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“Bullshit!” she cries out, slapping the island and laughing, startling me into looking at her. “You know me better than that.”
And suddenly I know I do. I’ve always understood Lorelai Jones. I get her quirks and love her instincts. Even if I didn’t have secret deep-seated feelings for her, she’s still the one person I like the most.
And right now, I feel like I am knowing things—potentially scary things—about Lorelai that maybe she doesn’t even know about herself, and what the ever-livingshitam I supposed to do about that?
Just roll with it, I guess? That’s what Old Huck would do. Find an equilibrium. Or at least a baseline we can both live with.
“Which iswhy,” I say even louder, cracking a smile, “I assumed it was a song. Because you couldn’t possibly mean to send me something like that. Not now, anyway. Years ago, maybe…”
She grabs up her wine and snorts into the glass before swallowing another gulp, and I’m mesmerized watching herlong throat work. “Yeah,” she hedges softly. “Well. Not all of us have”—she makes air quotes with her guitar-callused fingers—“anonymous poetry accounts.Some of us have to get creative when expressing our… desires.”
At the last word, my heart seizes in my chest and I can feel the blood leaching from underneath my skin, every last drop on a raging course south. My voice comes out hoarse when I say, “Jesus fuck.”
She raises a fine brow and puts down her glass. Having pity on me, she nudges mine toward me. “Take a big sip. The Pinot is delicious and especially fortifying tonight.”
I reach for it. “I think I’d rather have the absinthe.”
“Get ahold of yourself, Huck. This isn’t the time for being shy. You regularly write about oral sex on a public forum.”
I choke on my sip and Lorelai flushes prettily, her lips pursed. “Are you gonna deny it?”
I chug the entire glass, which in turn burns my entire esophagus, but desperate times and all. “How long have you known?”
“That you have an anonymous erotic poetry account on Instagram or that you’re writing about me?”
I clear my throat and retrieve the bottle, refilling both our glasses. “Both,” I rasp.
“I’ve known about the account for months. I’ve followed it for longer, but I didn’t know it was you until I accidentally saw your phone notifications that one time we were ordering from Sweet Tomato. As far as knowing you were writing about me… I didn’t. Until now, anyway. I guessed. Or hoped rather, after the sunflower poem.”
I wrote the night after she made me pull over at a field ofsunflowers and we wandered in between the rows. She was tipsy and I was feeling especially poetic.
So she knows. She…knows.
“And then the champagne poems from the other night… after I posted from the wedding.”
I spread my hands on the countertop, dropping my head and taking a deep breath.
“Still need the absinthe?” she asks quietly, and I recognize the offer for what it is. A chance to pretend this conversation never happened.
I shake my head, still reeling, but not a complete idiot. I know what she’s asking for. I can recognize the come-on for what it is. Of course she wants Old Huck. The good-time guy. The no-strings-attached fuck.
That’s what sexts are for, after all. Even ones set to music and sung in the loveliest voice. Not once did she mention love or feelings or taking our relationship to the next level. Which, okay, neither have I. My poetry has been purely physical. About her, but not. About us, but not.
Because the one thing Old Huck and New Craig have in common is an ironclad sense of self-preservation.
Find an acceptable baseline, Boseman.
I decide to be honest. This is new territory for me. “I don’t know where to go from here, though.”
Lorelai drops down from her chair and pads on bare feet around the island to stand in front of me. Just as close as she was the other night on the corner when we nearly…
She raises her eyes to mine and her mouth follows. Her lips a millimeter away from my own, her wine-soaked breathmaking my mouth water. She trails her fingers along the back of my hand, still on the countertop, grounding me; up my tense forearm, over my shoulder, and around my neck.
“You could start by kissing me.”
Without conscious thought, I’m reaching for her hips, my fingers eager, dragging her close. I swallow hard. “Okay.” My voice comes out sounding like it’s been dragged across sandpaper.
“Thank god.”
