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He laughed again, louder this time. “Because…fuck. I don’t know. I’m starting not to remember with you looking at me like that.”
I paused a second. “How do I look?” I ran a hand through my hair. It was probably all messed up.
He caught my hand, using it to pull me back up to him. His voice dropped low. “You look like sex. You look amazing.”
But he wasn’t closing the distance. He held there, in my breathing space, his gaze skirting from my eyes to my mouth.
“Since I met you, we’ve been on the fast track,” he murmured. “I don’t want to fast track being with you. Kissing you. Touching you. Spending time with you. Finding out what makes you laugh, what makes your eyes soften—those are the things I want to learn along the way. Having sex…” He hesitated. “I just worry. I don’t want to fuck up with you.”
My irritation faded…slightly. “You don’t want to fuck it up by having sex with me?”
“In a nutshell.” The corner of his mouth lifted. He reached up, touching the side of my mouth with his thumb. “Will you stay with me?”
I really wanted to kiss him, but I nodded and murmured, “Yes.”
He flashed me a grin before getting up.
He showed me the bathroom I could use and brought in what I’d need—toothpaste and everything else. He brought me one of his shirts, which I loved. It was a Kings shirt with his number. It smelled like him. This shirt wasn’t ever making it back to him. It was going with me when I left in the morning.
In the bathroom, I took a moment.
Is this real?
Everything that had happened? We’d had a meet-cute, an actual meet-cute. He’d crashed two of my dates. He’d met the closest people I had to family, and our second official date was him asking me to sleep under the stars with him.
This wasn’t real.
There was going to be a universal joke pretty soon, on me.
This stuff didn’t happen to me.
Losing people, that happened to me.
People left me.
That’s why I was scared to call Vicky and Howard my parents, Lo my sister. Her girls, my nieces. Roger, my brother-in-law. It was safer to keep myself apart.
I was scared of losing them.
Or worse…
A shiver worked its way down my spine.
The universe. It was magical and powerful and scary, and yeah, it could happen.
“I’m going to go see Jojo.”
My mom’s eyes had widened, and she’d paled. She’d reached for me, her blond hair sweaty and dirty from not showering. “No, honey. You can’t. We have to get ready for dinner. We have—”
I’d shaken my head, sticking out my bottom lip. “No. I’m going.”
Ben had come to the doorway. He didn’t say a word, but I’d seen the hope in his eyes. He wanted me to go. He wanted to hear about it afterwards.
Mom hadn’t wanted us to make friends. We’d moved from place to place wherever she could get a job. But in every town, her boss was mean, her boss was a bitch, her boss tried to steal from her, set her up. She’d had a different story every time she was fired. Then onto to the next place. Eventually she’d just said we couldn’t get to know people. We’d have to leave again anyway, so it was easier.
I sucked in my breath, pulling out of the memory.
It hadn’t been easier that way. It’d just been lonelier.
