Chapter 23 Sustained Silent Reading #2
He tilted his head and contemplated her like she was a painting in a museum, staring at her for so long that she started to grow unsettled. She had asked the question sincerely. So why should she be surprised that he was apparently giving his answer serious consideration?
Finally he said, “I don’t know why I’m being nice to you.” He reached out and placed his palm on her cheek. Just as quickly, before she could fully process that it had ever been there, he retracted it.
She was able to process, though, that she had a real problem here.
“I really don’t have a TV,” Jack said as he unlocked the door to his condo. “We can watch something on my computer if you want to, though.”
“Nah, let’s skip it. I’m reading a great book right now. I think I’ll just read for a while and go to bed. What time do you want to head out tomorrow?” They were driving to his friend’s cabin in the morning.
“We should leave by eight. What are you reading?”
“Askance.”
“I can report that it is all it’s cracked up to be,” Jack said.
“Well, the Nobel Prize committee said so, too. I’m late to the game.”
“I have another book of hers, the previous one. I’ve been meaning to read it.”
“We should have some SSR.”
“I am almost afraid to ask what SSR is.”
“Sustained silent reading. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Billings, used to declare SSR time. In retrospect, it was probably when she couldn’t handle us anymore.
But I internalized the acronym. I used to have SSR with my kids once they were old enough to read on their own.
We’d pile onto the sofa and everyone would read their own books. ”
“Sold,” he said, throwing his keys on a console table inside the front door and walking over to the truly glorious floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined one side of the living room.
Blair had no idea why she had suggested they read together. She’d nixed the idea of TV because the prospect of sitting next to him on the couch huddled over a computer was not appealing. Or it was too appealing. One or the other, and they amounted to the same thing: not a good idea.
“Here it is.” He picked a book from his library.
“I have to go change. SSR is done in pajamas.”
“Got it.” He set his book on a table next to an armchair and reversed course.
“You don’t have to put on pajamas. I personally can’t do SSR in street clothes, but you can do what you like.”
“No, it makes sense. Meet you back here shortly.”
Uh-oh. She wasn’t sure why reading in pj’s with Jack felt dangerous. It wasn’t as if they were going to jump each other as they had that last night at her house. That had been… a weird confluence of circumstances. If jumping were going to happen, she suspected it would have by now.
There would be no jumping.
Alas.
Jack reappeared wearing the same pair of plaid pajama pants he’d had on that last night in her kitchen and a short-sleeved gray Henley. It was an unremarkable ensemble to wear to sleep. Or to lounge around and read.
And yet.
“I brought you eight million blankets.” He dumped not eight million but three covers of varying types next to her on the couch.
“Ha ha, thanks.”
“You want some tea?”
“You have tea?”
“I have tea. I like to drink it when I’m writing at night—somehow, coffee after dark just doesn’t seem right. Or maybe another martini?”
“Tea sounds great.”
He went to the kitchen, and she sat on the sofa and took in the space.
Its most striking feature was the huge wall of bookcases she’d been admiring, the wall opposite the windows that looked out over the river and the skyline.
It was nearly dusk, but the residue of the sunset endured.
She could see why he’d bought this place.
“Milk or sugar in your tea?” he called.
“Neither, thanks.”
She shifted so her back was against an armrest and allowed herself to stretch her legs out along the length of the sofa, because it was clear that Jack’s reading spot was a nearby armchair.
On a table next to it was the book he’d set there but also a newspaper folded open to the crossword, a pair of reading glasses, and a notebook and pen.
A hoodie was slung over one arm. She smiled as she arranged one of the blankets over her legs.
The whole tableau was very grumpy novelist and exactly where she would have imagined him before she knew him.
When he emerged with two mugs of tea, he set one on the floor on the opposite side of the sofa from Blair, then dragged the coffee table so it was within arm’s reach of her and placed the other mug on it. “Black tea for the lady.”
He did not retreat to his grandpa chair but sat on the other side of the sofa with his back to the armrest on the far side, in a mirror image of her. She started to pull her legs up.
“No, no, stay where you are.”
He picked up his book.
He hadn’t extended his legs; he was sitting with his knees bent and the soles of his feet on the cushion.
But if she moved her own feet a few inches, they would touch his.
Was she just supposed to sit here and read now, with him inches from her?
She pulled her legs partway back to where they’d been.
She rearranged the blanket over her bent knees like a tent and picked up her book.
She only read a few pages before she started to feel his feet. Not really. They weren’t touching her, but she could kind of… sense them. Feel into his space. As if his feet were giving off heat. They probably were—he always ran so hot.
Her feet, of course, were freezing. Her mind jumped back to the few occasions in LA when Jack had warmed her hands. She thought of those times with fondness.
Also with lust.
That part was new. She had been dead inside in that regard for so long, first because of her stagnant marriage, then because when a person was busy trying to survive existential storms, it didn’t leave much space for an erotic imagination.
That last night, though, in her kitchen. Her knickers got into a knot when she thought about that. It was as if he had pushed her off a cliff. In more ways than one: the mind-shattering orgasm, of course, but also what he’d said about her being at a precipice.
She thought about the concept of a precipice. About standing on the edge of something new and contemplating jumping.
Did it always have to be a jump, though? A great big upheaval? Could a person effect change with a smaller, more measured move?
She inched her toes forward a tiny bit.
She waited. The world did not end. So she inched forward again and made contact with the side of his foot. It was as toasty as she’d imagined.
He glanced up from his book. What was she doing?
She started to reverse course, but he grabbed her foot with one hand.
They embarked on a staring contest. She wasn’t sure why, or what any of it meant.
He kept her gaze as he encouraged her leg to straighten.
She let it happen. He scooched around, reaching for her second leg and straightening his, arranging them so their legs were intertwined.
Apparently satisfied with his handiwork, he returned to his book.
Well. What could she do but return to hers?
It was very… cozy.
No, that was a lie. It would have looked cozy from the outside: two people reading on a sofa together. In actuality, it was possibly the most erotic thing that had ever happened to her.
She read a paragraph. Then, realizing she had no idea what she’d just read, started over.
“Everything OK over there?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You’re sighing like you have the weight of the world on you.”
“Oh. No, I’m fine.”
He kept his gaze on hers for a long moment before returning it to his book.
One thing her new shrink had suggested was that when Blair was having a big emotion, she should call someone and tell them about it.
To date, Tiffany had been the sole recipient of such calls.
And while by “big emotion” Dr. Rankin probably hadn’t meant “horny SSR,” Blair decided to give it a try.
It wasn’t even the horniness so much as it was how strange it was for them to be here, so close, without saying a word about what had gone down last time they were together.
“Actually,” she said, and he looked up. He must have seen something in her face. He put his book down on the floor next to his untouched tea. “I’m finding it a little weird that we haven’t talked about the fact that the last time we spent an evening together, it ended with us making out.”
“You keep saying that—‘making out.’ But don’t you think we did more than make out? By my estimation, if someone has an orgasm, it’s sex. Do you agree?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
He nodded, his expression mild, untroubled. She didn’t know how he did that. She was… exceedingly troubled. She still felt like she was at a precipice, but apparently she was standing at the edge alone.
Or maybe not. After another few heartbeats, he said, “Do you… want to do it again?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”