Page 23 of The Love Interest
“Okay… I don’t want to say goodbye to you yet.”
“You don’t have to. Want to go watch the sunrise with me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
We turn to face each other. I don’t think we would have said those things out loud to each other face to face tonight, but I haven’t said anything remotely like that to a woman in about eleven years. It may just be that I’m not used to talking to another person, much less a beautiful girl, in the hours just before dawn. Or it may just be Fiona.
She picks up the rooster, and we meet in the middle of the corridor. I take the statue from her, hold it in one arm, and take her hand with the other. Because it’s the right thing to do. It’s the least I could do for her right now—walk hand in hand with her out of the Whispering Gallery, back out onto the streets of Manhattan, on the way to the first sunrise I’ll be watching with a woman in over a decade.
I want to know more about her, but I also think maybe I know enough, for now.
I’m inspired.
I feel more awake than I have in ages.
I feel a little less cynical than I did a couple of hours ago.
And I’m ready to get started on a new beginning.
9
FIONA
Emmett Ford has beautiful hands.
The park he has brought me to, at Pier 35, is wonderful and nearly empty because it just opened at six. It’s at the edge of the East River and my neighborhood on the Lower East Side, and I had no idea it was here. We’re sitting on a bench. His arm is around my shoulder, and his fingertips trace gentle but devastating circles on my bicep. I want to take off my blouse and feel his fingers directly on my skin.
Fuck it, I want to take off everything and feel his everything on my everything.
To one side of him is a four-foot metal cock, to the other is a stunning view of the sunrise behind the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, but all I’ve been thinking about for the past fifteen minutes is how great this man’s penis probably looks.
I can’t even remember the last time I saw the dawn of a new day with a guy, and now my brain is flooded with early morning penis thoughts.
I bet it’s handsome and well-groomed and maybe even a little stoic and moody, but deep down it’s sweet and romantic and fully capable of drilling me ten different ways until I can’t remember my own name or walk straight.
I feel so tipsy, but I know for sure I haven’t consumed any alcohol in the past couple of days. I’m drunk on a hurricane of hormones and the sound of this man’s whispered voice in my ears and that sunrise and his fingertips. Now I want to feel his stubble on my skin, all over. I want him to exfoliate my entire body with it.
This needs to happen.
I’m inspired, but I need him to inspire me more. Hard. Soon.
I’ve been forcing myself to watch the sunrise because I know that as soon as I turn my head to look at Emmett again, the glow of the sun and all of New York will fade to black and I will kiss him.
I will kiss him and kiss him, and I won’t want to stop kissing him.
He curls his fingertips now, tickling my arm, and I feel it all over like the most gentle and seductive electric shock.
He doesn’t say a single word, but I know exactly what he wants right now, and it’s exactly what I want.
His hand slowly glides up my arm, across my shoulders, to push my hair aside. He leans in, and the tip of his nose touches my neck as he inhales the perfume on my pulse point just below my ear, and then he kisses me. Soft and slow on my neck, and then he pulls back just enough for me to turn to face him. I lift up my legs to rest them across his lap, because he needs to know that I mean business. He touches his hands to the sides of my face, just barely, but I feel so completely held by this man already.
His eyes are hooded and his sun-kissed skin is even more golden in this light, and his face is so beautiful it actually hurts a little to look at him.
This is why I end up with the Seth Rogan look-alikes. It never hurts to walk away from them. I can get more work done. Stay focused. I’m never tormented by the days and nights I don’t spend with them. I love sex, but it has always been more important to me to be responsible. To be practical. To stay on track. I already know I will see Emmett’s face whenever I close my eyes for quite some time. I will probably wear mismatched shoes and show up a few minutes late for work or class because I spaced out while thinking about his dazzling blue eyes while I was in the middle of brushing my teeth, and I’m not even scared of that at the moment.
I close my eyes and part my lips and grab on to his shirt with both hands, tilting my chin up the tiniest bit. He makes a quiet, sexy, guttural sound as his lips graze mine. Soft and slow, he kisses me the way his fingertips were kissing my arms through my blouse—so delicately that it somehow stirs up a torrent of butterflies and shivers and indicates just how much he’s holding back.
