Page 75 of Storm in a Teacup
“I don’t need you to,” she says.
“Sugar, you know the offer is purely a selfish excuse for me to see Oscar Wilde again.”
She laughs. “Fine. Nice to know that you’re using me for my cat.”
I chide, “Better than using you for a body part of a similar name.”
She lightly hits me on the arm. “You do not get to make jokes like that after seeing me naked.”
I stop in my tracks. “I would never joke about seeing you naked. That was a magical experience.Magical. I mean, have you seen you? Fucking incredible.”
She did not stop walking, so I have to jog to catch up to her. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she says once I retake my place at her side.
I put a hand to my ear. “I’m sorry, can you say that again? I believe you said, ‘Ben, I think you’re fit.’”
“I said you’re not bad.” She bumps me with her hip.
“Rude.”
“Ben, you’re absolutelybeautiful and you know it. I kind of love looking at you.”
I nudge her on the arm. “Well, then it sounds like the day you can’t anymore will be devastating.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, so I think I’ve gone too far, but then she busts out laughing. “You self-centered dick!” she exclaims. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. In my old age, when my vision has completely deteriorated, the Highlands won’t be at the top of my list, nor the ocean, it’ll beyourface.” She shakes her head and says with a smile, “You are such an ass.”
I throw my arm around her shoulders as we continue to head in the direction of her flat. “You like it.”
“I do,” she admits with a sigh.
I don’t remove my arm from her shoulders until we get to her door and I need to so she can dig around her bag to pull out her keys. She unlocks the door and leads me to her flat. As soon as I enter, I hear little legs running toward me. I bend down to greet Oscar Wilde, aka the love of my life.
As the cat plops before me, rolling on his back and showing off his soft stomach, which I amnotallowed to touch, I lie down with him. Twisting to my side and propping my head up with my hand, I say, “Can I ask you a question?”
After kicking off her shoes, Linny joins me, sitting crossed-legged on the floor. “I already told you. He came with four legs, but decided I needed a little extra trauma, so now he only has three.”
“He probably just wanted to ensure extra attention for the rest of his life.” Oscar presses his head against my hand, begging for me to resume my stroking as if to prove this point. “That’s not my question, though. Why don’t you want to be in a relationship?” I add quickly, “I don’t mean with me, I mean in general. You were engaged to Andy, but now you’ve sworn off relationships altogether. Do you just want casual now? I mean, do you ever hook up with people, or no?”
She purses her lips, once again choosing to ignore my misnaming of her ex. “That was more than one question.”
“Okay, can I ask you”—I count the questions I asked on one hand—“three, or wait, I have one more. Four questions?”
She just looks at me, but I take that as permission to proceed.
“What happened with you and Atti? I assume it was something big and awful.”
She blows out a puff of air, then drops to her back on the rug. “I don’t have the energy to get into that right now.”
I’m a little disappointed, however, I don’t want to push her. “That’s okay.”
“The breakup with Atti is not technically the reason I don’t want a long-term relationship anymore. I mean, it’s connected, but not completely.” She sighs. “And I do hook up, thank you very much. I’m not running around jumping every man I see, but if I have an itch, I know how to scratch it.”
Well, she answered one of my questions, so I’ll take it. And it turns out I have another one. “Is that what you were doing with me? Scratching an itch?”
She picks her head up to peer at me. “No. I was saying thank you.” Her head drops to the ground. “Though, I think you ended up thanking me a bit more than I thanked you.”
I chuckle. “Rather physical way to say thank you. Not that I minded doing some thanking myself.” I really, really did not mind. As Oscar Wilde moves on to attack a toy mouse, I shift so that I am stretched beside her on the floor, leaving a sliver of space between us.
“Casual is easier,” she discloses quietly.
