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I looked at my watch. “I think we’ve just missed that window by a minute! Did you eat already?”
Tate winked at me. “I’m going to take a break from the exercise regime and the fasting. Going on a little holiday from all that. What do you say, shall we have lunch? Maybe a burger, with fries? Preferably deep fried in a gallon of dirty palm oil?”
I laughed.
Tate called the waiter over and we ordered hamburgers.
We stayed for two hours. Just talking about everything, Star’s wedding-that-wasn’t-a-wedding, Summer’s new friend at school, a girl called Maddie who liked horses and everything that was the color green; how he was taking it easier at work. He asked me about my new job and Carlos, and about all the adventures I’d done over the past few weeks.
“You were right,” I said. “I needed to loosen up a bit, take some chances.”
“I’m serious about the hike,” he said. “Have you seen the redwoods yet? I know a good place to go.”
“Sounds great,” I said.
I couldn’t believe we were sitting here, in a fairly average restaurant, on plastic leather seats, having eaten normal hamburgers, not on artisanal bread with some kind of imported duck butter or anything over the top like that. Just ordinary burgers.
“I have to go to work now,” I said, a little regretfully.
“Your new boss sounds tough,” Tate said, getting up.
“He’s nothing like my old boss,” I said, stealing a glance at Tate.
“What was he like?” Tate asked in a light voice.
“Wonderful,” my voice caught as I choked on the emotion I was feeling.
Tate swooped down and kissed me then, pulling me close in front of everyone at the restaurant. But I didn’t notice any of that. I was consumed by joy, feeling his arms around me, his warm, spicy smell surrounded me and I knew, without a fact, that I had come home. I was finally where I needed to be.
Chapter 26
Tate
It was winter now but I didn’t feel the cold.
I had Evie to keep me warm. We took it slow, like, tectonic plate movement slow. For a few weeks, we held hands and kissed, nothing past first base. I felt like I was in school again, a teenager with raging hormones, dreaming of getting into some hot girl’s pants. The funny thing was, it wasn’t Evie who was stopping things from moving further. It was me. I was the one pulling back, saying hold on, let’s take a minute.
She never disagreed with me although I often wished she would.
I wanted to show her that I could have a relationship without sex, that it wasn’t all about being physical for me. But I ached for her, to feel her body against mine again. I knew what it was like, after all, to be with her, and nothing else came close. Well, it did come close and I knew we were leading up to it. I could see it in her eyes, her lingering touches, the way she touched my thigh sometimes. She’d look at me, teasingly, waiting for me to make the next move and I didn’t. We went for walks on beaches, saw movies, went to restaurants, took Summer to skate parks and had ice cream at the beach. It was like ticking every box on a dating site checklist.
One night, dropping her off at her place after we’d gone to dinner, she asked if I wanted to come up. The way she’d said it, her voice low and suggestive, made it obvious what she was talking about. “My room-mate is out, so we’ll have the place to ourselves?”
I didn’t need to be asked twice.
We went up the stairs, giggling like teenagers, me trying to pull her in for kisses along the way and her trying to wriggle free and get away from me, but not really. At the door, struggling with her keys, I asked her, “Are you sure?”
“About what?” she winked at me. “The future, us, the meaning of life? No! But let’s not overthink this, yeah? It’s been long enough.”
I couldn’t have agreed with her more.
We went straight to bed, getting rid of our clothes as quickly as we could, then jumping under the covers as it was freezing. Evie’s bed was a basic double bed, the sheets were nothing like my imported cotton and silk blends, but none of that mattered. When I took her into my arms, felt her skin against mine, there was nothing between us anymore. I kissed her for a long time, exploring her all over again, tasting her neck and licking her ear lobe, nibbling at the soft, tender skin. I let my hands wander all over her body, feeling her slightly tighter muscles, the more toned arms. She groaned as my hands slid between her legs and I touched her there, sliding my fingers into her pussy, caressing her, stroking slowly but insistently, feeling for her clitoris and gently rubbing it. I went down on her, eager to taste her, to lick and kiss her. She opened her legs wide and I buried my face in her, enveloped by the most intoxicated smell of her. She moaned and groaned as I probed with my tongue, licking and sucking, and she moved her hips against me, demanding more. When she came, it was with a scream of delight that pierced the quiet air in the apartment.
“Oh my God,” she said, over and over again, as I slipped my cock inside of her, so incredibly turned on that I climaxed right away.
“That was incredible,” she said in a low voice.
“Worth waiting for?” I asked.
