Chapter 15 #3
“The more I’m with you, the more I want you, too, but being without you isn’t any easier,” she went on. I literally had to leave the gym for fear of orgasming on the stationary bike. Now they were close enough that she could smell the pine needles.
“You really want to try this?” he asked quietly. “Because if we do—I need to know you mean it. I trusted someone before, thought it meant something—and it didn’t. I can’t do that again.”
“I really do.”
His palm found its way to her cheek, and he kissed her.
Softly at first. Simone put her hands in his hair, knotting them into his curls, and pulled him in, deepening the kiss.
A fire burned in her core and Ryan was the kindling, the oxygen, all of it.
She needed more of him. She parted her lips.
When their tongues met, she could feel his low moan of relief.
The vibrations filled her mouth, awakened her whole being.
After a minute or two or ten—what was time when she was kissing Ryan?—she pulled back, gasping for air.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“If we don’t stop now, I’m worried I’ll make you lay me down on this table and go to work.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Would that be so bad?”
“I’d like to not get fired for having sex at the office,” she teased. He smiled and leaned his forehead against hers.
“I was thinking,” she mused. “Would you want to go out on a date?”
“Oh wow. We’ve never done that before.”
“Wild.”
“I’d love to,” he said. “When were you thinking?”
It was only nine o’clock on a Friday night, and the launch party had to be winding down soon. “How’s now?”
THE CAR DROPPED THEM OFF OUTSIDE a freestanding brick building near the lake.
There was an empty patio out front with picnic tables and string lights, but Simone could hear voices and soft folk music coming from inside.
A Canadian flag and a Pride flag hung in the window.
“What is this place?” she asked. Ryan had called the car for them, insisting he knew the perfect spot for them to go.
“The best brewery in the city,” he answered.
Simone smiled and rolled her eyes as they crunched across the gravel. “Of course you brought me to a brewery.”
Ryan smirked back at her, his face glowing in the string lights. Simone wondered how it was scientifically possible for a human to be that handsome. He opened the door for her. “Welcome to the Common Loon.”
They were in a warm, bright space that was all wood inside, like a cabin.
The air smelled like pine and fresh bread.
There was a long wooden bar with a dozen or so taps, and a chalkboard with the names of the beers written out by hand.
People were wearing sweaters and jeans, sneakers and baseball caps.
Simone and Ryan stood out in their party attire, and it wasn’t long before they were spotted by the bartender, who wore a toque and a T-shirt that said COMMON LOON brEWERY.
The man’s face lit up. “Hey, buddy! I didn’t think I’d see you tonight. Thought you were gonna be in Barrie.”
“The moms got colds.” Ryan led Simone to the other end of the bar, nodding and waving to a few patrons along the way.
They grabbed two stools and shimmied up to the bar as the bartender slid two coasters in front of them.
“Simone, this is Dom,” Ryan said. “We went to high school together and now he owns the brewery. Dom, this is Simone. We went to Whistler together.”
Dom raised his eyebrows knowingly. He had a firm handshake and a bunch of tattoos climbing up the medium-brown skin of his arm. “Dom,” Simone repeated. The name had jogged something in her memory. “He mentioned you the first day we skied together.”
“Good things, I hope.”
She smirked. “He assured me you’d also been calling him out for acting like a miserable gargoyle of late.”
Dom turned to Ryan, grinning. “You were right. I do like her.”
Simone blushed. “You told him about me?” she asked Ryan.
Now Ryan looked embarrassed, too. “I might have called him from Whistler for help with my apology.”
“I heard the first couple of tries didn’t go so well,” Dom said.
Ryan shook his head. “No, no they did not.”
Simone squeezed his shoulder. “You got there in the end. Thank you, Dom, for your service.” Dom jokingly saluted her. “This place is amazing,” she added, gesturing around at the cozy interior of the brewery.
Dom waggled his eyebrows. “Guess who did all the carpentry?”
She turned back to Ryan, impressed. “No way.”
He nodded humbly at Dom. “Anything for this guy.”
“Oh, stop, you just wanted a lifetime of free beer,” Dom teased. “Speaking of which, what are you guys drinking tonight?”
They placed their orders and Dom returned with their drinks. “Cheers,” he said, before dashing off to the other end of the bar, where a large group had just walked in.
