Page 9 of Rebound With Me
“I know a lot of guys. Comes in handy. You know any guys?”
“I know a lot of six-year old guys.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“I do get to eat a lot of birthday cake. So you knew a guy in real estate?”
“I knew a couple of guys. Enough about me.”
Right. It’s just one night. I don’t need to know where he works.
“You want to tell me why you felt the need to get drunk tonight?”
“Um…”
“Something to do with that lame ex who never took you to bars?”
“Something to do with that. Yeah. We just broke up.” I sigh. “I ate expired pasta and cookies all weekend. And I even had food that wasn’t expired, which was weird.”
“Livin’ on the edge, huh?”
“Guess so.”
“Feel good?”
“Almost.”
“We’ll have to see what I can do about that.” He winks at me, grinning, and I bet if someone asked me to recite the alphabet right now I wouldn’t be able to. “You want to forget about your ex, Nina?”
I cover my face with my hands. Thinking about myself and my ex and my intentions for getting drunk is making me feel insecure all of a sudden. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
“Hey.”
I feel his finger slowly trace a trail from the V between my index and middle fingers, down the back of my hand, to my wrist, along the scalloped-edge cuff of my blouse. It sends shockwaves through my body as if his finger is touching me somewhere else entirely. I spread my fingers apart so I can peek through them.Who are you? How did you do that? What are you doing to me?
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he says. “You don’t have to think about anything you don’t want to think about right now.”
I let my hands fall from my face and he takes my right hand in both of his, holding it gently with his big, slightly rough, capable hands. My left hand, shockingly, rests just above one of his knees.
I can feel him coaxing some hidden stray cat part of myself out of the shadows. He doesn’t make me feel safe so much as he makes me want to know what it feels like to not care about anything other than what he has to offer. I can see it in his eyes—he registers the exact moment that I’ve decided to sleep with him, even as I’m still processing it myself.
Here’s a guy who knows more about the secret nooks and curves of my body than I do. I have no idea how a one-night stand works, but I am one hundred percent sure that he does, and I will follow his lead. His face is so close to mine. I am staring at his mouth and biting my lower lip.Un, deux, trois…fuck…
“So…what do you do after taking a lady you just met at a liquor store to a bar for one blue drink?”
“I can’t wait to show you.”
I tilt my head up the tiniest bit, and when his lips touch mine, I ease into him and this new person that I’m becoming with such a graceful force that it feels like the only stranger here is the girl I used to be.
