Whit
Sunlight forces its way into my bedroom around haphazardly closed curtains. I groan, driving my fingers into my temples. There’s a hammering in my skull. Somebody give me a lobotomy.
My hand skims across the warm sheets to the other side of the bed, hoping to find the sleeping form of a man.
I know I told Colt I didn’t know if this would work, and to be honest, I still don’t think we can ever be a couple.
I’ll give up my selfish desire to have a man who looks at me the way Colt does with those sharp blue eyes—for Jonas’s sake, and for Colt’s, too.
But that hard line can be drawn after the fog from last night finally lifts.
Except he’s not here. I blink at the empty space.
Lugging my heavy, aching, too-old-for-this-shit body out of bed, I aggressively rub the drool from the corner of my lips and shuffle to the bathroom for a quick splash of cold water on my face.
It takes two rounds of teeth brushing to rid my mouth of the disgusting mixture of old alcohol and morning breath.
Then I grab my toothpaste and a spare toothbrush from the cabinet and head downstairs.
At the sound of my footfall, Colt looks up from his phone. “Morning, birthday girl.”
Naturally, he’s effortlessly sexy first thing in the morning. Leaning against the kitchen counter like he’s posed for a photo shoot. His hair’s a tangled mess, sticking up in a few spots, and his shirt’s completely wrinkled, but it works for him.
Meanwhile, I look as if my birthday celebrations included getting run over by a truck.
“Not my birthday anymore. I’m now firmly in my thirties,” I mumble, homing in on the steaming to-go cup on the counter.
Every step hurts my head, so I move slowly, and Colt beats me to it.
By the time I’ve shuffled into the small space, slapping his teeth-cleaning essentials down on the counter, he’s thrusting the cardboard cup at me.
I shakily accept the drink and unapologetically moan at the dark roast splashing across my tongue. “How do you know how I like my coffee?”
I’m white-knuckling that baby for the short walk over to the table, where I only let go so I can go back to cradling my head in my hands. Something about a hangover really makes you aware of how heavy your own skull is. And somehow we carry it around all day without issue normally.
Colt brushes his teeth at the kitchen sink, and a few minutes later slides a plate-sized cinnamon bun in front of me before sitting across from me. “You told me once.”
“And you remembered?”
“Of course I did.” He swirls a plastic straw around in the blended frappe that’s more dessert than coffee.
I stare down at the table. “And you got us breakfast?”
“I’m used to waking up early, so I walked over to Anette’s. How are you not six hundred pounds living so close to that place?”
“I have impeccable self-control.”
He smirks. “Right.”
“So…”
“So.” Colt pulls his straw to his lips, studying me.
“Last night…”
“Last night.” His tone is saturated in suggestive undertones.
“Are you going to repeat back everything I say?”
“Depends.” He chews a piece of cinnamon roll. “Are you going to finish your thought so I can reply to it?”
This requires more caffeine first. So I do that. I savor my coffee and devour my cinnamon roll while the thought I’ve left unfinished mulls over.
“Last night was really fun,” I say. “And we decided we were going to talk after we got some sleep, right?”
“Are you sure you want to talk about it right now? You look a little…”
“Like I was run over by a truck? Feels that way, too. Or like I was picked up and thrown around by a tornado a few times.”
“Looking at your hair, the tornado makes more sense.”
Cool. Let me shrivel up and die now.
“Sorry we can’t all wake up looking like we’re heading to a sexy bedhead competition.”
He smooths a hand over his hair. “Do those exist?”
“Well, this chat has made me realize we actually don’t need to talk about anything, because there’s no way you’d want to be anything more than friends after seeing me like this.”
He pushes away from the table and saunters over to sit beside me. I flinch when he grabs my chair and spins it, letting the feet scrape across the floor. We’re knee to knee, and he leans forward so his forearms come to rest on his thighs. Expansive blue eyes tug at my soul and heat my veins.
“You’re gorgeous. Always. When you’re wearing a pantsuit and looking like you’re heading out to write checks and snap necks.
When you’re crying in my arms. When you’re shoveling pizza into your face.
When you’re making yourself come on my thigh.
” His words make me blush and avert my eyes, but he takes hold of my face to bring me back.
“And right now, when you look a little rough around the edges. You’re so fucking pretty right now. ”
His thumb rubs the outer corner of my eye, presumably to remove some slept-in makeup.
