Page 8 of Swept Away

I can’t read Zeke’s reaction. I expected him to seem startled, but he just looks down for a moment, as if he’s gathering himself, or perhaps deliberating.

“I’m flirting with you because I think you seem interesting, and beautiful,” he says lightly, looking up at me again. “And maybe kind of…”

Don’t saysad. Don’t saylonely.

“Bored?”

I blink.

“But is that what you want, Lexi?” His voice drops slightly, and my stomach turns over. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

I open my mouth to say yes, but at the last moment I find myself blurting, “I’m thirty-one.”

“OK,” Zeke says, unperturbed. “I’m a Pisces.” And then, at my unimpressed expression: “Are we not sharing facts about ourselves? Is that not the game?”

I snort. “You look about twenty. It would be weird. You’re too young.”

“I’m twenty-three. Not too young. Just right,” he says, with a new, cheeky smile that draws a dimple in his left cheek.

The very thought of a night with this stranger who is eight years younger than me feels decadent and forbidden, but I don’t have an early-morning wake-up to think of now. I don’t have a little person to get home for—Mae is with Penny and Ryan. She’s got everyone she needs.

“I want one night,” I find myself saying. “One night of stupid, reckless fun. I want to get drunk and enjoy myself.”

He tilts his head to the side. “I can give you that.”

Heat unfurls in my belly like a rope snaking loose.

“When do you get off?” he asks, his voice steady. “Have a drink with me. Properly,” he says, eyes flicking to the gin and tonic I’ve barely sipped while I’ve been busying myself behind the bar.

“I’m not actually working, officially. So…I’m free as soon as Marissa walks back through that door.”

My gaze shifts toward the pub entrance. He turns slowly, exaggeratedly, and watches the door, too, shooting the occasional hot, amused glance over his shoulder at me. We wait. There’s a low pulse beating through me now. I can’t remember the last time I did something like this. Something irresponsible. Something spontaneous.

The door opens. My hand is already on my apron, fingers shaking a little as I untie its ribbons.

“Where are we going?” Zeke says, as I move around the bar toward him.

“Nowhere,” I tell him. “This is Gilmouth. You want a drink, there’s nowhere else to go.”

Zeke

There goes “committingto the long-term in both thought and action.” There goes “dedicating oneself to the pursuit of authentic connection.” I leaveSurviving Modern Loveon the bar as Lexi and I move to the armchairs by the window—looking at it just makes me feel guilty. It’s the dumbest one of these books I’ve read so far anyway. What the hell are the “artifices of modernity”?

Truth is, it’s been so long now, and I missed it, I guess. This easy back-and-forth with someone who really only wants one thing from me, something I know I can give. It means breaking all my rules, but…what’s one more one-night stand, really? What’s the harm?

Outside, the streetlights have come on, bright gold against the silhouetted masts of the marina. Lexi puts her feet up to rest on the old-fashioned radiator underneath the window, and I do the same, my black boots beside hers. Almost-but-not-quite touching.

There’s a quiet promise of where the night’s going in the air between us. I feel myself slipping into the rhythm of it all. The way our gazes meet, flit away, then join again, and how our bodies lean toward each other. Her sayingI want one nightkeeps going aroundmy head, and the way she looked as she said it, like even speaking it out loud was enough to turn her on.

“Are we wearing the same shoes?” Lexi asks, looking at them over her glass.

I knock her foot gently with mine. “That a problem?”

“Only because you wear them better.”

I laugh. She stays deadpan—she’s hardly cracked a smile since we started talking. Even sprawled out with her feet up, she still has one arm drawn across her body like a shield. Everything about Lexi’s like this—kind of hemmed-in, muted, like someone’s dialed her down. You can tell she’s complicated.

I amsucha sucker for complicated.

---