One Night Hand Stand

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Case

I am not a fan of suits.

Birthday suits, though? Of course. We got that part out of the way nice and early.

But for a first date, and with someone like Sarah, I pull out my finest threads.

Good thing, because measuring up to her when she's dressed like that takes some work.

Arriving at her apartment, I find the door open, a breathtakingly gorgeous Sarah standing there, smelling like cinnamon and future sex. The dark teal wraparound dress is sleeveless, with a high collar in the front, and a sash that begs to be tugged so her hot, naked body is revealed. Blood rushes through me, pulsing hard, and suddenly, what’s dinner?

I want her in bed.

Date first. Sex second.

And third.

And fourth….

Sarah’s light-brown hair is up in a sweet 'do that makes me want to kiss her neck.

So I do.

Giggles follow, then a low whistle as I pull back and she checks me out.

“You clean up nicely.” Is that a purr in her voice? The awkward woman I met last night – last night? – is being shed like a costume, an outer skin, by someone far more confident.

Someone I'm clearly drawing out.

“I put in the work. But you force me to up my game, Ms. Gorenta.”

Her cheeks turn pink with pleasure. I know what she sounds like when she comes, so that mystery's out of the way. This is a first for me – a date after a one-night stand.

Okay, so the one-night stand was a first too. Which makes this a first on top of a first.

Speaking of things on top of each other...

The kiss is easy, hot, filled with an eagerness we match in the other, hands everywhere, hers grabbing my ass with a ferocious grip I like.

Like a little too much, as my tailored pants are about to leave nothing to the imagination. We have dinner reservations and MoMoTaste (pronounced mo-mo-TAH-stay ), and I had to make a deal with the concierge to get a last-minute window table.

He gets three free months at Chakroga123. Not that I care. In three weeks, I'm done.

Done .

And life changes forever.

A little moan escapes out of Sarah, a sound of yielding that makes me groan, our tongues going places that make promises of more, and soon, dinner at a fine restaurant pales in comparison to dragging her back into her apartment, screwing until we're dehydrated, and ordering Door Dash sushi.

“Ahem,” she says as she pulls back, reaching up to wipe lipstick off my mouth with her thumb. Our eyes lock as she smiles at me, full and open.

It's the kind of smile you could jump right into, unabashed and with complete abandon.

A freefall smile, that one is.

“That was a lovely way to say hello,” I whisper in her ear, inhaling slowly, enjoying the warm glow of her. “Ready?”

“Where are we going?”

“MoMoTaste.”

“No way!”

“Yes way.”

“It's so...”

“Pretentious?”

“Special.”

“Then I chose correctly, because so are you.”

She pulls back and gives me a look, from shined shoe tips to the crown of my head.

“You don't look like a yoga teacher.”

“Not in a suit, no.”

“You don't act like a yoga dude.”

“Am I supposed to smell like patchouli and spend hours debating why breastmilk isn't vegan?”

“Well... yes.”

“There are lots of ways to be into yoga, Sarah. I view it as a perfect way to focus. Body-mind alignment.” Our gaze locks and lingers longer than it should.

I place my hand on the small of her back as we go down the stairs of her building, her high heels making the steps a bit hard, giving me more reason to touch her.

It's easier to use Uber than it is to drive around town. This way, if I drink a little too much, I'm staying safe. The car, a silver Nissan Ultima, pulls up within seconds of our departure through the building’s main doors.

“Nice,” she says in a voice that pretends I've planned it down to the second.

“Pure luck.”

“Just like meeting you last night,” she replies as we climb into the backseat.

Like many rideshare drivers, this one has signs on the backs of the front seats, mints in little containers, bottled water, hand sanitizer, headache pills, a small container marked “For the women” that I assume holds tampons (or perhaps pepper spray?), and every creature comfort you could imagine.

What's next? Condoms and a Roomba?

“On a date?” the driver, who the app says is Sean, asks nicely. “Taking you two to MoMoTaste.” He pronounces it mo-mo-tayst .

“Yes.”

“Not a first date, though,” the guy guesses.

Sarah tilts her head and looks at him in the rearview mirror. “Why would you say that?”

“You're too comfortable together. Besides,” he says, catching my eye, looking me up and down as he shakes his head. “If this were a first date, dude is trying waaaaaay too hard.”

“I'm a sure thing,” Sarah says, squeezing my hand.

The driver laughs his ass off at that one.

So do I.

