19 #2
A guilty smile lights up the corner of his lips. “Okay, there is one thing. But it’s definitely embarrassing.”
“Please tell me. I can’t wait to make fun of you.”
He’s looking at the ground as he says, “It’s really not interesting. I just like… puzzle games.”
“What do you mean, puzzle games?” I ask.
“Like… crosswords and sudokus. Stuff like that. The New York Times puzzles are huge. I’m not big on Wordle, but Spelling Bee is my shit. I demolish that thing every single day.”
My face cracks into a disbelieving, open-mouthed smile as I weave this information into my quilt of Owen Walsh tidbits. “So what you’re saying is you’re a huge nerd.”
“I went to law school, Amelia. Of course I’m a huge nerd. Logic puzzles are like the whole point of law school.”
“No but you’re like an Andy-level nerd. Do you secretly have reading glasses? Please, for the love of God, tell me you have a slutty little pair of reading glasses.”
He laughs and it’s almost childlike. “I do.”
“Yes!” I spin around to face him, walking backwards without a care for the people around me. “You have to show me. I bet they’re so fucking hot.”
He catches my waist with his hands, maintaining our pace through the crowd. “Oh, you like that, huh?”
“Mhm.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“And hey,” I say, twisting back to his side and looping my arm around his middle, “I may never have played whatever Spelling Bee is, but I like crossword puzzles too. We should do one together when we get back to my place.”
“That’s what you’re inviting me over to do?”
I bat innocent eyelashes at him. “What else would it be?”
“I still can’t get over it, Amelia. That whole exhibition was insane. How do you find time for stuff like this on top of your regular job?”
We’re winding through Lower Allston on foot, Korean restaurants and vape stores and red brick apartment buildings on all sides.
“Well, I don’t exactly have a regular job, as you so often remind me.”
“Okay, it may not be a regular job but it takes a job’s worth of time and energy. Plus this? Not just going to the shows, but actually making the art… Do you sleep? Do you ever watch TV or like… go to the bathroom?”
“Do you want an honest answer?”
“Yes.”
“I think people who watch TV are boring and I’m better than them.” I turn my head towards him in challenge. “You gonna tell me I’m an asshole now?”
He huffs a laugh. “I think most people are boring and I’m better than them.”
“Including me?”
“No,” he says, fingers reaching to intertwine with mine. “Definitely not you.”
It pulls a smile out of me, but I keep walking, eyes fixed ahead. “Why not?”
“You want me to find you boring?”
“I want to hear you compliment me.”
He stops in his tracks, then tugs me towards him by our connected hands. I land against his chest and big hands wrap around my waist, steadying me there. “I think you’re exactly as intense and obsessive and bitchy as I am.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Did you just call yourself bitchy?”
His eyes are the teasing blue of a fast-moving current. “Do you disagree?”
“Not at all, little bitch boy.”
“Little? I’m at least four inches taller than you.” His palm presses into my lower back, pulling me tighter against him, arcing his body over mine to prove the point.
“I have four inch heels that would solve that.”
“Better wear them on our third date, then.”
“We’re going on a third date?” I ask.
“Mhm.”
There’s privacy in the warm, cloudless night. A solitude here between the highway and the rows of two-family homes. I wrap my arms over his shoulders, then behind his neck, asking, “When?”
He’s a silhouette limned in streetlight yellow. His head tilts, mouth moving to find my jaw, bottom lip dragging across the skin there as he says, “Tomorrow. Now. Whenever you want.”
“We categorically cannot go on a third date during our second date.”
“Fine, then tomorrow. Dinner.” His lips move down to my neck, slow and warm, trailing wet kisses. My muscles melt into the solidity of him. “Or maybe,” he says against my beating pulse, “breakfast.”
“That’s…” I sigh, neck stretching back, welcoming the touch of his lips, “awfully presumptuous.”
“It doesn’t matter what we do,” he says into my skin. “I always have a good time when you’re there. Even when you’re ruthlessly mocking me. You make me feel… I don’t know. You just make me feel.”
I shift back. I want to see his face—want to find a lascivious grin there. But his expression is earnest, ice blue eyes melted to cool water in the low, warm light. There’s hunger, yes. But also something rarer. Something sweeter.
“Do you know what I mean?” he asks, and that simple question feels like raw honesty.
So, I answer as honestly as I can in return.
“I feel a lot,” I say, slowly finding my words.
“Maybe too much. Sometimes it feels like there’s a switch that flips in me, and it's like a wave of anger hits me and I can’t stop it.
I feel stressed about everything and indignant over nothing, all the time.
But there are also things I rarely feel, or haven’t felt in a long time.
” I trail one hand across the front of his neck, anchoring myself to the strength of his collarbone, watching my fingertips memorize his warm skin.
“Safe, for one. Safe and admired and… taken care of.” I raise my hand to cup his jaw, meeting his eyes as I say, “Those are the things you make me feel.”
He presses his eyes closed, a crease appearing there.
Then he’s urging me forward, pulling my cheek to his chest as he holds me, tight enough to hear the beat of his heart, the swell of each breath as it rises and falls.
And it feels like I’m comforting him, by letting him hold me, by just being here together.
When he finally lets go, what I see in his eyes sets my blood on fire.
Because he sees all of me—the curated and the raw, the tempting and the vile.
All of my horrible, stubborn rage next to my passion, intelligence, and drive and he wants it all.
Not just half of me. Not the parts that are pretty and palatable. His eyes blaze with want for all of me.
And I want him just as much.
My eyes flick down to his lips, then back to his eyes. “Unless you have any objections, I think we better get to my place as soon as possible.”