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I stare at the ceiling as he jogs into the bathroom and shuts the door. I can’t quite believe this is happening. Maverick and I just slept in the same bed. All night. We made out—a lot. I let him run his hands all over me, and I did the same to him. Sometimes we fumbled; sometimes we bumped noses or accidentally twisted our limbs together in a precarious way. Each time, we stopped, realigned, figured it out, and laughed it off.
It was perfect.
And now, we’re going to spend the day together and go to dinner.
Which we’ve done a thousand times before, but this is a date. At least it sounds like one.
I turn my phone over in my hands, trying to decide if I should text Callie. I really,reallywant to—but she’s going to have a million questions that I don’t feel prepared to answer, and besides, I don’t know if Maverick would be okay with it.
He emerges from the bathroom then, hair mussed, face a little stubbly, a mischievous look on his face. He jumps onto the bed, making me bounce, and crawls over to hover above me. Forgetting all about Callie, I toss my phone to the side.
“It’s almost nine,” he says. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Interesting,” I respond, “since you justleftthe bathroom to come over here and lay on top of me.”
Maverick laughs. “Well, I wanted a kiss.”
I push myself up just long enough to give him a quick peck, then flop back down into the pillows. “There you go.”
His eyes flash. “You know, you’ve got a lot of nerve for somebody who has now drooled on metwice.”
My jaw drops and my cheeks heat. “Is that why you took your shirt off?”
“Partially. You didn’t seem like you minded a minute ago.”
I start to stutter out a response, but my thoughts go quiet as Maverick lowers his head and starts dropping kisses down the column of my neck. He reaches my collarbone, sucking lightly, and my breath hitches. I clench my hand in his hair. “Mav.”
He lifts his head, letting his mouth hover half an inch from mine. I strain, trying to reach him, but he holds himself just out of my reach.
Then he drops another quick kiss on my nose and pushes himself up. “Gotta go get that shower.”
“Maverick!” I push myself up to a sitting position, but it’s too late. He’s already dashing away from the bed. “Get back here!”
He shoots me a wicked smirk and disappears into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
I flop back against the pillows and let myself grin like a little kid.
Thisismyfirsttime in Chicago, so I let Maverick lead the way. He takes me to what he calls “the generic tourist spots” with the promise that he’ll show me some lesser-known places the next time we come. My heart jumps with excitement at the idea that there’s going to be a next time.
We walk south down the Magnificent Mile, popping into stores whenever we need a dose of cool air. South of the Chicago River, we visit Millennium Park and a giant silver sculpture that Maverick calls “the Bean”. The sun is high in the sky at that point, so we buy tickets to the Art Institute as an excuse to spend a couple hours out of the June heat. We wander aimlessly through the galleries, neither of us particularly interested in the artwork, until we decide that we’ve regained enough energy to walk to Navy Pier.
On Navy Pier is a 200-foot-tall Ferris wheel that offers views of the city and Lake Michigan. When we stop at the top, I’m so busy looking out over the water that I squeak in surprise when Maverick pulls me in for a long kiss.
Back on the pier, we grab some ice cream and find a bench to sit on. Maverick has had a personal anecdote about almost every place we’ve visited today, and as we work on our cones and look out at the lake, he tells me about the time his sister pitched an almighty fit while in line for the same Ferris wheel we were just on. Unable to console her, their parents decided that Maverick’s dad would take Lilly somewhere to calm down while their mom rode the Ferris wheel with Maverick. When their dad went trudging up the pier with a screaming Lilly under his arm like a football, a security guard thought he was witnessing a kidnapping and tackled him to the ground.
“Then what?” I ask, watching a little boy toddle past as his parents shuffle along behind him.
“Mom ran over there, screaming her head off, and explained. The guy apologized and then we all went back to the hotel together. They were pissed at the time, but eventually they found it funny.”
I watch him for a moment, looking for any sign that sharing this memory has activated his grief. He seems to be in a good place today, though; his shoulders are relaxed, and he currently seems most concerned with digging up pieces of butterscotch from the bottom of his ice cream cup.
“I wish I had memories like that,” I tell him.
Maverick looks over at me, surprised. “I’ve heard you talk about going on vacation with your dad.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We’ve gone lots of places.” I pause, searching for the right words to go on. “I’ve heard some stories about some ofmytantrums, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure when he was a single dad with a toddler, boring seemed like a luxury. But in all my memories, everything was just…quiet. Like it always is with us. We would go to places like Hawaii—places you go to for the landscape—and just sit in a rental house or on the beach. He took me to do kiddy stuff sometimes, but even that’s only so much fun when you’re there alone with your dad. I couldn’t tell you a single story from one of our vacations that’s an interesting as the ones you’ve told me today.”
Maverick nods, but by the way his brow furrows, I can tell he doesn’t quite understand what I’m getting at.
