Page 9 of Tickled Pink

“He’ll be fine. Max knows what he’s doing.”

Her thumbs tap out a message. “Good luck,” she reads. “I love you. Kiss emoji.”

She hits send and tosses the phone down above her head, effortlessly shifting her focus right back to me. Our lips lock once more, but I ease back an inch as my thoughts get the better of me.

“You know I love you, right?” I ask.

Phoebe hums pleasantly. “Of course. Why?”

“I just…” I hesitate, feeling stupid. “I can’t help but notice that you and Max say it. A lot.”

Her head tilts. “Thad.”

“Like, a lot more than we do.”

“And you think that means something?”

“Doesn’t it?” I ask.

She curls her arms around my neck, pulling me closer. “It means…” she kisses the edge of my mouth, “that you and I say it differently than me and Max do.”

“We do?”

She nods. “Max doesn’t leave little poems for me to find under my pillow. And I don’t think about him every time I hear a plane fly over my head.” Her lips graze mine. “That’s all you, baby.”

I smile. “Oh, yeah?”

“I look up into the sky,” she says, “and I always think about you… showing up at my loft at two in the morning looking for a place to stay.”

I chuckle, utterly bewitched. “I did do that.”

“You could have gone anywhere.” Our noses touch. “But you came to me.”

“Of course I did.”

“And today, you go up into the sky and you can go anywhere you want. But still, you come home to me.”

“Of course I do.”

“I think about that and I love you,” she says. “I think about how, out of all the girls in the world, you love me.”

I kiss her, unable to hold it in another moment. She gently caresses my face as she kisses me back with the lightest chuckle in her throat.

“I love you, Thad Hemsley,” she whispers. “Especially your poems.”

I laugh. “What can I say? You inspire me.”

“Maybe someday I’ll have enough to make a book out of them.” She bites her lip. “Might even convince you to let me publish it.”

I exhale. “Maybe someday. But not today.”

Phoebe nods, her smile dimpling her cheeks and bewitching even more. I crumble into her, wrapping my arms around her as I kiss her again. She runs her fingers through my hair, sparking a deep need down my spine to feel her, taste her, take her.

I glide a hand down her body, reaching for the zipper on her jeans.

“No, no...” she says, playfully grabbing my wrist. “We just made this bed.”

“We’ll re-make it,” I say, heat rising between us.

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