Chapter 11 #2
“Nobody. I’m just practicing phone etiquette.”
She threw a throw pillow straight at my head and it actually connected.
“Ouch!” I snatched it up, ready to fling it back.
She held up her hands in defense. “Don’t lie to me. And don’t fake your voice for your boyfriend. There’s no way you can keep that up. Just be yourself, dork.”
“You have a boyfriend?” Miles asked. “Since when?”
“They’re three years strong,” Sloane said.
“You’re the worst.” I threw the pillow, which completely missed her, then shut myself back in my room. “I do not have a boyfriend.” I just had someone I needed to make hot and bothered for sport.
“Hello,” I practiced again, trying to be normal. “Hello.” I walked over to my window and watched a man in the parking lot disconnecting the battery in his car, a new one waiting on the sidewalk behind him. “Hi.”
As though the man could hear me, he looked over his shoulder. I stepped back quickly, then closed my blinds.
I took a deep breath and messaged Oliver my phone number. My phone rang several minutes later.
“Hey,” I answered. My voice was definitely not sex-line operator. The lack of air in my lungs made it sound squeaky instead of sultry. “Hi,” I tried again. Better.
“Hello,” he said, like he was the audiobook narrator of a romance novel.
“You’re inviting a woman to a funeral for a first date?” I asked. “Probably a bad choice. Better to just bring your best friend or distant cousin for support. Also, are you okay? Who died?”
“No, not me. A woman invited me to a funeral. Not sure how to respond to that. It feels cruel to say Too much, too fast or to just ignore her. She’s obviously grieving.”
I would probably feel the same way if someone invited me. I sat on my bed to answer. “I see your dilemma. But how would the rest of the family feel having a stranger at something so very personal?”
“True. That’s a great response. How come we haven’t been each other’s coaches for all these years?”
“Because we’ve been trying to wash the taste of our first date out of our mouths,” I said.
“I thought the taste of our first date was the only good part,” he responded.
It was validating to hear I wasn’t the only one who thought the makeout was exceptional. “You’re right. We really should’ve just been each other’s booty calls for all these years.”
He strangled out a choking laugh.
“Too much?” I asked, laying back on my pile of pillows.
“From you? No.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It is,” he said. “What was your weirdest message from the apps this week? Does it beat my funeral one?”
I tried to remember any message I had gotten this week. The truth was, I hadn’t opened the apps in days. “Um…”
“You’re still on the apps, right?”
“Yes, of course,” came my defensive reply. “Pimple popping.”
“What?”
“Someone asked me if I watched pimple popping videos.” That was a message from last week, not this week, but it answered his question.
“Huge red flag,” he said.
I snorted out a breath. “It’s stress relief!”
“Oh, your response was yes.”
I smiled. “Mostly I read for stress relief, but those videos are mindless and kind of great and if you haven’t watched any, I don’t want to hear it.”
His laugh was low and settled in my belly.
My hand trailed a slow path along the strip of exposed skin between my silky pajama shorts and tank top.
Back and forth. My eyes fluttered closed as every nerve ending in my body hummed to life.
Why hadn’t we revisited our physical connection before?
Because I’d walked away frustrated that first night?
“What do you do to relax?” I asked, my voice huskier than I intended.
“You okay?” he returned.
“Just…” Imagining your hands on me, that’s all . “Where are you?”
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“In my bedroom. You?”
“Same. In bed.” God, we’d been good together in that car. How much better would we be in an actual bed. Maybe just one session would get him out of my head for another three years.
He cleared his throat. “Are you tired?”
“Not at all.” Goose bumps formed along the path my hand trailed. “Has anyone ever told you that you should record audiobooks? You have the perfect voice for it.”
“Nobody has ever told me that.”
“I have a book you can practice with.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of book?” Was it possible for his voice to get even sexier with that question?
“The kind where the main characters do really bad things to each other,” I said.
“Like a psychological thriller?” he teased, a smile in his voice.
“There are definitely head games involved.”
He let out a low chuckle. “I would like to read this book. To you.”
Heat poured through my body. I feared the only person getting hot and bothered by this conversation was me. “Okay,” I breathed.
“By the way, I run to relax,” he said, answering my previous question.
I pulled down my tank top and sat up, trying to shake off the obviously one-sided physical responses happening. “Huge red flag,” I said, parroting his earlier sentiment. “My sister is a run-when-stressed person.”
“Is it a good thing or bad thing to be compared to your sister?”
My sister was a work of art in all ways, in how she dressed, how she kept her house, how she mothered, how she ran her businesses.
“Running is a pretty innocuous thing to have in common with someone. I won’t hold it against you,” I said to Oliver.
He let out a low hum. “Interesting. So it’s a bad thing.”
“What? No. My sister and I are just very different, but I love her. Now, if you have a regimented schedule, like her…”
“Schedules are good for anxiety.”
I laughed. “You totally do! Let’s hear this schedule.”
“It’s a perfectly normal schedule. Wake up. Run. Work for a couple hours. Gym. Lunch. Work. You know. Normal.”
It was good to be reminded, once again, how very different we were. “I sense it’s much more detailed than that, but we can pretend you’re not super strict with it for now.”
“You have no schedule?” he asked.
“I have organized chaos.” That’s what my sister always called my life. “Do you have any siblings?”
“I also have an older sister.”
“Does she run?” I asked.
“Yes, actually.”
“Looks like we’ve discovered why we’re incompatible. We don’t agree on running.”
His voice was low when he said, “We’re hopeless.”