Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PIZZA
Agreeing to dinner with him was a terrible idea.
I know that before I even open my eyes properly.
I know it while I am still half buried in my sheets, warm and irritated and carrying the sort of deep, private ache that makes a woman feel betrayed by her own body before she has even had coffee.
I know it when I reach for my phone and see his last message still sitting there on the screen like a smirk in text form.
Remember your lies don’t work on me.
The worst part is that I already answered him.
The second worst part is that I am going, which means all the fury simmering in my chest this morning has nowhere to go except inward, where it can curl up with everything else he has already worked under my skin and make me absolutely unbearable to myself.
I throw the covers back with more force than the situation requires and immediately regret it, because the cool morning air skims over my bare thighs and the whole overworked bundle of nerves low in my center wakes up like it has been waiting for an invitation.
That is another thing I am angry about. I am angry that he is not here and I can still feel him.
I am angry that one night, one scene, one ruined little stretch of kissing and praise and rules has somehow rewired my body into something that answers to the memory of his voice.
I am angry that I know, with humiliating certainty, exactly how he would sound if he saw me right now—all tangled hair, bare legs, and attitude, and that some deep, shameful part of me would go soft at the edges just from seeing him smile.
I stomp into the bathroom and turn the shower on too hot, then stand under it until the steam turns the mirror to clouded glass and the heat starts working its way into my skin.
It helps my muscles. It does absolutely nothing for my mood.
The water slides over my breasts, down my stomach, between my thighs, and every inch of me feels too awake, too tuned in, too aware of itself.
My nipples pebble. My mouth goes dry. My own hand gliding over my body with soap feels like an insult because it is not his hand, not that broad, certain hold that made me feel pinned and praised in the same breath.
It is ridiculous that I know the difference now.
It is even more ridiculous that I miss it.
I brace my palm against the shower wall and bow my head, breathing through the heat gathering low in me with the kind of self-control that used to mean something in my life.
This is Pineapple’s fault.
No, that is not entirely true, and pretending it is would only make me angrier because it would let me ignore the part I played in all of this.
He did not force me to answer him. He did not force me to meet him tonight.
He certainly did not force me to stand in my own shower with my beef curtains turning richer and heavier every time I remember the way he said good girl like he had every right to hear how it landed in me.
That part is on me. That part is on the woman who has spent years pretending she only wanted admiration and stability and the kind of public approval that never gets messy, only to discover that what really undoes her is a man who looks at her like he wants to make her beautiful little life messy.
I hate that woman.
I hate that I am shaving my legs.
I hate that I am exfoliating like a woman expecting to be touched.
By the time I step out of the shower, wrap myself in my fluffy terrycloth robe, and make the mistake of checking the news again, the whole city appears to have turned my sex life into a hobby.
There is a woman on a morning show using the phrase culinary corruption with the kind of solemnity usually reserved for natural disasters.
There are people defending me, which somehow makes it worse, because now I am not only being judged, I am being analyzed.
Everyone has an opinion about what this says about me, about him, about food culture, about women, about desire, about whether a classic girl like me should have known better than to let a man like him put his name next to mine and expect the world not to get sticky about it.
I turn the television off and stare at my reflection instead.
There I am. Fresh-faced and furious. Hair damp.
Mouth still a little swollen from the memory of last night, though maybe that is me just losing my sanity speaking.
The robe gapes slightly at the chest, and the sight of my own skin should not feel as charged as it does.
I look like a woman with her life together.
I look like someone who should know how to cancel a date, silence a phone, and go back to being exactly who she was a week ago.
Instead I keep looking at myself the way a critic looks at a plate after the first wrong bite, already aware that something has changed and unable to decide whether the change is offensive or brilliant.
There is no point pretending I am not worked up.
That would be the real lie.
I am worked up enough that choosing underwear starts to feel like a private moral crisis.
Everything in my drawers suddenly has meaning it did not have yesterday.
Black lace looks like surrender. Satin looks like optimism.
Nude looks defensive. A tiny pair of silk panties in a peachy cream color makes my pulse jump for reasons I refuse to explore too closely, so of course I throw those onto the bed and pretend it is not because I can already imagine the way his mouth might curve if he ever saw them.
Disgusting.
I hate him.
I hate that I am moisturizing my thighs and the soft inside curve of my hips with all the solemn concentration of someone preparing for ritual sacrifice, because in some ways that is exactly what this feels like.
The knowledge that he is going to look at me across a table and mean every filthy thing he does not say out loud, and that I am going to sit there in some perfectly chosen dress trying to act like my lady flower is not already reacting to the thought of his hands.
That phrase should not even live in my head.
It sounds like something a desperate woman in a badly written bodice ripper would think while collapsing into a chaise lounge.
