Page 9 of Unrealistic Expectations

“What the fuck?” Galvin sounded chagrined. “Why am I sitting here telling you my sad story, when you have, like, real problems?”

Jessica shrugged. “I guess that I’m just used to focusing on other people’s issues.”

“This seems like a real big issue not to focus on.” Galvin turned his body more toward hers. And even though this was objectively not the right time to be attracted to someone new, and Galvin was objectively the wrong person to be attracted to, she felt his attention in the pit of her stomach. He had long lashes and a very kissable mouth. She swayed toward him. “How long were you together?”

“Since college.”

“Holy shit.” Galvin whistled. “You’ve been with the guy since forever, and he just walked out? Do I know the guy? I kind of want to kick his ass.”

“He was in your fraternity, so yes, you do know him. Luke Grayson.”

Galvin sneered. “That fucking guy?”

Jessica was surprised by Galvin’s reaction. Almost everyone liked Luke. That was Luke’s thing—he was laid-back and likable. “He didn’t like you, either.”

Galvin paused, and Jessica waited to see if he would elaborate. Instead, he said, “I can’t believe you spent over a decade with him.”

“What do you mean?” Jessica was genuinely curious. Galvin and Luke couldn’t have been more different, but Jessica didn’t see why that would have prevented them from being friends. In her experience, friendships between straight men weren’t as intimate as friendships between straight women. But that sometimes made them less fraught.

“I mean, you put up with him for years. You probably have more of an idea of why he’s an asshole than I do.”

I didn’t think he was an asshole until he broke up with me. “Like I said, him leaving came out of nowhere. We weren’t married, but we were settled, you know?”

“Shit.” Galvin shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jessica swallowed the rest of her drink. It went down the wrong tube, and she choked a little. He patted her on the back until she could breathe again, and his touch lingered.

“I’m going to buy you a few more drinks and then some food. And maybe more drinks.”

“This place is about to close.” Jessica wasn’t sure of the wisdom of that choice. But she’d gotten dumped by the so-called love of her life making wise decisions.

“I’ve got some places we can go. Places with tacos.” He waggled his eyebrows as though he was promising sex instead of food, and her skin heated. He was kind of adorable.

Galvin looked at her with a disarming earnestness. Being around him felt good. The way he looked at her and flirted with her made her feel attractive, and she realized she hadn’t felt that way in a long time. She knew that relationships were hard work, but she’d been working really hard for a really long time to make her relationship with Luke feel sustainable, and maybe that was the problem. She’d been the only one working, the only one invested. Because she hadn’t wanted to let go of her relationship. She hadn’t wanted to risk ending up in the kind of dating hell that her clients bemoaned. She didn’t want to end up the victim of the behaviors she talked about in her book.

Even though spending any more time with Galvin was probably going to lead to her having a story to tell for her next book, she didn’t want to leave it here. She didn’t want to walk away. When Galvin looked at her, his eyes filled with mischief and adventure, she didn’t want to say no to him. In fact, it was impossible to force her mouth to make the words.

“Okay.”

CHAPTER SIX

Galvin was shivering when he woke up, which might have had something to do with the fact that he was almost naked and sprawled out on a very cold tile floor. His face was stuck to said floor, and the skin on his cheek stretched unnaturally when he tried to lift his head. But that was the least of his problems. It felt as though his head was a construction site and all the heavy equipment was parked where his thoughts should be.

He sat up and looked around the bathroom he had slept in. He remembered everything from the night before, but it was the kind of hazy, alcohol-obscured memories that he had to reach out for, and that reaching was kind of painful at the moment. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as he saw himself drinking tequila shots with Jessica Gallagher at a bar and then dancing to a club mix of Adele. And then taking more shots. And dancing some more.

There were tacos in there somewhere, too.

But the memory of kissing Jessica on a dance floor under colored lights slammed into him. Jessica wasn’t the sort of girl he usually had those kinds of nights with. He waited for the remorse to show up, but it didn’t arrive. All he wanted was a clearer memory of that kiss. Since he’d seen her at the restaurant, he’d wondered what she would taste like. And now he knew, but he didn’t know enough. He didn’t even know if she’d liked kissing him and wanted to do it again.

She’d said, pretty emphatically, that she wouldn’t fuck him. And they hadn’t done that. If they’d fucked, he wouldn’t have woken up on the floor of her bathroom in his boxer briefs. He looked around for his clothes and didn’t see them, so they must have come off someplace else. And then he remembered that she’d taken off most of his clothes and said they weren’t fucking, so he could keep his underwear on. She’d been so funny and cute that he hadn’t really cared whether or not they had sex. A first for him.

And now he just hoped that she wouldn’t be upset with herself—or him—for letting all that happen after she’d told him that they were definitively not going to pound town. He was glad they hadn’t, but Jessica didn’t seem like the kind of woman who made impulsive decisions. She probably had a spreadsheet for every choice she made in life. She seemed like a checklist person. He didn’t know that for sure, but it wasn’t a huge leap. Last night hadn’t been about thinking about all the reasons that they were deeply incompatible. It had been about drinking, dancing, and kissing.

He got up off the floor and opened the door to the bathroom slightly. Jessica wasn’t in the bed. In fact, it was already made. Pillows fluffed and everything. He did find his clothes, neatly folded on the lone chair in the bedroom.

Once he was dressed, he ventured out of the bedroom and found Jessica in the kitchen, wearing yoga pants and a cropped T-shirt. She had her curly hair in a high bun that practically demanded he stare at the skin at the back of her neck. He now knew from experience that it was soft and very kissable.

Seeing her this morning, not rumpled, but not dressed up for a night out, he wanted more than anything to have a night like the last with her again. This time with less alcohol and more nudity. She hadn’t seemed to notice him entering the room, so he cleared his throat.

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