Page 44 of Can't Help Falling

Though she’d been trying her hardest not to think about what it had felt like to sit in that chair, the memory of it was unstoppable now. It was like trying not to think of a pink elephant. She couldn’t avoid remembering the warm buzz of energy that had enveloped her as the back of her legs had hit the smooth leather, the wooden arms of the chair almost warm under the palms of her hands. It had been like sitting down in a dark room only to realize that Tyler was already sitting there. Almost like she’d accidentally sat in his lap.

She got that nervous-system-juddering feeling again and shied away from it immediately.

Strike that, actually, he texted a moment later. I don’t even want to know what you hate about my chair. Ignorance is bliss.

Have you been steering clear of patronizing her with

women’s soccer?

He immediately sent her back an eyeroll emoji. Some of us call that having common interests. Tell me this, Cleopatra. Do you get off on chastising me or something?

She pursed her lips for a moment and then burst out laughing. It wasn’t that the text was even all that funny. But it made a giddiness rise up within her and it burst out of her in laugh form.

She worked a few different responses in her head, but anything that was funny in return seemed too flirty.

In the end the best she could come up with was, I’ll work on it.

A few minutes rolled past and Fin couldn’t help but check her phone again and again to see if he’d texted her back yet. Were they done? Was he sleeping again? Damn, she should have said something sweeter. The words I’ll work on it looked so terse as she reread them.

Her phone buzzed in her hand and she almost fumbled it.

I’ll move the chair.

She blinked at her phone for a minute, turned off the movie and then went to brush her teeth, inexplicably smiling all the way to the bathroom.

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