Page 56 of Maybe You

My move.

Okay.

I can do this.

I lean closer.

Almost there.

Almost.

That’s when my stomach lets out a loud rumble. And I mean loud. It’s like there’s a high-tech sound system in my stomach. And it’s not even just that the rumble is loud. It’s also long.

Sutton snorts. And then that snort turns into another one. And then he’s full-on laughing.

“Shut up,” I mutter. “It’s been a long day, and I skipped dinner.”

He’s still chuckling when he looks at me.

“Pizza?”

“You don’t have to?—”

“I insist.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. But then we fuck.”

“Like bunnies,” he promises solemnly, then gets up to get his phone.

The pizza arrives thirty minutes later, and we eat it on his comfy couch, both of us with our feet propped on the coffee table. It’s one of those fancy pizzas where the dough is made from scratch, and there are multiple types of cheese and sauce on it, along with something decidedly weird you wouldn’t put on a pizza yourself—pumpkin cubes and some type of seeds in this case—and it somehow works.

Everything about this evening feels surreal.

“You’re, like, really fucking rich, huh?” I ask through a mouthful of pizza when I look around his apartment and out the window at the view. You don’t get views of Washington Square Park for free, is all I’m saying.

Although, aside from the location and the building itself, the apartment is actually quite normal. It’s not excessively big. It’s not a penthouse. It doesn’t have its own private elevator opening straight into the living room. It’s tastefully decorated, but not in that way where you can tell it was decorated with the express purpose of showing off in mind. It’s cozy first and foremost, and there are a lot of things that feel very domestic. There’s a book on the end table, open, laid on the surface with its face down. A coffee cup is drying on the counter next to the sink. A sweater has been thrown over the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table. There are plants on windowsills and more of those subtle signs of life everywhere I look.

It’s a home.

“Yup,” he says, his voice full of ease. It’s not even as if he’s bragging, he’s just agreeing with a fact I stated.

“Trust fund?” I ask.

“Inheritance.”

“Who died?”

“My grandparents.”

“Were you close?”

“Not even a little bit.”

I probably shouldn’t dig into his personal life. That’s not what this night is about. But it doesn’t feel like he’s especially reluctant to answer those questions.

“What about the rest of your family? Are you close with them?”

“Not even a little bit.” All his answers are delivered with the same easy, almost flippant tone.

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