Page 26 of Sweatpants & Sweet Tea

When I reached the back screen door, I slid on a pair of flip-flops and took a deep breath before I pushed it open and stepped outside. Harlan was standing at the bottom of the steps that led to the kitchen. He looked so much better up close than he did from a distance. It was unnerving. His thick, wavy bedhead made me envision him rolling around in his sheets. A five o’clock shadow covered his strong jaw making my palm itch to reach out and touch his face. His soulful, whiskey-brown stare stole my breath away.

“Hi,” I said breathlessly.

“I, um, I couldn’t sleep, and I saw your light was on.”

I nodded as I tried to calm down my heart, which was racing like a car in the Grand Prix.

“I would have called you, but I didn’t have your phone number,” he explained.

“Oh, right.” I had to actively work at not giggling like a schoolgirl.

Shit.I’d just made the decision that not seeing him again was absolutely the best thing, and now, here he was standing in front of me in a zip-up hoodie and sweats, looking so sexy it should be illegal.

“I looked for you after I was done with the photos; Nadia said that you left.”

“Yeah, Aunt Rhonda wasn’t feeling well.” I felt like a tongue-tied teenager trying to speak to her first crush. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but yet, my mind was totally blank. All I could think about was the fact that despite having decided the less time I spent with him, the better, I didn’t want this conversation to end.

He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

“A walk?” I repeated. I didn’t know the exact time, but it had to be past 1:00 a.m.

His stubble-covered chin dipped in a nod. “There’s something I want to show you.”

As someone who always had to look out for herself, I’d studied several different self-defense styles. I carried mace everywhere I went in California. I lived in a building with twenty-four-hour security that had underground parking, was well lit, and in a good neighborhood.

I’d seen too many episodes of20/20andNightline. This was not a good idea. I knew better than to go for a ‘walk’ with a man I didn’t know, in the middle of the night, in a secluded area, and no one would even know I was missing for hours.

It appeared the rational side of my brain was out for lunch because instead of politely declining, I heard myself say, “Sure. Yeah.”

I didn’t know how to explain my decision other than to say I felt safe with Harlan. Safer than I’d ever felt with anyone in my life. We began walking in the field beneath a blanket of a dark, inky sky dotted with bright stars. Crickets chirped, and leaves rustled in the midnight breeze. The entire scene had a dreamlike quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d fallen asleep at the computer, and this entire thing was just that. A dream.

“So, did you find out who bid five thousand dollars for you?” I asked, even though there were probably a thousandother questions I’d rather know the answer to. I wanted to know everything about this man. But somehow, I didn’t know what to say. It was a very strange phenomenon; one I’d never experienced. I had adegreein journalism.

“I was told it was a woman named Ms. French.”

“Ms. French?” I repeated.

He nodded.

“That sounds like a Bond villain or something.”

He chuckled. “It does. My dad loved those movies. He watched them so much when I was a kid.”

“Who is his favorite Bond?”

Kale, the actor I was in a situationship with, was on the shortlist to play the next Bond, so the last time he was in town, we’d binged all twenty-five Bond movies chronologically, starting withDr. Noand ending withNo Time to Die.

“I don’t know. I never asked him.” Harlan was quiet for a beat before continuing, “He died when I was twelve.”

My heart sank. I knew what it was like to lose a parent, even one I wasn’t close to. It was still hard. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay; it was a long time ago. But I still miss him.”

“We’re you two close?” I knew I didn’t have the right to ask him such a personal question since we didn’t know each other, but it didn’t feel like I was stepping over any boundaries. I hoped I wasn’t misreading the situation.

“Yeah, I was pretty much his shadow. He was a mechanic, just like my Grandad, and I spent a lot of my childhood in their shop or following them around on the farm.”

“That sounds…nice.”

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