarity.
Finding yours is a life journey.
“Nice catch,” Will says as I hand him his now-warm phone. It stops ringing. Is it my imagination or does his hand linger for a few seconds longer than is socially polite?
“That is as athletic as I get. Good to see them finally do something constructive,” I say, looking down at my breasts. “They’ve been nothing but a source of agony for most of my life.”
“Agony? I think you mean pleasure.”
His phone rings again.
Literally saved by the bell.