“Definitely not first date,” Sean ventures. “No one says that. This is the date where you try to figure out whether you'll block the other person three hours from now.”

“You have a very bleak view of romance, Sean,” I inform him, on alert. Talkative Uber drivers are no big deal when you’re using them alone, but the stakes are high here.

Hold on.

Why are the stakes so high? I like her. Like her a great deal. I even like like her, as Jared says.

But enough to be this vigilant? Really?

Her smile turns to something contemplative as she says to me, “We really should get to know each better, shouldn’t we? I’ll start. What’s the deal with your accent?”

“What accent are you talking about?” I reply, going into a fake American voice.

She reels back. “That’s – whoa. That’s very good.”

“It should be. I’ve lived here for more than half my life.”

“Then why the British accent?”

“I was born in England. Moved here when I was fifteen. I tried hard to get rid of it, but then I discovered something very, very valuable about my accent.”

“Let me guess: it’s a chick magnet,” Sean pipes up from the front seat. He either just lost a star or gained one in my review, and how the next part of this night goes determines his fate.

And his tip.

“I don’t know. Let the lady decide. Is it?” I tease Sarah.

“Let me hear you speak in your American voice again. I have to compare to see.”

“In the name of research, I will do so. What should I say twice? To do this justice, we need to have me say the exact same thing in my regular voice and in my American voice.”

Sarah finds her phone in her purse and taps some icons. “How about part of a book I’ve been reading lately?”

“Sounds good.”

She thrusts the phone at me. “Here.”

“What’s the book called?”

“ Love You Right .”

My eyebrows shoot high as she stares me down, her eyes like a dare.

“Sounds like a romance novel,” I tease.

“It is. Sort of. More like a big, sweeping contemporary story about a town where every day is Valentine’s Day.”

“Sounds Hallmarky.”

Sarah laughs, charming me even more as she pushes her hair back around one ear, her turn for raised eyebrows. “You watch Hallmark movies?”

“My sister wa – is a huge fan.” Using past tense to describe Stacey feels too vulnerable. Talking about dead people we love is more like a fifth date experience.

From the way Sarah’s watching me, I think we’ll get to that date, too, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage. I never planned to fall like this for someone who has no idea I knew who she was when we met at that bar.

Now I feel like a complete ass, keeping the truth from her. Dig the hole deeper, Case.

Three more weeks , my inner devil whispers. Date her until the sale goes through, and then confess.

If the next three weeks already felt like an eternity, now it feels like purgatory. I can’t lie to Sarah for three weeks.

I’m not sure I’ll make it through the next three hours without spilling my guts.

“Case?”

“Hmm?”

“How many Hallmark movies have you watched?”

“The one about the career-driven woman from the big city who falls in love with a lumberjack, so… maybe fifty movies?”

Her throaty chuckle makes me like her even more.

“Go for it, dude. Give me your best American voice first, then your best British voice.”

“My British voice is my voice. By default, it has to be my best.”

“Now you’re splitting hairs.”

I take her phone and begin reading, flattening and widening my speech to go with the standard American accent. Years ago, I caught Tom Holland on a press junket, being interviewed about his facility with accents. It reminded me of myself in high school, where flipping back and forth was a fun party trick, until I realized the whole chick magnet thing.

Sean the Uber driver clearly has, too.

I clear my throat and begin reading, clearly in the middle of a chapter, using my flat American voice:

“My beard,” he murmured between kisses. “Sorry.”

“What beard? You shaved it off.”

“I meant this.” He rubbed his stubble. “It’s going to chafe.”

She laughed. “Of all the reasons for chafe marks, this one is the best. My face can handle it.”

“I wasn’t talking about your face.”

Sarah snatches the phone out of my hand, her face bright red. “Oh, my God.”

“I think that’s what the woman in that book is about to moan,” I reply in my American voice. Reaching to stroke my chin, I give her a leer. “Chafing, huh?”

Sean groans. “Come on, guys. Save it for some other Uber driver’s backseat. Don’t make me pull out a blacklight and anti-bacterial cleanser in ten minutes.”

“I didn’t mean to have you read part of a sex scene!” she insists.

I shrug, reaching for her hand. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

Tapping the end of her fingernail against her front teeth, she thinks about my words. I like that about her. Most women are nervous, constantly talking on first dates, but Sarah pauses. Taking her time, she wholly owns the space she needs to craft an answer. There’s an authority inherent in assuming you can take time, and also a centeredness – for as much as I hate that overused word in the yoga industry.