“You wanna try the IPA?” Ryan asked. “It’s my favorite of all time.”
“Your favorite IPA of all the IPAs? That’s saying something.”
He slid his pint glass across the lacquered wooden bar that he’d built for Dom. She took a sip and wrinkled her nose. Ryan chuckled.
“It’s so bitter.” She preferred the wheat beer she’d ordered—sweeter, with a hint of banana—but what she liked best of all was that Ryan had offered her a taste.
All of a sudden, Simone gasped and nearly fell off her metal barstool.
A giant orange furball had just leapt onto the bar, landing inches from where they were sitting.
“Um…” She whipped her head toward Dom, but he didn’t seem remotely alarmed that a cat had just materialized in front of them.
Ryan laughed again. “Don’t worry, that’s just Loonie. He lives here.”
“Really?”
“Dom found him in the basement when he bought the building. Now the whole staff takes care of him. I’m sure it’s against some health code, but no one seems to care.
C’mere, Loons.” He held out a hand, and Loonie strutted over.
Ryan scratched the spot between the cat’s ears.
Loonie closed his eyes and purred like a lawnmower.
When Simone first met Ryan, she never would have believed he had a gentle side.
A side that loved animals, and took his moms out to birthday dinners, and did massive carpentry projects out of love for his friend.
The brewery closed at midnight. When Dom announced last call at eleven thirty, Simone turned to Ryan and said, “I don’t want this night to be over.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he told her.
Dom refused to let them pay, but Ryan covertly stuffed a handful of cash into the tip jar on their way out. He held the door open for Simone, and they walked outside to the porch. Their driver was a minute away.
Simone shivered in the February air. She’d worn her black leather jacket tonight, which was a lot more fashionable than her parka, but nowhere near as warm.
“Come,” Ryan said, opening his arms. She walked straight into his chest, pressed her cheek to the soft wool of his coat.
Beneath the fabric, she felt the firm rise and fall of his pecs.
He wrapped her in a warm hug, pulling her in close as she threaded her arms around his waist. Ryan kissed the top of her head.
“I can make you some tea when we get home, if you want.”
Simone nodded. She wanted that very much.
Ryan’s place was closer, so that was where they went. He lived on the top floor of a taxpayer building on Queen Street East, above a bakery with a pink-and-white-striped awning.
“Is this a constant thing? The chocolate chip cookie smell?” she asked as they climbed the staircase.
“Sometimes it’s more of a cinnamon roll vibe.”
“Wow, lucky you.” Simone lived in a sterile new build that smelled like whatever they used to clean the carpets.
Ryan took out his key. “Just so you know, it’s still a work in progress.”
“Did you move in recently?”
“After the breakup.”
Duh. “Sorry—right. I didn’t realize you and your ex had been living together.”
“Yeah.”
Simone felt a sudden pang of jealousy—sharp, irrational, and totally unwelcome.
She hated the idea of him living with someone else.
The feeling caught her off guard, but it quickly gave way to sadness for Ryan.
She couldn’t begin to imagine how awful it would feel to be betrayed by someone you loved enough to move in with.
She felt bad that she’d darkened the mood, so she went on her tiptoes and kissed him right there on the landing.
“Well, I’m excited to see your new space. ”
When he opened the door, she smelled sawdust instead of chocolate chip cookies, and when he flicked on the light, she understood why.
He’d turned his entire living space into a woodworking shop.
Where there could have been a dining area, he’d instead put a wooden worktable and a single metal stool.
An elaborate wooden storage unit spanned the length of an exposed-brick wall, with designated spots for saws, wrenches, pliers, hammers, drills, and other tools she didn’t know the names of.
On a different wall, rulers and levels hung neatly from a pegboard, beneath which sat a bright orange shop vacuum.
The only surfaces not occupied by carpentry-related items were the kitchen countertops and the windowsills, where different plants grew in no-frills terra-cotta pots.
She liked the controlled chaos of it all, whereas her own apartment was neat but also kind of sparse.
Ryan’s home felt more lived-in than hers did, even though he’d only actually lived here for a couple of months.
“This is so cool,” she said as she took off her leather jacket. “It never would have even occurred to me that you could do this with an apartment.”
“Thanks.” He took her coat and hung it on a standing wooden coatrack.
“Let me guess, you built that?”
