Page 14 of Love You Too

They’re my favorite flower. There was a house down the block from where Ren lived in college that had a whole hillside of daisies, and Ren would often pluck one stem and tuck it into my ponytail, flower on top of the band. That simple, sweet gesture was what made it so hard for me to accept how easily he seemed to walk away from me at the end—I couldn’t believe a man with that kind of heart could turn so cold.

Surely it’s a coincidence that daisies are growing here now, but it makes me happy to see them.

Ren stops in his tracks so fast that I run smack into his back. I barely have time to put up a hand to brace myself, and now it’s crushed between us, the hard muscles of Ren’s back under my palm. He spins around, freeing my hand, and I feel an urge to reach out and touch him again somewhere. The heat of his body is magnetic, and I’m no match against it.

“Nope. Just me. You like the plants?”

“I, um, yes…”

He unlocks the front door and pulls me through it. I barely have time to take in my surroundings, which are quaint and well-kept—tidy white kitchen to the right, stainless steel appliances, small, unfurnished living room to the left—before Ren leads me down a hall and pushes open the door to his bedroom.

I don’t know what I’m expecting. A college dorm room? Milk crates for furniture? Posters of hockey heroes taped to the walls?

All of my memories of Ren and his living style are rooted in ten years ago, when he rarely made his bed and left pads and jerseys strewn everywhere. This room is large and immaculate, with a king-sized bed in the center and matching rustic woodbedside tables. Each of them has a small stack of books on it next to a lamp.

“You’re a reader?”

“Yes.” He smiles. “You want me to read you a story?”

“I, um…” Before I can come up with a logical response to a question that’s probably laced with innuendo, Ren presses a quick kiss to my palm. Eyes never leaving my face, he squeezes my hand and leads me to the edge of the bed.

He holds up a finger. “Sit, please. I’ll be right back.” Then he disappears down the hall. Truman, who has been sitting at the foot of the bed, obediently trails after Ren, his nails skittering against the wood floors.

I feel like I’m not supposed to follow him, so I stay put and think about what I’m considering. Sex with Ren is a bad idea, no matter how tempting. Then again, maybe it will get him out of my system once and for all. The breakup sex we never had.

When I hear him rustling around in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards and rattling dishes, I push down my ambivalence and scoot myself back on the bed to check out his books. On one side of the bed, I find a stack of performance-related sports books. No surprise. Ren has always been obsessive about understanding different kinds of training and the effects on fitness and performance.

On the other bedside table, however, I find three books of poetry—Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and E.E. Cummings. I flip open the Dickinson tome and find that several of the poems are earmarked. Interesting.

When I hear Ren’s footsteps approaching, I close the book and stash it back where it was. He catches me scooting back to the foot of the bed where he left me. Eyeing me with a quizzical look, he says nothing. Instead, he closes the door behind him and puts a tray down on the bed next to me.

“You still haven’t eaten much, and I don’t want you passing out on me from starvation. And maybe this will help yournerves.” He gestures to a corked bottle of wine and two glasses on the tray. Next to that sits a platter with crackers, three kinds of sliced cheeses, a bowl of pitted green olives, and a dish of dried fruit.

“I’m not nervous,” I lie.

“Right, okay.” He points to the strand of hair I’m twirling, and I immediately drop it. I hate that I have a “tell” and I hate more that he remembers it.

My stomach rumbles its approval as I take in the snacks. I push away the warm glow that rises in my chest at the sweetness of his gesture. He couldn’t know it, but the snack display is exactly the kind of thing I often eat for dinner when I’m alone at home and don’t feel like cooking. But I don’t tell him because this is a fling, and he doesn’t need to know me better than he does.

Putting a slice of cheese on a cracker, I nod. “Thank you.”

He watches me bite into the cracker, and I’m aware of the indelicate way a piece falls to my lap. He pops an olive into his mouth and hands me a glass of wine. We nibble and sip in silence for a few minutes, and I feel a pleasant numbness from the wine. I also feel a pang of regret. This is crazy. I should not be at my ex-boyfriend’s house for sex. Or…this is exactly where I should be. I can’t decide.

“If we do this…”

“Yes…” I’d smack the cocky grin right off his face if it weren’t so damn cute.

“It’s just a spur-of-the-moment thing. It doesn’t mean we’re friends again. It doesn’t mean we’re anything. Just one and done. We clear?”

He nods slowly. “Whatever you say.”

“That’s what I say. We’re not friends.”

He smirks again. “Fine.”

When I’ve finished my glass of wine, a bit of my caution slips away, though I still feel a little nervous and tense. Putting my glass on the tray, I meet Ren’s eyes. They’re just as molten brownand bottomless as I remember loving as a college sophomore when all I knew was that I wanted to stare at those eyes forever.

Now, I feel the heat and pull of him, but none of the emotions or promise of something more. I only feel the need for his body and what it can do to mine. There’s no question I want that.

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