“So let’s talk about the scrawny baby elephant in the room,” he says.
“Jonas hasn’t been happy when I’ve gone on dates before. Last time was a couple years ago, and he lied to his babysitter about throwing up so she’d call me.”
“Okay, not to toot my own horn—but actually, beep beep—Jonas thinks I’m really cool. I doubt he’ll be mad about me being around more often.”
Until his heart breaks when you’re not around at all.
“But that’s as a friend, not as his mom’s boyfriend. He’s never done well with change, so there’s a good chance he’s going to feel differently if we’re together.”
“That’s kind of what my mom said, too.”
Something spins and fizzes in my stomach like the drop of an Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water.
“You talked to your mom about this already?”
“I did. And she told me to take things slow….” He mouths the word oops, and smiles sheepishly.
“Maybe Jonas doesn’t need to know right away.
Love the kid, but he seems to have been oblivious to us eye-fucking the hell out of each other so far.
I’m sure we can pretend to only be friends for a while longer. ”
“Yeah…” I glance down at his hand, which has slowly inched its way from his thigh to mine and is rubbing softly. “Something makes me think you’re going to have a hard time with that.”
“No way. I can fake it so good, you’ll nominate me for an Oscar. Pretend Jonas is coming into the room.” He raises his eyebrows in challenge.
I lick my lips. “Oh, shit. Jonas just walked in the door.”
Using his hands on my knees, he launches his chair backward, dragging across the floor with a harsh squeal.
Two of the four legs lift off the ground, and Colt grabs frantically at the table to stop himself from crashing down.
He teeters there for a second before the chair rights itself with a resounding thud. Wide-eyed, he clutches his chest.
“Oh, he’s definitely not going to be suspicious of that.” I laugh, wincing only slightly at the way it makes my head pound. The joy’s worth the pain. “So…you want to be friends with benefits?”
I guess that’s sort of what Alex and I have always been, haven’t we? Well…we weren’t really friends. And the benefits were largely for him.
But no strings. No promise of long term. No need to worry that he’ll want to have a talk months or years down the road about marriage and babies. Emotion clings to my throat. I know how that talk goes, and it never ends with a man saying I don’t care because Jonas is the only kid I want in my life.
“No, Whit.” He scooches toward me again. All the grating chair noises are seriously aggravating my headache. But the next words crack my skull—and chest—open entirely. “I want to be your boyfriend.”
I choke on my own spit and frantically reach for his coffee. The sugary concoction invades my mouth, annihilating my taste buds and forming cavities as I cough and sputter.
“Colt, that tastes like you wafted coffee in the general direction of a cup of sugar.”
“Anette added extra chocolate and caramel to my frappe this morning because I needed the pick-me-up.” He takes the cup from my hands and takes a quick sip before setting it down.
“I don’t think I should be your boyfriend right this second.
At the very least, I need to take you on a date first. I want to do everything the proper way, with one exception. ”
Don’t waste your time on me. I’m a fruitless endeavor—literally, I want to scream.
I don’t. Instead, I straighten myself in my chair and rasp, “What’s that?”
“I’m kissing you. Not when Jonas is around, obviously. But I’ve been staring at your lips since I woke up this morning. I don’t think I can wait until after we’ve gone on a date to kiss you again.”
I know I should let him down gently right here and now. End things before they start. Go back to watching him from the opposite end of the couch and reliving it in my bed alone.
“Colt…I—” I stutter. The instant flash of hopelessness in his ever-confident expression has me backpedaling.
I know the grief of wanting something so desperately and having to come to terms with the fact that you won’t ever have it.
And at eight a.m. while nursing a hangover and still feeling the chafing on my lips from his facial hair, I can’t do it to him.
I can’t tamp out the hope he has that maybe, with enough time, I could be the one.
I won’t be. He’ll find that out soon enough. Just not today. And hopefully the joy will be worth the pain.
“Not when Jonas is around,” I reiterate. “And it’s going to be casual.”
“Can I ask you on a very casual date? The drive-in doesn’t end their season for a few more weeks.”
Wow. I didn’t anticipate the beginning of the end to come so fast. I didn’t expect Colt, of all men, to forget about the fact that I have a child.
“What about Jonas?”
Without skipping a beat, he says, “I suggested the movies because he can come with us, if that’s what we have to do.”
“That’s not really a date then, is it?”