Page 40 of Mr. Broody

“Yeah, hi.”

“I’m Conor. This guy sucks at introductions.” He thumbs in my direction. “Then again, you two seem to be in your own little world when you see one another.” He smiles, his dimples indenting.

“You gotta go, Conor? Cool, see you later.” I give him a look that says to get the fuck out of here.

He puts up his hands and does a shallow bow. “Sorry to interrupt. I hope to see you around more, Jade.” Then he laughs and jogs down the steps, stopping right before he opens the security gate. “We’ll be downstairs watching the game if you want to join after… I mean, you gotta eat and rehydrate, right?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushes through the gate.

“Sorry about him.” I key in the code to my apartment.

She steps into my space, and I watch her look around the condo where I’ve made a home for Bodhi and me. “It’s very you.” She picks up a piece of mail that sits on a stack on the table by the front door and drops it on the floor, laughing. “Still organized Henry, huh?”

I bend down to pick up the envelope and place it back where it was. “I imagine your place still has dirty dishes in the sink?” I arch an eyebrow, the corner of my lips tugging up.

She turns around, shrugging off her coat and tossing it over a chair. Her challenging smile at me tells me she knows I’m itching to hang it in the closet. “All your cans turned label-side forward in the cupboard?”

“Go check.” I cross my arms and watch her in my open concept kitchen, opening cabinets where yes, everything has a specific place and is front facing. “Is your bedroom floor still your laundry basket?”

She swivels around, her hands pressed to the counter, her back slightly arched, giving me a view of her tits in the snug sweater she’s wearing. “I don’t remember you complaining when you were picking up my thongs off the floor.”

I shake my head and say nothing.

She pushes off the counter. “Toothbrush still have a specific compartment in the drawer? Contact lenses pulled out of the boxes, stacked and ready for the week?” She disappears into my bathroom, and I hear her opening the drawers.

“Your toothbrush still dead since you’ve probably lost your charger?”

She chuckles, walking out of the bathroom seeming satisfied that I’m still the guy I was when I was with her. “Still does the job.” She shrugs.

“Just not as well.”

She glances in my direction, and I can’t help but relate her toothbrush to me and the ex-boyfriend. I’d bet he didn’t do half the job I did in getting her off because he didn’t have years to discover all the places that drove her wild until she was begging for my dick.

“Suits organized by color, I assume?”

“Looking for a reason to go into my bedroom?”

“Maybe.” She pushes the bedroom door open wider to look inside, then steps over the threshold.

I follow her, resting my shoulder on the doorframe as she opens my closet, her fingers running along my suits that are in fact hung by color.

“I won’t pry, but I bet all your boxers are black now. No more array of different colors that you found on clearance.” She quirks her eyebrow.

I almost point her to the drawer she’s asking about, but I’m not sure I could control myself if she had my boxer briefs in her hand.

She sits on the edge of my bed and pats the spot next to her. When I don’t move right away, she says, “Afraid of me, Henry?”

“Deathly,” I admit, pushing myself off the wall and breaking the distance between us.

I love this playful side she’s showing me, and I don’t want it to end because when it does, we’ll have to address the big ol’ King Kong-sized issue between us. I sit on the bed but not right next to her, purposely leaving space. We’re in dangerous territory sitting in my bedroom, on my bed. The same bed I’ve masturbated in to remembrances of us fucking too many times to count.

“You want to talk in here?” I ask.

She nods. “I think it’s fitting, don’t you? Maybe we should reenact the scene when you left me in a bedroom, turned on and wet, with no explanation.”

I grab her hands because I knew this whole thing when she walked in was her defense mechanism. I can’t imagine how unnerving it would be if I walked into her space, the place she made a home without me.

“You have no idea how hard it was for me that night.” I guess we’re just going to dive in. Maybe we can get this part over with and move on. I have no idea in what direction we’ll go, but I know for sure that the incident three years ago is blocking us from moving forward. “I wanted to be with you. I wanted to be the guy who swept you up and made all that pain and fear of a future without your grandma disappear. Fuck, I so desperately wanted to be that guy, but…”

My mind travels back to where I was in my life at that time—the crossroads I found myself at.

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