Sarah is grounded.

When she finally speaks, it comes with the phone thrust in my hand again.

“British, this time,” she insists.

“You think the word chafe sounds better in England?”

“Does it feel better there?”

“I – I wouldn’t know.”

Sean interrupts from the front seat, clearly eavesdropping. “Dude, because you’ve never had a man between your legs, or because you’ve never – ”

“SHUT UP, SEAN!” I call out firmly. He complies, turning the radio up slightly, going quiet. Visions of ratings stars are clearly dancing through his head.

“Can you answer Sean’s question so I know? That’ll be one thing I can check off on my list of questions about you.”

“You have a Case checklist?”

“I do.”

“And somewhere on it, you want to know whether I’ve been with… a man?”

“More general than that. Overall sexual preferences.”

“I rather like giving you chafe marks, Sarah. Do you have a category for that? A box I can fit into?”

“Oh, I have a box you definitely fit into, Case. No worries there.”

Once again, laughter pours out of me, unexpected, like a shock of a full ice bucket tossed over my head.

“I want to hear it in your voice,” she murmurs, leaning across the seat, “because the words were a turn on when you read them in your American voice, but I suspect my panties will become soaked if you do it with your regular accent.”

“And you want wet panties?”

“Of course. Then I’ll have to remove them.”

“I like panties the most when they’re removed.”

“I suspected that, Case. That’s going in my database about you.”

“I’ve graduated from a checklist to a database?”

“Keep going and you’ll earn your way up to a library. A CRM.”

“A sexual Salesforce of sorts?”

“I think we’re going to do some serious records merging, so yes.”

“And if we’re together forever, does it turn into an archive?”

My tone of voice is light and joking, but the look I give her is so serious, her gaze so searing in its fierce openness, daring me to reveal myself to her, be vulnerable, be real. Sarah makes me want to check all the right boxes on her list, fill all the correct answers in her database, shelve all the books in her library, and give that archive every artifact full of meaning and rich context.

Which means I’m a goner.

“What do you do for a living if you’re talking about checklists, databases, and libraries?” Sean interrupts, his eye on Sarah.

Oh, shit.

At some point, we have to have the “what do you do for a living?” talk. We’re playing a dangerous little game here, pretending we don’t know who the other really is.

She, of course, knows I’m not just a yoga teacher. Someone like Sarah is too smart to be that clueless. But she doesn’t know that I know she’s doing some kind of article about me, or Chakroga123, or… whatever she’s up to.

And that’s where this feels wrong.

Good wrong.

Prickly wrong.

Morally ambiguous wrong.

Nothing wrong about her luscious body, her clever eyes, or the way she gives Sean a half smile and says, “I’m a journalist.” Her eyes flit over to catch mine, and I see guilt in there, too.

She doesn’t feel half of what I feel, but seeing it in her helps.

I tilt my head and play dumb. “Journalist?”

A quaint red spot begins right at the base of her throat. Oh, she’s a blusher. That means her skin turns a lovely shade of high pink when spanked.

And… now my blood pumps even harder.

“Who do you write for? Have I read any of your stuff?” Sean asks as he makes the final turn toward the street MoMoTaste is on.

Thank God.

“I’m a freelancer.”

“What kind?”

She shifts uncomfortably. I almost open my mouth to rescue her from Sean the Overly Curious Uber Dude, but why not let him take some of the heat for answering questions I was going to ask at dinner?

“What do you mean, what kind?”

“My girlfriend’s a freelancer, too. Her focus is on architecture.”

“Seriously?” Sarah gasps, then laughs nervously. “Most people don’t understand freelance writing, so I’m used to being vague. I’m a magazine writer.”

“Nice. What’s your best clip?”

“ Boston Magazine .”

Now I have to react, too. “That’s impressive,” I say, squeezing her hand. In return, I get one of those quick smiles, the kind you miss if you blink.

Ah. This one has a conscience, I see. She feels bad about lying to me. Something rolls around inside my chest, a warm feeling that is as invigorating as it is anticipatory.

Sarah Gorenta isn’t just great in bed, smart as a whip, caring enough to help an old man in a yoga class, and hot as fuck.

She’s got a moral core.

Gongs begin chiming inside me because the stakes really, truly are suddenly so much higher.

I’m lying more to her than she is lying to me.

Which means I am the asshole here.

What have I done?