Page 52 of What It Means To Be Found

“Don’t you dare,” Josh scolded.

“Don’t you want to know who Eloise just had over?” Courtney whisper-hissed, sounding like she was close to the door.

“Yeah, but instead of ambushing the guy, we could just ask her about it in the morning,” Josh chuckled, making Courtney grumble a disgruntled noise.

I stood frozen in the hallway, my heartbeat rapid in my chest as I wondered how to proceed.

I knew Eloise had been loud, but I didn’t realize how thin the walls of the townhome were. Would she tell Courtney about us? …Would I? To my knowledge, nobody knew about our FaceTime call that I had thought about for the last couple of weeks. Would it be different now that she and I had actually, well, had sex?

“How did she even find someone so fast? Those dating apps really don’t mess around.” Courtney’s voice got quieter as she retreated from her bedroom door and the squeak of a mattress let me know she settled in for the night.

I exhaled a harsh breath of relief, before continuing my quiet journey downstairs.

***

A week passed. I exercised, practiced on the ice, and ran. I was consumed with reliving that experience with Eloise in my mind. I kept replaying it over and over again.

I was addicted.

It wasn’t until the following weekend when I was waiting for Courtney and Josh to show up at the gym that I realized how excited I was to see her again. We had texted only a few times, short flirty notes that ended after just a couple of messages back and forth. It never escalated to a repeat of the night we FaceTimed, and I was okay with that. Part of me wanted to wait until we could get together again, just the two of us.

I also read her romance novel.

Eloise had clearly highlighted her favorite parts, which weren’t philosophical or educational. No, Eloise instead liked to highlight parts simply because she liked them. The highlighted lines were either cheesy pickup lines from the male love interest or dirty lines he would say during the many, many sex scenes the book had. Sometimes there were little drawings of a fireball or a panting face in the margins, letting me know exactly what her thoughts on the dialogue of the story were.

I had never gotten hard from reading a book before…but I did now.

I then googled the phenomenon and learned what book boners were. And thus, I suddenly wanted to learn more about the romance novels that Eloise read. It didn’t take me long to find her social media accounts on the internet, but none of them showed what she liked to read. I did, however, see her comment on one of Courtney’s posts. It was a picture of Courtney and Josh reading in bed together, with millions of likes and comments, but Eloise’s comment is what caught my eye, “I saw your review for this one on Goodreads and immediately added it to my TBR!”

And just like that, I learned what Goodreads was and found Eloise’s account. I was able to see all the books she read, what she rated them, and why.

So here I was, a week after I had snuck through Eloise’s window and four romance novels deep, thanks to her online recommendations.

I was sitting on my bench, taking a break from my reps to read a couple more paragraphs of the latest romance novel I was on. It was categorized as a hockey romance, which unsurprisingly, had very little to do with the sport itself and had more to do with the love story between the man and woman.

“Well, well, well.” I heard Josh’s voice before I saw them, smirking to myself as I quickly pocketed my phone and turned to face him. “If it isn’t exactly who we came to see.”

Josh was weird.

“Who started without us, again.” Courtney made a show of glaring at me before she set her bag down and pulled her sticker-clad water bottle out.

That was when I spotted Eloise.

My heart thudded in my chest.

I struggled to remember what I was doing so that I could continue the movement and not be super obvious about what her presence did to me.

“Shocker.” Eloise’s lips twitched a little as we made eye contact, but she broke it first by bending to drop her bag next to Courtney’s and digging around in it. There was no indication in her body language that she was just as affected by my presence as I was by hers. While Josh and Courtney chatted about, well, something, I took a moment to take in Eloise.

She was wearing a black headband that kept most of her hair out of her face. Her light blue sports bra was the kind with only one strap over one shoulder—I wasn’t an expert on sports bras, but I figured that wasn’t one she could confidently wear while running. She wore the same little black shorts she had worn last time, showing off her dainty flower tattoos on her hip and thigh. The shorts did wonderful things to her ass, her ass that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of before I knew how it felt in the palms of my hands.

I stared at the flowers on her hip, promising myself that I would take the time to trace them with my tongue should Eloise allow it.

Fuck me.

Eloise stood with her water bottle in hand, pausing only a moment when she realized I had been staring at her. Courtney and Josh were grabbing their weights to the side, so I took an opportunity to hold her gaze.

I wanted to see how she wanted to play this.

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