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“Because?”
She makes wide eyes. “Because if I have to go alone, I may hurt my mother. Dylan will keep my hands away from her neck.”
I cut some of the steak I had delivered. “Tell me about your mother.” We only spoke briefly about her family the other night, and while I know of the Cohens, I want to hear about them in her words.
She opens another box of Nutella goodies and takes a bite of the Nutella Dumpling in it. Her eyes light up as she eats, and she makes more of those noises I like. After swallowing her food, she says, “Joan Cohen is your perfect WASP with her old money, perfect manners, deeply embedded sense of entitlement, disdain for new money and excess of style, pointless discipline, and an insane ability to sit still for long periods of time.”
She’s just described half the women I know. Her description tells me everything while telling me nothing. “Who is she besides all that?”
This catches her by surprise, causing her to still and consider the question. While she thinks about that, she opens box number three and then looks at me. “Seriously, I’m not sure how you’re ever going to beat this dinner. I feel like a man shouldn’t bring out the big guns on the first date. Where does he go after that?”
I reach for her chair and drag her closer to me. “Firstly, I like that what I’m hearing in all this is that there’ll be a second date.” Fuck, she’s beautiful sitting there wearing only my shirt. “And second, this isn’t the big guns, Charlize. Trust me on that.”
Her breaths become uneven as she takes all this in. She doesn’t respond at first, which is unusual for her. Charlize usually has a lot to say on most topics. It’s one of my favorite things about her so far, the way words just fall out of her mouth. Like I told her earlier, I never know what’s coming next. I like that kind of unpredictability in a woman.
She’s silent for a little while before finally saying, “My mom wears the pants in her marriage and cares way too much about keeping up appearances. She married my father because he comes from old money too and she liked the idea of their union more than she liked the idea of love. In fact, I’m not sure she’s ever been in love, which is sad if true. We’re not the kind of close, though, that would let me ask her about this, and I find that sad too. If I ever have a daughter, I’ll make sure we’re that kind of close. I want her to ask me all about love and hate and sex and boys and dreams and disappointments and hope. And if I have a son, I’ll make sure he knows that the pants should be shared. Like, cut them in half and wear half each, you know?” She stops talking and takes a deep breath. “And just so you know, you should never make me a promise and then not keep it. Now that you’ve said this wasn’t the big guns, there better actually be bigger ones. I don’t do well with disappointment.”
Fuck me, where did this woman come from and why did I take so long to meet her?
Before I can stop myself—not that I’d want to—I’ve got my mouth on hers and am kissing her with everything I’ve got. She kisses me right back, giving me the same. Then, not letting my mouth go, she’s crawling into my lap and hugging her arms around my neck and kissing me with even more.
By the time we come up for air, we’re wrapped in each other’s arms and both breathless.
“I don’t do well with disappointment either,” I say, pushing a strand of her hair off her face and trying like hell to get all my thoughts back into a straight line. A fruitless endeavor when I’ve got Charlize in my lap. “There are absolutely bigger guns. And I agree that pants should be cut in half and shared.”
She takes a moment with that before relaxing into me. “Tell me about your mom.”
“You don’t want to eat your dinner before it goes cold?” Hell, I’m more than good with keeping her in my arms and talking with her, but I don’t want her to miss out on her food.
“I might be into food, Owen, but right now, I’m into you, and I want to know all the things I don’t know about you.”
I tighten my arms around her. “Mary North didn’t wear the pants in her marriage, but she tried hard. It sounds like our mothers could be best friends. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I wonder now after you mentioned it whether my mother has ever been in love. She—”
“Wait. You’ve never wondered that about your parents? Like, how?”
“I’m a guy, Charlize. I think about work, sex, finances, and sports. I don’t think about whether my mother was in love when she married my father.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Do you think about those things in that order? And how is food not on that list? Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever understand men. I have no idea how you can only think about four things while I’m over here finding new things to think about every hour of my life.”
“Obviously, I think about more things than I listed. The point is that we think differently.”
“I can share some new things with you that you can start thinking about. Maybe if I get them into your head, I can get them out of mine.” She wiggles around on my lap like she’s settling right in. “Okay, keep going about your mom. And are your parents divorced?”
“No, my father passed away when I was nineteen. He had a heart attack.”
Charlize’s expression softens. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard for you.”
“It was. But my older brother was there for me.”
“How old is he?”
“Ryan’s thirty-six, three years older than me.” I smile as I think about him. “You’d like him, I think. He’s more like you than me.”
“In what way?”
“Ryan is the kind of guy who probably does think about whether Mom was in love when she got married. He’s also the kind of guy who’d travel the world after having his heart broken.”
“You’re right. I like him already.” She pauses. “Tell me something about your mom that most people don’t know.”