And yet here I am, robe open, lotion still cooling on my skin, staring at my closet with a bundle of nerves low in my body and enough glistening folds to make every practical decision feel vaguely obscene.
I choose the dark green dress first and reject it immediately because it makes me look too soft.
I choose the black one next and throw it aside because it makes me look too obviously dangerous, which would only flatter him.
The cream dress is out because I am not walking into dinner dressed like innocence at a time like this.
By the time I finally settle on a wine-colored silk number with a low back and a skirt that skims my thighs just enough to remind me I have them, I am sweating like I have been sparring instead of dressing.
The dress is gorgeous.
The dress also says I know exactly what tonight is.
That realization makes me sit down on the edge of the bed with the fabric pooled around me and press my fingers to my temples, because this has gotten away from me in a manner I deeply dislike.
I was supposed to be the woman who laughed at dynamics like this.
The woman who knew how to flirt, how to tease, how to hold the room and never once mistake desire for surrender.
I was not supposed to be the woman who gets gooey and moist because a man told her to drink her coffee and stay off the comments.
I was not supposed to crave the sharp, humiliating comfort of rules.
I was not supposed to discover that something in me likes the pressure of being watched closely enough to be guided.
But I do.
There it is.
The truth I keep trying to wriggle away from lands cleanly enough to make me close my eyes.
I want him to take control.
Not all of me. Not forever. Not in the careless, reductive way the internet would describe it if they had half a clue what was happening.
What I want is smaller and more intimate and much more dangerous because it has nothing to do with spectacle and everything to do with trust. I want that hand at the back of my neck.
I want that low voice telling me where to put my hands and what to say.
I want the way my body responds before my pride can finish objecting.
I want the deep, aching relief of not having to carry every ounce of tension by myself for once.
I want to be wanted so thoroughly that resisting feels ceremonial and surrender feels like truth.
That is not a sentence I ever expected to be true about me.
The room is quiet except for the hum of the air moving from the tiny oscillating fan on my dresser.
He has not texted again. That should be a relief.
Instead it only makes the wanting worse, until my whole body feels aware of what is missing.
My mouth is dry. My breasts ache. The soft center of me feels overfull with need and under-touched in a way that would be funny if it were not making it so hard to focus on putting on this damn mascara.
I manage the makeup somehow. Liner. Blush.
Lip stain. The whole time my thoughts keep circling back to him in maddening little loops.
The cut of his mouth when he is amused. The shape of his hands.
The dark gold of him under low light. The way his confidence is rooted in attention.
The way he looks at me as if my entire public image is just the wrapper on something he fully intends to unwrap with his teeth.
That thought is so filthy it makes me set the lipstick down.
Oh, god…I am in trouble.
I know that by the time I hook my earrings on, by the time I slip into heels, by the time I stand in front of the mirror for the final inspection and realize I do not look like a woman headed to dinner with a man she should avoid.
I look like a woman dressed to be seen by the exact man who already knows too much about what is under her skin.
And the most twisted part of all is that I like it.
No, that is too gentle.
I crave it.
I crave the moment his eyes hit me. I crave the little shift in his mouth when he realizes I came and I listened to his orders to not touch myself this entire time.
I crave the first look, the first line, the first order disguised as a suggestion.
I crave the whole intolerable dynamic of it, the push and pull, the fight and the yielding, the way he makes my body feel like something warm and wicked instead of something polished and displayed.
My phone lights up again just as I reach for my clutch.
One message.
No preamble.
Pineapple: Wear your hair down.
I stare at the screen until the words start to blur with outrage.
Then my eyes lift slowly to my reflection.
My hair is half pinned.
My hand rises to the clip at the back of my head.
I hate myself a little more as I pull it out.
Dark waves spill over my shoulders, fuller and softer and far more touchable, and the woman in the mirror changes in one cruel, immediate second from prepared to tempting. My pulse jumps. My center answers with one deep, needy throb that makes my mouth part on a breath I do not appreciate.
Another message comes through.
Pineapple: Good girl.
I should not smile. How does he know? Who am I kidding? How would he not know?
I do not call what happens to my mouth a smile. I call it a lapse in judgment and head for the door before I can become any more ridiculous than I already am.
By the time I lock up behind me, I am still angry.
Angry with him. Angry with myself. Angry with the paparazzi, the internet, the headlines, the way the whole world seems to think it has a right to tell me what a woman like me should want.
Under all of that anger, though, something lower and wetter and far more honest keeps rising, softening me from the inside out with every step I take toward the elevator.
I never thought I would agree to a date like this.
I never thought I would dress for it like this either, with my body already humming and my thighs already too aware of each other and my whole heart beating like it knows I am heading straight toward the kind of trouble that does not leave a woman unchanged.