Page 7 of If Only In Our Dreams

I shouldn’t have stopped him too—Iknewthat.

Especially after the way he’d run off.

But the second we were alone again, my mouth had opened before my brain could catch up. And then I’d run—just like he had. Which, again, was not like me. Not at all. And now…I needed to figure out what to do. Because I didn’t want to seem like a total creep, but it also didn’t sit right with me—the way we’d left off.

Not when I kept replaying the confused, almost hurt look on his face, over and over in my mind.

No, no. He most definitely deserved an apology for that.

He was aperson. And I’d been less than kind by walking off when he was mid-sentence.

“I’m sorry for molesting your bicep, man.”

He’d looked so…defeated when he said those words. Paranoid almost. Like he expected me to get mad at him for borrowing my shoulder. To be fair…if it had been anyone else I would’ve found a way to politely excuse myself from the situation.

I’d never liked being touched as a general rule.

I’d always thought I had very few exceptions.

My daughters, Rosie and Jane, my mother—because she’d always been my closest confidant—and begrudgingly, my best friend, Trixie—the mother of my children. And on the very rare occasion I left town for a medical conference or to visit my publisher, I would sometimes tolerate the hands of the random men I’d pick up.

Though, admittedly, it had been years since I’d felt inclined to scratch that particular itch—despite having just arrived home from a conference today.

Apparently, I’d been wrong—about my limitations, that is.

Because…while my bubble remained small, today I had learned that it was still large enough to accommodate a tiny, black-clad emo twink.

An emo twink that I was going to need to find, so that I could properly apologize. And perhaps…maybe thank for reading my book. Which I still couldn’t believe had really happened. It felt surreal at best.

Drying my hands, I sighed and pulled the men’s bathroom door open with my foot using the lever near the floor. I wasn’t about to touch the handle. Absolutely not.

Speak of the devil.

Apparently, I didn’t need to hunt him down to apologize, after all.

“Oh,” Trashmouth stood outside the door, his hands raised like he’d been about to reach for the handle. His movements were clearly sluggish, another hint at the sleep deprivation I could see written all over his face. He had to tilt his head back quite a ways to meet my gaze, the difference in our heights even more obvious up close. “Bicep guy.”

Bicep guy?

Now I was met with a very awkward situation. I could…wait for him to use the bathroom so I could apologize for acting rude. Or…we could have this conversation in the doorway of a public restroom.

Neither option was good.

But which choice would frighten him less?

Best to rip the Band-Aid off now.

I had no idea what kind of people he interacted with back in California—or why he was here in Vermont at all, but I didn’t want to frighten him by lurking.

“I’d like to apologize to you,” I said, the door still awkwardly positioned on my foot.

“Apologize…to me?” Trashmouth—god, that was an awful name—looked confused, head cocked to the side as his eyes narrowed. “For what?”

He had a scratchy voice, lower than one might expect. Almost like he was a smoker, even though I was fairly certain—given his career—that he wasn’t. There was something effortlessly sexy about it, all low, crackling amusement.

“I’d like to apologize for running away,” I clarified.

“What?” He stared at me like I’d grown a second head.

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