Page 44 of Waiting for Tuesday

I examined his profile in the dim lighting. One that was hard, chiseled, beautiful. Yet beyond that manly exterior was a much softer side to him. The side that wanted to cry at the reunion of a mother and her baby, that ran through the zoo with the excitement of a child. The man who stood beside me, his hand pressed to the glass, waiting…

My heart squeezed in my chest, and a ball of emotion rushed to my gut. I’d expected to be intimate with him tonight, but this was a whole different kind of intimacy. I didn’t think I was ready for it.

He tugged me closer, put his arm around my waist, and then turned me until my back was against his chest. His head rested on the soft space between my neck and shoulder. “There, in the far corner,” he whispered.

My heart was pounding so hard.

He was so close I could feel the vibrations of his voice, feel the soft whispers of his words as they brushed my ear. It was difficult to breathe with him so close, but in the distance, I could just make out the silver fur of one of the gorillas in the back of the exhibit. “I see him,” I whispered. I wasn’t quite sure why we were whispering, other than this was a purely magical moment, and I didn’t want to mess it up.

His cheek came to rest next to mine. “That’s George,” he said.

I smiled slightly, though my eyes brimmed with tears at the way he said the name. Maybe because I felt he was sharing a piece of himself with me, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. “How do you know that?” Goosebumps covered my body, and he pulled me closer, wrapping me in the warmth of his embrace. I inhaled, breathing in his intoxicating scent and going with it, even though my instincts were telling me to run. Just as he told me to in my office earlier.

“I spent every lunch break for an entire year right here, watching him.”

I nodded, wondering how I had ever thought him shallow. How I ever thought he was just another asshole at a bar, when he was so much more than that.

Eventually, we made our way back to the front of the zoo, and the security guard handed us boxes of food he had waiting for us at his station. We carried them back to the parking lot, climbed into the cab of John’s truck, and drove back to my shop in silence—but he held my hand the whole way.

* * *

Ahalf hour later, parked in the very front of Simply Tuesday’s, John unpacked the boxes on the bed of his truck. A veggie burger for me, and a double cheeseburger for himself.

He handed me a carton filled with my sandwich and an extra large order of fries. “I figured since you haven’t had a donut in a year, a hamburger was out of the question.”

I laughed, knowing he was completely right, and headed for the back of his truck. I pushed myself up to the tailgate, my heart twisting at the realization we were completely alone, and I let my legs dangle from the side as I unwrapped my burger.

I took a large bite, horrified when the whole leaf of lettuce came with it. It spilled from the corner of my mouth, and I pushed back just as John came around to the front of his truck to join me. He leaned against the tailgate, his brows lifted as I pushed the last bits of offensive greenery in my mouth. “Sorry,” I said around a mouth full of food.

He arched one brow, and his shoulders began to shake.

I frowned, covered my lips with one hand, and put my burger down in the box. “Are you laughing at me?”

He shook his head and made a coughing noise before he finally gave in, gripped his stomach, and let his head fall back to his shoulders. “I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting that.”

“Expecting what?”

“For you to eat like a man,” he said, throwing his head back with laughter.

I couldn’t help it. I grabbed a fry out of my box and shoved it into his mouth.

“Hey!” he protested, but then I took another handful of fries and crammed them into his mouth again. We were both laughing now, and he pushed me to the bed of the truck, got on top of me, and held my hands over my head. His body straddled mine and he grinned like the devil, chewing and swallowing as he looked down at me.

My heart constricted, and my body tightened beneath him—neither of us was laughing anymore. I couldn’t help but think about his kiss, what it did to my body, what his body was doing to me now. I wanted more of him. More than a night at the zoo. More than one heated kiss in a hardware store. I was ready.

His eyes shifted to my mouth and my lips parted.He was going to kiss me. My heart was in my throat, screaming for him to do it already. For him to kiss me again. But this time, I wouldn’t stop it. I’d welcome it with open arms and take in every bit of him I could get my hands on.

His eyes remained on my mouth, as if he was trying to make his mind up about something. “Thanks for coming with me tonight,” he finally whispered, then his eyes lifted, meeting mine once again.

My hair rubbed up and down against the bed of his truck as I nodded. “No, thankyou. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.”

He rolled off me then, causing confusion to surge over my body, leaving me chilled where his warmth had just been. I wasn’t sure what was going on. He grabbed his food from the bed of the truck and started eating again, this time a good yard away from the truck. I tentatively sat on the edge of the tailgate, unsure what was happening between us, and took another bite of my burger.

We both ate quietly for the rest of our meal, bathed in an awkwardness that consumed the dark night, but I only finished a quarter of my burger. I was too nervous, too confused to eat more than that. He packed up his empty boxes in the brown bag then pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Well, it’s pretty late.” He turned in the direction of my truck, and I couldn’t help my heart from squeezing with rejection.

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head, keeping his back turned while I searched my brain for what he’d said in the office, wondering if I had made the whole thing up. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and glanced over his shoulder. “We both have work in the morning, Tuesday. It’s almost midnight.”

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