Page 74 of Accidentally Amy

I discovered he loved animal documentaries (though the man was straight-up terrified of monkeys), hated snow, and was a volunteer “watchdog” at his niece’s school, which basically just meant that he had to volunteer one day a year doing whatever the principal told him to do. The smile on his mouth when he talked about little Ellie made me slightly dizzy.

It wasn’t until our plates were cleared and we were enjoying a post-dinner glass of wine that things changed. Blake was talking about one of the new machines at the gym, and I said, “Y’know, I haven’t gone back there since the day I saw you in the elevator.”

“Why not?”

I knew I should shut up, but the wine had loosened my tongue. I ran a finger over the rim of my glass and said, “Because if I go all the time, my routine visits will gradually dim the memory of that first time. And I don’t want to ever forget that elevator ride.”

His smile disappeared, his expression turning serious.

“I mean, I know it’s no big deal now—you’re Blake and I’m Izzy. We’re friends. But at the time, it felt like this great cosmic coincidence, that I would run into Mr. Chest from Scooter’s, and I always want to remember the magic of all that crackling potential.”

He didn’t say anything. At all. He just watched me.

“Obviously I’m drunk,” I teased, rolling my eyes and lifting the glass to my lips. “I shall shut up now.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I think about it every single time I step into that elevator.”

“Youdo?” I asked, unable to be cool. “Seriously?”

“Hell, yes,” he said. “I rotate between the memory of what it was, and the fantasy of what it could’ve been.”

“You fantasize about the elevator?” I leaned forward on my elbows. “I do, too. All the time.”

His eyes dipped down to my mouth as he said, “About you hitting the stop button?”

I ran my tongue over my bottom lip. “That’s where it starts.”

“Tell me where it finishes, Shay,” he said, quietly and calmly. No one around us would ever guess that he was asking me to share a sexual fantasy. No one who’d ever known me would guess that I would.

“With my hands on the wall,” I said, stuck somewhere between shyness and exhilaration as I dared to say it all. “And with you behind me, most of the time.”

He raised his eyebrows like he was amused, but his jaw was rigid. “Most of the time.”

“It varies, y’know?”

“Yeah, I fuckingdoknow,” he said, and my stomach dipped.

“So tell me,” I said, intimidated and totally turned on by his blazing eyes. “Where it finishes for you.”

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting—Blake wasn’t the kind of guy to back down from a challenge, soof coursehe’d answer—but it wasn’t “your back against the elevator wall,your legs wrapped around my waist, and my name on your tongue.”

“Ah,” I managed, unsure of how to behave as my body spontaneously combusted over after-dinner drinks. “I, um, I think I like yours better.”

“Do you want more wine?” he asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Do you want to go?”

“Yes, please.”

Blake

I pulled into the parking garage as Iz rambled about the song on the radio. The drive to my place had been off, the two of us unusually quiet as thoughts of sexual fantasies pinged through the air.

Izzy tried to jump-start a conversation, but it wasn’t meant to be. I was fucking incapable of thinking about anything other than the image she’d put into my depraved mind. After pulling into my spot and turning off the car, I finally dared to look at her.

“This’ll only take a sec,” I said, referring to our stop-off to inject the cat.

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