Page 53 of Maybe You

He’s smiling. Again. It seems I’m entertaining, if nothing else. I’d prefer to be sexy, but you get what you get, I guess.

“You ramble when you’re nervous,” he says. “Cute.”

I frown at that. “No. That’s not what you’re supposed to think. You don’t fuck cute people, ergo I’m not cute. I’m seductive. Hot.”

“You absolutely are,” he agrees solemnly, eyes moving up and down my body, and when he looks up again… Yeah, there’s humor, but he does seem to like what he sees. I think. “Extremely hot,” he adds as if to push away my silent hesitation.

I nod. “Yeah.” I put some more confidence in my voice. “I am.”

“But also cute. Especially when you use words like ergo.”

Silence stretches between us. My heart goes a hundred miles a minute.

“I am nervous,” I admit.

“Really? I couldn’t tell at all.” He’s still smiling, but I don’t really mind that he mainly seems to find me entertaining right now. It’s better than the many, many alternatives.

I take the glass of scotch from him and put it on the floor by my feet.

“We should probably just do it,” I say. “Just get it over with.”

His lips twitch. “I don’t make a habit of criticizing the way people flirt, but that is a shit-awful way to seduce somebody.”

I can feel my face heat, but fuck it, I’m already here. Might as well see this thing through.

“Sorry. I sounded less reluctant in my head. But rest assured, I want to. Come on. Let’s put some fucking into this evening and enjoy each other’s genitals.”

“Hot,” he says, and a spark of teasing lights up his eyes.

I let my head drop back and groan out loud.

“Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”

He just keeps looking at me, still painfully amused. Waiting. Am I supposed to make the move? If so, how do I go about it, exactly? And if you really think about it, what even counts as a move? Because I think we technically can argue that I already made the move when I asked him to sleep with me. Or maybe that doesn’t count. In that case, I really don’t know how.

Maybe I just need a plan. Like a manual. And then I can just follow those steps.

Yeah. That sounds good. Doable.

First step: location.

“So… where should we do it?” I look around. “Here? The bedroom? The kitchen counter?”

I’m fucking this up so badly, and I don’t know how to stop.

“The bedroom?” Sutton offers. Still smiling. Still amused. By some miracle, still interested.

It’s like an anchor in a storm, that suggestion. And I grab it with all my might. I have a mission. To get us to that bedroom.

I take his hand and start tugging him out of the living room like I have any fucking clue where I’m going. There are three doors to choose from, but fuck me if I can remember which one was the correct one, so I just open the door closest to me and barrel inside, dragging Sutton after me.

“That’s not…” Sutton starts to say.

But I’m so determined to do something right that I’ve stormed well into the room before I realize it’s not the place where I meant to go. I stop. Turn around.

“That’s not your bedroom,” I tell Sutton.

“No, it’s not.”

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