Page 20 of The Boyfriend Goal

“Ah, that thing. Yes, I recall it now.”

He’s making this so easy. Still, it feels important to get this right. When someone you love gives you instructions before they go, it seems like you should handle them with care. Wesley’s part of the list now. Part of this new history of me. The first checkmark. So I meet his eyes and say, “I’m glad it was you.”

He dips his face, smiling. When he lifts it, he locks his gaze with mine again, then says, “Me too.”

There’s an intensity in those warm, soulful eyes that makes my stomach flip. That makes me wonder what it would be like if he was more than a stranger. Briefly, I toy with the idea of asking if he wants to hang out, but there’s no item on Aunt Greta’s list or mine for anything more than one night. My new job starts in two more days—on Tuesday. My new life.

Best to be true to the plan.

We’re both quiet for a beat, and maybe he’s unsure of what happens next when he says, “So the night ended better than it began?”

“It really did,” I say, then I yawn, fighting to stay awake.

“Go to sleep,” he says, on a yawn too. “Sleep makes a perfect one-night stand even more perfect.”

I take off my glasses again. We dim the lights, slide under the covers, and crash into slumber.

I’m dead to the world until I get up to pee early in the morning. When I trudge back to bed, I fumble around for my phone to check the time and squint at the screen.

Christian: Get ready to be an aunt! Liv is in labor for real, and the babies are almost here!

Then he sends me the address to the hospital.

I bolt upright, wide awake despite the fact it’s five a.m. In a flurry, I jam on my glasses, yank on clothes, find a tube of toothpaste and smear some on my teeth, then hunt for a pad of paper.

Finding one, I scribble out a note, thanking Wesley.

Then I go, leaving him behind and taking the sexiest memory of my life with me into the early dawn.

7

GLASS SCARF

Wesley

The fading scent of cinnamon drifts past my nose. That’s a real nice way to wake up. But there are even better ways to rise. I stretch an arm across the bed, reaching for Josie. She’s adventurous. Maybe she’ll be up for one more round.

“Hey,” I murmur, my voice gravelly from the last remnants of sleep.

She doesn’t answer. The room’s quiet. My hand makes contact with…a pillow. My eyes float open.

Pushing up on my elbows, I tilt my head, listening for any sounds of a shower perhaps. It’s dead silent. My shoulders slump, but I’m a glutton for punishment, since I swing my legs out of bed and pad to the bathroom. Just in case she’s, I dunno, quietly applying hotel lotion.

But it’s empty too. I take care of business, then hunt around the room for my clothes. I pull on my boxer briefs before sitting on the end of the bed, more contemplative than I like to be first thing in the morning.

Or, really, ever.

I drag a hand through my messy hair, missing Josie’s hands in it making it messier.

Fact is, I wasn’t just hoping for another round with her. I was hoping to get her number. To ask her to hang out again. Sure, we said it was a one-night stand. But some one-night stands should turn into two nights. Or three.

I’d been planning to suggest as much when we woke up. It’s been a while since I met someone I clicked with so easily. Someone who wasn’t into me for the number on my back. Or, on the flip side, someone who didn’t hate what it represented. Though hate may be a strong word for my ex’s feelings about hockey. Anna looked down on it, it turns out—and me. “You need a life beyond hockey. The sport won’t last forever, you know,” she’d said.

Really, it won’t?

“But you don’t like anything besides hockey,” she’d said. “You never want to discuss the world or ideas. You don’t even read the articles and think pieces I send you.”

No shit.

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