Chapter 20
Twenty
One Real Date
Kelly
The first thing I noticed when I opened my apartment door for Xerses the next evening was that he was carrying nothing.
No flowers not something devastatingly expensive, or thoughtfully selected thing inside it.
He was alone in his dark jeans, black Henley and hair slightly wind-tossed. Hands empty.
And because I was already too far gone to protect myself properly where he was concerned, that alone nearly made me emotional.
He looked at me for one quiet second and said, “Hi.”
I leaned against the doorframe and smiled before I could stop it. “Hi.”
“You look good.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
I couldn’t look away. “That should not work on me.”
“Does it?”
“Unfortunately.”
No grand speech followed.
I stepped back to let him in and felt, with a little ridiculous bloom of happiness.
He was here under a version of terms that did not feel fake or fragile or arranged.
He crossed the threshold and looked around like he always did seeing things.
The books. The little framed photo of me with the girls.
The throw blanket still half-slid off the couch where I’d fallen asleep reading the night before.
The tea glasses he’d given me, now washed and sitting near the kettle like I had not placed them there on purpose because I liked the look of them in my kitchen.
His eyes landed on the glasses with a quiet, warm little recognition that made my whole chest loosen.
“That’s new,” he said.
I glanced toward the counter like I had not spent three full minutes deciding whether leaving them visible looked too meaningful. “I use my kitchen.”
His expression shifted faintly. “ Get your shoes.”
I should have made him suffer more for how well he took understatement.
Instead I just asked, “Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“That is not a clue.”
He took one step closer. Not enough to touch. Enough to make me aware of his body in my space and the volatile amount of pleasure that still gave me.
“It’s a date,” he said.
That one simple word hit me harder than it should have, a date.
I looked at him and for one stupid, shining second I wanted to laugh and cry and kiss him all at the same time.
My mouth softened before I could stop it. “Okay.”
His eyes held mine as they shone. “Okay.”
And because all my best decisions involved not letting myself think too hard before acting, I crossed the last distance, put my hands on his chest, and kissed him.
He made a low sound against my mouth, liked I delighted him.
The kiss was warm and easy and full of all the things that had become ours too quickly for either of us to properly guard against, trust, heat, that odd deep relief of being near each other without having to pretend it meant less than it did.
When I drew back, he looked at me like the whole night had already improved beyond his expectations.
“I could get used to this,” he said.
My heart did something humiliating. I smiled anyway. “Don’t say emotionally destabilizing things to me in my own foyer.”
His mouth tipped. “You kissed me first.”
“Correct.” I grabbed my bag from the chair by the door. “That does not make you innocent.”
“Didn’t claim innocence.”
“Good.”
We left.
Xerses opened my car door. I paused with one hand on the frame and looked at him. “You’re doing that a lot.”
“Yes.”
“Why.”
His gaze moved over my face, then back to my eyes. “Because I like taking care of small things for you.”
That should not have been sexy, but it was. I got into the car before my body could make its opinion on that too public. “Promise me please one thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t chase a gift. I hate losing people I love.”
“I won’t.”
He drove with the windows down and one hand on the wheel and the evening air moving through the car around us. And because the whole point of this was apparently that once the truth had been said, everything could get both simpler and deeper at the same time, the drive felt easy.
“You seem suspicious,” he said after a few minutes.
“That’s because you are driving like a man with a secret.”
“I do have a secret.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be reassuring. It’s meant to be interesting.”
“The last time you were interesting, I ended up crying on a sidewalk.”
His hands tightened on the wheel.
“That was a joke,” I said quickly.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“No,” I agreed. “It wasn’t. But I’m here anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And that matters.”
“Yes.”
“I’m taking you somewhere you’ll like.”
“That is the vaguest possible thing you could say.”
“It’s also true.”
I crossed one leg under me a little and leaned back into the seat, watching the last of the light move over his face as we drove. “You know this is already better.”
He was quiet for one beat. I laughed softly under my breath and looked out the window.
That was the whole volatile truth of the night. I was happy before we’d even arrived.
Happy that he’d come to my door as himself. Happy that I had kissed him first and he’d looked pleased instead of smug.
