Chapter 22
chapter twenty-two
priscilla
I was on the elevator going up to J’s house, and even though I would never ever say it out loud, it hadn’t taken very long for me to feel right at home in his building.
He’d given me the entry code, so I’d made my way up without having to get buzzed up.
I wasn’t going to make a thing out of the fact that I was looking forward to hanging out with J.
I didn’t want to ruin it by telling myself we would only end up hurting each other, or worse—that this would be the time we wouldn’t be able to come back from.
No, I’d needed this ease and I was going to enjoy the fact that I’d been able to turn my evening around after a shitty end of the day at work.
I was tired of handling everything on my own.
Juan Pablo and his new zen thing had gone a long way to put me at ease tonight and I was not going to question it.
I didn’t want to go back to my place, which was comfortable and had what I needed, but didn’t exactly feel homey, even after being there for almost a year.
It wasn’t like me to not make a space my own, but lately I didn’t seem to feel settled anywhere.
Tonight, doing the workshop, being in a space where I could help people feel more in tune with themselves and their sex lives had refilled my very empty well.
I loved it, and it was getting harder to ignore that recently, a few stolen moments working on my side hustle was what got me through most weeks.
As I pondered that very unpleasant reality, my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket, right as I got to J’s floor. I stepped onto the hallway as I read a message from my mother.
Call me, m’ija. Just wanted to know when you’re going to be home for Christmas.
I sighed and immediately felt guilty. Lately, speaking to my mother was something I dreaded, and I felt shitty about it.
About all of it. I didn’t have to wonder why.
I knew. It was because half the time she wanted to hear about the job.
How the promotion prospects were going. How I was putting away the bad guys.
Honestly, I didn’t have the energy. The other one, of course, was the fact that she’d ask where I was and I’d have to either lie to her or tell her I was at J’s and that was not happening.
Instead of answering, I put my phone on vibrate and rang J’s doorbell.
If anything came up from the job, my work phone always had the ringer on.
As soon as J opened the door, my shoulders loosened.
If I’d been a more reasonable person, or at least the me from a year ago—who seemed somewhat better equipped in not actively looking to fuck myself over—I’d have taken it as a warning and taken my brown ass home.
But that Pris seemed to be out to lunch and the one in her place had her nose wide open and was not shying from the almost certain mess in her future.
At this point, the only thing keeping me from doing something incredibly dumb with Juan Pablo was the bloating and all-around PMS discomfort.
Basically I was back to my teenage years levels of self-control.
“Hey, come in.” He’d had a bit of a head start.
I’d gone by my place to drop off my stuff and change out of my work clothes, so he was leaning on the doorway wearing a tight long sleeve Henley and sweats that were riding very low.
I could see the jut of his hipbones, which alerted me to the fact that my eyes had made it further south than was advisable.
“Hey,” I said, as I walked past him, doing everything I could to avoid eye contact.
Still without looking at him, I handed over the bottle of wine I’d brought from home.
“I picked up some of that Garnache we discovered on that trip to Ithaca.” Reminiscing about trips to see my parents was the opposite of sensible, and yet here we were.
He gripped the bottle and as he pulled away, his long fingers flickered over mine, and no that was not a fucking shiver.
“Thanks.” His voice was low, like he could tell I was mad skittish and didn’t want to scare me off. “Let me go open it. I don’t know what you want to watch, but I’m up for pretty much anything. Other than horror, you know I don’t fuck with scary movies.”
I rolled my eyes as I sank down on the long end of his sectional and grabbed the remote. “Holy shit, Juan Pablo, how many buttons does this thing have?” I asked, baffled.
He laughed and got busy pulling glasses out of the cabinets and opening the wine. “You’ll figure it out.” He actually wagged his finger at me like the big cornball he was.
I scooted up so I was sitting closer to the lamp and tried to figure out how to turn the TV on. “Please tell me you saw Get Out,” I said, while I finally got the giant flat screen on the wall to turn on.
“Hell, no. I couldn’t sleep just from the trailer.” I turned to see him walking in with two glasses in hand. He looked genuinely freaked out just from talking about the movie, and it was so fucking adorable. I wanted to forget the wine and the movie and kiss him silly. I teased him instead.
