Page 71 of Red Flags Only

“I mean to entice and enlighten,” she says, scooting around me. “This is all just for the movie, right?”

The movie? Flag the movie, I want to play. To touch. To feel.

“Yes,” I reply. “We’ll be doing only one bedinbed. The last time I slept on a floor, my back hurt for a week and I had to go to that massage place in town to get it fixed. Erin, the masseuse? She does not practice the art of soothing, relaxing massages. What she does is torture of a different kind than what you’re partaking in right now. I was quite abused. Then, fortunately for the state of her tires, I was better. Apparently beating people up is healing now.”

“I know Erin,” she replies. “She’s great.”

Oh, the torturers are friends? How surprising.

A knock sounds at the door, and my eyes shoot wide. I move on instinct, scooping Lyra up and dropping her in the nest, then throwing any loose blanket I can find over her until she’s covered head-to-toe in plaids, peaches, and pinks. Only her eyes peek out at me, astonished, as I order, “Don’t move.”

I handle the food delivery quickly, opening the door just wide enough to throw a tip at the boy on the other side and snatch my bags and drinks. He bids me a goodnight, and I growl in response, then slam the door. Barrier renewed, my heart rate slows.

I move to the window, pushing aside the curtain so I can watch him leave the property. He throws startled glances behind him as he mounts his bicycle, shoving green bills into the money pack around his hips as he goes.

“Well,” Lyra says behind me. “It’s a good thing nobody panicked.”

I blink and turn around. “I told you not to move,” I grumble, retrieving the big brown bag containing our food before joining her in the nest, where she’s disobediently uncovered her top half. “You’re a terrible listener.”

“I’m an excellent listener,” she counters. “It’s the obeying that you have an issue with. Sadly for you, I’m afully grown woman who answers only to herself these days. It’s all that character growth, you know?”

I do know, and I couldn’t be more proud. She shies, pleased, when I tell her so.

“Okay,” she says. “Food? Before the fries get cold?”

Ew. Cold fries.

I stand to disappear into the kitchen to find a tray for our drinks. Tray secured, I return to a wiggling, happy Lyra.

“This smells so good,” she says. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast, which was a two pack of Reese’s cups and a half a bottle of kombucha. Ineedthis.”

I fold myself into the blankets next to her, scowling. “You didn’t eat lunch?” I ask. “And your breakfast was chocolate and a drink you hate?”

She shrugs, pulling tiny pots of sauce out of a bag and lining them up beside her. “I was anxious about telling you you love me,” she says. “I thought maybe you’d be mad at me about it.” She glances at me, sheepishly. “I couldn’t eat.”

“I hate everything you just said,” I tell her. “You have to eat, Ly. That’s Being a Human 101: Basic Necessities. Food. Water. Shelter.”

“And look!” she exclaims, presenting a fry before shoving it in her mouth. “Food! I live another day!”

It’s enough to make me wish Iwasin love with her. I could feed her carrot cake every day, like Mars does for me. And she’d never drink flagging kombucha ever again.

“Pick a movie, Jove.” Her shoulder bumps mine, then stays there, the heat of her skin soaking into my shirt where they meet. “It’s sleepover time!”

Eying her as she merrily dunks a spicy nugget into a slew of sauces, I grab the remote to do as she bids.

After the movie and the food, we spend some time rooting through her art supplies to decide on a project, ultimately landing on making tiny clay dragons. Hers is about a million times better than mine, with vines crawling over its miniature scales and leaf-like spikes crawling up its back. In comparison, the dragon I’ve molded looks more like a sick puppy with wings, no matter how insistently Lyra tries to tell me otherwise.

Braiding her hair goes slightly better than clay sculpting in that I get to touch Lyra for the entire process. The end result is about the same on the disaster scale, though, and she ends up rebraiding it herself. “Although, honestly, if you’d like to keep playing with my hair, feel free. It feels really nice.”

Goodbye, hair tie. Hello, joy.

We watch another movie with her curled up between my spread legs, head resting on my thigh as I run my hands through her hair and rub at her scalp. I learn that she likes it best when I push to the point that I think I might hurt her, and then go a little bit more. At some point she starts to purr, and I wonder if any moment has ever been more beautiful than Lyra in my lap, safe and content and happy, purring at my touch.

When her purrs turn into the most adorable snores I have ever heard in my life, I stop stroking her hair to poke at her. “Lyra-love,” I murmur. “We’re supposed to do the enemies-to-lovers thing for my research.”

She groans, twisting her face into my thigh. “Make them friends-to-lovers,” she whines. “I’m sleepy.”

And what, exactly, is a man to say to that?

---