I had loved him longer than I’d admitted to anyone including myself.
That thought sat beside me in the car as steadily as he did.
We’d met in a bar but when Charlie and Hope fake dated and introduced us, I’d known my fate was with him.
Built a whole little private crush around him and then laughed at myself for it because what else was I supposed to do with wanting a man like Xerses Norouzi when he had a past full of women that he apparently didn’t know their names.
I had thought my crush on him was something small and impossible.
He turned onto a quieter road and parked in front of a little place near the water that I had driven past a hundred times and never once entered because it looked too simple for a man like him to ever notice.
A tiny Italian restaurant. White-painted brick. String lights over the patio. The kind of place with handwritten specials and real candles and mismatched chairs that had probably been there for twenty years.
I turned to him as he killed the engine. “This is not where I expected you to take me.”
“That’s why I did.” I stared at the building. Then at him. Then back again.
“It’s cute.”
I laughed. “You told me last year you wanted to try this place sometime.”
I don’t remember that conversation. He got out, came around, and opened my door again.
I let him.
I was still independent. I could let him do things for me and still stay fully myself.
Inside, the place smelled like garlic, wine and summer. There were maybe ten tables, most of them occupied by locals in that easy, familiar way that told me this wasn’t a restaurant trying to impress tourists. It was good.
A hostess greeted Xerses by name. I looked at him.
He looked back without apology. “I said no props. I did not say I was incapable of making reservations.”
“That feels like business negotiations.”
He pulled out my chair.
I sat and he sat across from me.
This was it, just him and me and a real date now.
For one weird, lovely second all I could do was look at him. He noticed, naturally.
“What?”
I smiled. “Nothing.”
“That’s never true with you.”
“No, but this time it’s close.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying me with that same unbearable attention he always gave me, only now there was something lighter in it.
He ordered wine. I let him. We shared burrata and warm bread and then two pastas because he claimed choosing only one would be emotionally restrictive and I laughed hard enough that the table next to us looked over and then smiled to themselves.
It felt simple and good and easy.
The way he sat in an unpretentious restaurant and looked just as much himself as he did in the compound or his office.
The way he listened all the way through my stories instead of waiting for his turn or how he made me laugh with these quick, dry little comments that felt private even in public or the way his face shifted when I spoke about things I cared about, like he was storing the details on purpose.
All of that was what sold me that we could be real.
We could be happy together.
He would pour my tea right and remember which pasta I liked best and argue with me about stupid things in bed and on beaches and in grocery stores and probably in front of his entire family.
I would tell him when he was being impossible and he would say good in that voice and I would hate and love it in equal measure.
He would stand with me in quiet rooms and look at me like I mattered in them.
I would make his life warmer, noisier, more alive.
We could be happy and even a family. I could actually see the life and not only the romance.
Halfway through the meal, he said, “You’re staring at me.”
“You say that like I should stop.”
“You should not stop.”
“Then why mention it?”
“Because I like knowing you’re doing it.”
I smiled into my wine. “You are unusually attractive tonight.”
“Unusually?”
“Well, no. Annoyingly consistent.”
One side of his mouth moved. “That sounded almost like praise.”
“It was.”
“Good.”
I searched him over the rim of the glass. “You enjoy that word too much.”
“I enjoy it more when you make it say when I’m deep inside you.”
My whole body lit up.
No change there .
I set the glass down carefully because if I kept holding it while looking at him like that, I’d either spill it or climb into his lap in public. “That was filthy.”
“It was accurate.”
I should have changed the subject.
Instead I asked, “Do you know what’s unfair.”
“Yes.”
“I know it’s big.”
I laughed once, helplessly. “I was going to say that I’m trying to eat dinner and you keep reminding me we had sex on a beach.”
His eyes darkened instantly.
“I wasn’t trying to remind you,” he said.
“That feels like a lie.”
Got me.
I sat back in my chair smiling so hard my face hurt because there he was again, the man under all the control and power and bad instincts. Funny. Dry. Warm in these tiny flashes that felt more precious because he didn’t hand them out to everyone.
“You make me so stupid,” I said.