Page 96 of Fluke
I snort.
He drags his paddle, effectively slowing him until he’s next to me again. “So answer my question. Your perfect day?”
I raise my face to the sky and breathe in until my lungs strain. Then I blow it out until there’s nothing left.
“My perfect day would start with sleeping in—at least until ten,” I say.
“That’s half the day.”
“Hey, this is my perfect day. You had yours.”
He holds up his hands in defense.
“Thank you.” I clear my throat. “There would be coffee and breakfast waiting for me—probably a chocolate croissant or just a croissant with Nutella on it. Oh, also, a fruit and yogurt parfait. I love those things.”
Jess grins.
“Then I’d open all the windows in the house, and it wouldn’t be too hot outside,” I say. “Then I’d take a bath and do all the things that I never have time to do.”
“Like what?”
“Exfoliate. Double wash my hair. Properly condition it. Mani-pedi. Apply one of the twenty lotions in my cabinet all over my body and then kill time with …”
I don’t finish the sentence because it scares me.
My perfect day would be spent with him.
“Kill time how?” he asks as if he knows the answer.As if he hopes he knows the answer.
I search his handsome face.Is there any way things could work between us?Any way at all?
The idea of having this in some way every single day feels like the only answer in my life that makes sense. Going forward, I can’t see my life without Jess. I don’t want to.
But how is that possible so quickly? Am I just in a crazed state of lust that will diminish over time?
When he gives me his shy smile, the one that’s my new favorite, I know how it’s possible.Because he’s him.
That doesn’t fix my concerns. It doesn’t make me any less terrified to let him down. Imagining him sitting beside me right now and telling me that I either have to change what I want out of life or lose him—like I’m not enough the way I am—causes my chest to ache.
If Jess gave up on me, I’m not sure I’d bounce back.
But I told him I would give him this week to win me over, even though he doesn’t need a week because I’m already a goner. I’ve already bought into his brand of charm.
“If I have you ten years from now and I live in a box on the beach with sand crabs snapping my toes while I sleep, I’ll be one happy and lucky motherfucker.”
Those words he spoke earlier are burrowing into my heart, making me consider that hewouldbe content if we were only an us.
As I search his face and find no shield, no mask—nothing but this man giving me everything he has—I wonder if maybe I should trust the process and give him what I get.
It would be the truth, after all.
I push my paddle into the water and smile at him. “I’d kill time by finding my man and seeing if he could help me rub it in.”
His Adam’s apple bobs before he slowly—so slowly—splits his cheeks into a grin. “Your man, huh?”
“Yeah.My man.”
My core twists. My sex pulses as if it has Jess-controlled muscle memory. It correlates that look in Jess’s eye with getting his dick shortly thereafter.
