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He’s so still. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s always moving or fidgeting. I hurry back, ice cream cones in hand. He looks at me from behind his mirrored shades when I nudge him. “You okay?” I ask, handing him an already melting ice cream cone.
He licks around the base of the ice cream and I watch, fascinated, wanting to taste the vanilla on his tongue. I know he knows what I’m thinking—his dimple pops as he grins. Then he breaks the spell by chomping half the soft serve. Five seconds later, he winces and I laugh.
“Dumbass,” I lick a drip of my chocolate ice cream before it can reach the cone.
The brain freeze passes, and he grins. “Nope. I have a plan. Eat all mine…” He takes another bite, smaller this time. “Then I can eat yours.”
I hip-check him gently and we watch the long-armed swing of the gibbon moving about the ropes and poles as we eat our ice cream cones.
“How badly do you want in there?” I ask, realizing too late he’s been watching me, not the monkey.
I can feel the heat in his eyes, behind his mirrored sunglasses. “So fucking bad,” he murmurs, head dipping as he looks down my body.
“Inthere.” I point at the animal enclosure while I go hot all over.
He shrugs and turns back to the exhibit. “I’ve planned seven different routes through it. One I could only do if I were a monkey.”
The tone in his voice is a little sad, so I slip my free arm around his waist and give him a half hug. His arm comes around my shoulders and he squeezes me to his side. “I’m okay,” he says in a quiet but firm voice as he lets me go.
Immediately I want back under his arm, despite the heat of the day and the heat of his body. I want to smell the faint sweat under his cologne and feel his lips, cold from the ice cream, against my temple. Against other places.
No. I’m not going there. “Want to check out the tropical reef exhibit?” The brand-new exhibit is inside, where the temperature will be cooler. Hopefully.
He holds out his hand, and I take it because friends can hold hands. Even if he keeps tracing his thumb over the back of mine. It feels natural. He feels like a boyfriend.
He’s been a boyfriend. Two years, three years. The idea I don’t know him as well as I thought keeps tugging at me. He keeps plants alive and his house isn’t a giant shrine to adrenaline.
You aren’t paying attention, he’d said. Could he be right? How much of this man have I set aside as Not For Me, refusing to see the rest of him?
“You never stop surprising me,” I say as we amble along behind a stream of young parents pushing strollers.
Timothy tugs us out of the way so he can toss the paper from his now-gone cone in the trash. “How so?”
I hand him the rest of my cone. “You’ve been a boyfriend.”
He nods, eats the last few bites of my cone, and tosses the garbage away. “I definitely mean to brag—I am the best boyfriend. Ever.”
I roll my eyes, but he’s an amazing friend. He’d be an amazing boyfriend.
We step back into the stream, and soon we’re in the cool building housing the reef exhibit. I stop to watch a turtle glide alongside the floor-to-ceiling glass. Timothy drops my hand to stand close behind me, leaning to whisper in my ear. “At the hospital, you accused me of seeing hundreds of people.”
Shit. I’d forgotten. How could I forget? This is so clearly my Get Out Of A Potential Heart-Destroying Relationship with Timothy Free card. I need to play it right now. Put a stop to this. Then I can quash this physical attraction that has my body bending toward him every time he’s near. We can stay friends, my heart can stay safe.
“You said”—Timothy’s hand slides up and down my arm and I shiver—“I couldn’t love you and be with all those other people.”
My excitement over playing this card goes up in flames because it still hurts.
“I tried to fuck you out of my system for a few months after we met. It didn’t work, and I felt awful. It wasn’t fair to my partners that I was never thinking about them. So I stopped. Every ‘date’ I’ve been on since the day I bought you that ring has been strictly platonic.”
“Platonic?” I’m staring at the glass, but I’m watching his reflection. I can’t see more than the shadow of it, the way the light bounces around.
“No romance, no sex.” His breath ghosts my ear and a shiver zips down my spine, my skin breaking out in goose bumps.
“The woman from the bowling alley?”
He makes an unhappy noise. “A part of me gave up, seeing you with Dex, but I couldn’t even kiss her.”
The last of the hurt I’ve held on to from that night dissipates. “I didn’t want Dex,” I blurt.