Ryan smirked.
“You really are impressive.”
“What kind of tea can I make you?”
“Anything herbal would be great.”
“How’s peppermint?”
“Peppermint’s perfect.”
While Simone grabbed a stool at the kitchen counter, Ryan grabbed a kettle and filled it. It wasn’t the plug-in kind, like Simone had, but an old-fashioned-looking metal one that went on the stove.
“I’ll do peppermint, too,” he said, fishing the teabags from the pantry and dropping them into two ceramic mugs.
While they waited for the water to boil, Ryan disappeared to the bedroom to put away his shoes and hang up his jacket, while Simone scanned the room for more details that she hadn’t noticed yet.
A spice rack that appeared to be handcrafted (of course) held dozens of little jars, some with names she’d never heard before, like nigella seed and fennel pollen.
Next to the spice rack were a knife block and a utensil holder with a whisk, tongs, spoons, and a spatula.
“You cook,” she said when he returned to the room.
“I do.”
“What do you like to make?”
“Honestly, I like experimenting. It’s like carpentry, where I get to be creative and make stuff by hand.”
“Meanwhile, I make the same five recipes on repeat.”
“Whoa. They must be good ones.”
She snorted. “Not even. It’s like, chicken and fish with different combinations of rice, pasta, and vegetables. Boring.”
He laughed. “Then why do you keep making them?”
“Because I know I won’t screw them up.”
Ryan stroked his chin. “I think you should cook with me sometime. Let me take you out of your comfort zone.”
“Oh yeah? You’ll teach me your chaotic ways?”
“It would be my pleasure.” The kettle whistled. He filled their mugs and passed one to Simone, who cupped it in her chilly palms.
She sipped her tea. It warmed her from the inside out, and her body relaxed in a way it hadn’t since she’d woken up this morning. She felt like she’d lived a whole week in a day. A yawn came on so suddenly that she didn’t even have time to cover her mouth.
“Tired?”
“Extremely.” She loved how honest she could be with Ryan. He, of all people, would understand if she wasn’t in a perfect mood all the time. Although she was happy—just exhausted.
“You’re welcome to sleep here, just so you know.”
Simone smiled. “Good, ’cause I was planning on it.
” She yawned again, this one so big it made her eyes water.
“The only thing is, I don’t know how much fun I’m going to be tonight,” she said as an apology in advance.
She wanted so badly to have sex with him again, but she also wanted to have enough energy to enjoy it.
“We don’t have to have sex,” Ryan said matter-of-factly.
Simone’s cheeks flushed hotter than the tea.
Ryan talking about not having sex was somehow just as hot as if he’d talked about having it.
Because it’s hot that he wants to take care of you, Simone realized.
“I just want you to be comfortable here,” he said.
They carried their mugs into the bedroom, where Ryan went to the dresser.
“Lemme find you something to sleep in.” While Ryan dug through his T-shirt collection, Simone peered around his cozy den of a bedroom.
The queen-size bed had a brown tufted quilt with a plaid wool throw, and Simone had a feeling she would never want to get out once she burrowed beneath the blankets.
He handed her an old T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and she carried them into the bathroom to get changed.
Yes, they’d already seen each other naked, but that was when they’d thought they’d never see each other naked again; naturally, they’d ripped each other’s clothes off.
Now, there was no time limit on exploring their feelings.
It made her want to take her time. She took off the dress she’d worn to the launch party and pulled Ryan’s T-shirt over her head.
It was impossibly soft and smelled like him.
Back in the bedroom, Ryan had swapped the overhead light for the soft glow of the bedside lamp. He’d changed into boxers and nothing else. “If I wasn’t so tired, I would… I would…” She covered her mouth with the back of her hand to suppress another enormous yawn.
“You would…?”
When she’d recovered, she finished: “I would climb you like a tree.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, smirking, “we’ll have plenty more time for tree climbing later.”
She grabbed a scrunchie from her bag and wound her curls into a loose topknot.
Then they wriggled under the covers, and Simone realized she’d been right: She never wanted to leave this bed for as long as she lived.
Ryan turned off the bedside lamp. She moved over to him, and he lifted his arm, and she wriggled into his side.
She yawned again. She fell asleep in what felt like a matter of seconds, with her cheek to Ryan’s chest.