“J, that’s like mandatory. Milo didn’t make you watch it?”
He sucked his teeth and carefully handed me the glass before sitting down next to me on the couch. I was not going to get all in my feelings about how this was like the old days, because that would not get us anywhere productive.
He took a long sip of the wine and made a big show of turning on the gas fireplace before he responded. He had his index finger in the air.
“First of all, Camilo is not the boss of me. His ass is blessedly too busy running Tom’s life to be all up in my business.
” His thumb popped up and I was having a hard time keeping a straight face.
“Second of all, he knows those movies give me nightmares, and unlike some people—” this time he raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips right in my direction “—he takes people’s triggers seriously. ”
Wow, this therapist was not messing around.
“Damn, okay, point taken, you didn’t need to go that hard. I got it. But that movie’s required watching. Besides,” I said, pointing my glass in the direction of the TV. “We’ve watched horror movies before.”
He pursed his mouth again and I could see that he was trying really hard not to say something out of pocket, and honestly, that more than anything else completely disarmed me.
I wondered if he’d say something bratty or if he’d just push out whatever he had on the tip of his tongue to say. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel either way.
When he finally looked at me, he seemed so serious I almost felt bad that I’d started the conversation.
“Those times we watched horror movies…uh.” He paused to take another sip of his drink. “I thought we both knew I was secretly reading a book on my phone and trying to tune out the nightmare inducing horror on the screen.”
He looked a little mortified and straight up adorable and I legit snorted. “For fuck’s sake, Juan Pablo!” I was literally cackling. “You’re too fucking much. Fine I’ll find something not horrific.”
His mouth twitched like he was super happy he’d made me laugh, and I wanted to kiss him. So bad.
I was playing a dangerous game. And yet, I could not for the life of me come up with a reason strong enough to make me leave.
I fiddled with the remote after figuring out how to make it work until I found the Great British Baking Show.
I raised an eyebrow in question before turning on the first episode of the latest season.
“Happy?”
J bit his bottom lip and it was really very hard to be this close and not kiss him. Because if that mouth was around, I wanted a taste of it. That wasn’t ever going to change. It hadn’t after all this time. I didn’t think it ever would.
His shoulders relaxed and he threw an arm over the back of the couch—noticeably not on the side I was sitting. “Perfect.”
We both sank into the couch and watched a couple of episodes, furiously looking up recipes on our phone whenever we saw something that looked delicious.
Every emotional part or stressful moment making us drift closer and closer to each other, so that by the time we were finishing Cake Week, I was practically on his lap.
I was starting to doze off when the smell of popcorn woke me up, and before I could even sit up, Juan Pablo was walking back into the living room with a bowl of fluffy popcorn in one hand and balancing wineglasses in the other. “I knew the smell of popcorn would lure you back from sleep.”
“You know I can’t resist Orville’s siren call.” He laughed, handing me a refill and placing the bowl on the couch next to me.
He sat down next to me and in no time, we both had our hands in the popcorn bowl.
“You looked really happy today doing that class. Totally in your element.” I knew him too well not to know he’d had that on the tip of his tongue all night.
But I was not going to go down that road unless I had to.
So I just hummed and kept myself busy shoving handfuls of popcorn in my mouth.
When he realized I wasn’t going to respond, as he always did, he called my bluff. “Have you thought about doing it full time? I mean those ladies were into the class. Two of them asked me if we could make them a permanent thing.”
I considered him for a second, really looking at him. I wondered if this was just another way for him to get back on my good side. Of extending another olive branch.
I could blow it off again, but I didn’t feel like it.
Somewhere deep inside, in a little drawer I rarely even let myself open, I did hold the dream of doing something like this for a living.
Of being an activist and an educator. Of putting into my community in ways I knew it needed.
Maybe even going back to school for it. But it just seemed so fucking reckless.
Without really looking at him, I made myself say it though. “I mean, sure, it could be great and I really love doing it. But that’s not really an option, not as a job.”