“Wanting a man to dance with you in a parking lot because he’s so fucking in love with you he can’t wait to get you home and into his arms isn’t childish. Thinking you’re too manly to pull over and give your girl that? That’s childish.”
Again, I don’t respond. I let my fingers touch the longish hair at the base of his neck, combing through it and letting my mind pretend this is us.
That this is normal.
The song changes, “Lover” coming on next, and I try not to lean into the idea that it’s the universe speaking to me, telling me we could be more.
One of Zee’s hands moves from my waist until it’s resting on my cheek, tipping my face up to look at him.
His lips are centimeters from my own and finally, I can’t resist asking him, to question what’s happening in some way.
“What are you doing to me?” I whisper against his lips.
“Whatever it takes to convince you to be mine,” he says, and my heart stops.
“Zee, I’ve been yours for as long as I can remember,” I confess because it’s the truth, and in this moment, I only have the truth as an option.
There has never been a moment where deep in my soul, this wasn’t what I wanted.
Where Zander wasn’t what I wanted.
That desire has changed with age, moved from just wanting the cute boy who was my best friend's older brother so we could be sisters to something more. To wanting the man who goes to the diner on Sunday mornings because he knows his mom is struggling with being alone.
The man who took on the peewee team because he knew those boys needed a role model.
The man who will always take on an extra shift to cover for someone else because he thinks their families are more important than him living the bachelor life.
The man who once again proves we’re always on the same wavelength.
“No, that’s not true. That was rainbows and butterflies and the world is magical Zoe. I had that one, but I never got to keep her. That one never had time to be mine. She is right person, wrong time Zoe.” My breath stops. “I’m winning right now Zoe. The one with the perpetually broken heart—the one who thinks this would be hard. The one who has social constructs in her mind of who she should be and who I should be, and who we should and shouldn’t be together. I’m winning the Zoe who thinks she has to do it all, even if none of it makes her happy.”
And there it is.
He sees it.
He sees that he always had a version of me, but he doesn’t have the version of me I am right now.
“What if she’s too scared? What if she’s too far gone to be won?” I ask, my voice low.
“Well, I’ve got a week to try, don’t I?” he asks, and then it happens.
Alexander Michael Davidson dips his head down as he dances with me in a parking lot on a whim, and he presses his soft lips to mine.
The air in my lungs seizes, but my body knows what to do.
My hands move to his head, pulling him in closer, forcing him to kiss me deeper, leaning into this.
Because every molecule of this, of kissing Zander, feels so right.
Right enough that I’m able to block out the reality of where we are right now, to block out the version of me that would question this.
His hand moves up my head, tugging at the ponytail and tossing it into the parking lot before his fingers are in my hair, holding me there as he deepens the kiss.
His tongue taps at my lips, begging for entrance, and I have no choice but to give him that, parting my lips and touching my tongue to his.
And then the kiss changes.
It moves from a sweet first kiss that has my inner fifteen-year-old squealing to something so much more.
Something that has heat flooding into the veins of my thirty-year-old body.
A tiny moan comes from me, and Zander groans, his hand on my waist pulling me in closer.
We’re no longer swaying.
We’re no longer dancing.
My hands are on his neck, clinging to him as he devours me, as heat rolls through me, tingling in my spine and pooling in my core.
Holy fuck, I want this man.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a man more than I want him right now, on the side of the road, groping me.
Then a car honks, stopping our side-of-the-road make-out session, and it breaks the magic.
Not fully, but enough for Zander to break to kiss, to move his lips away from me, and to press his forehead to mine.
His breathing is heavy, mirroring my own as he stares at me, that boyish smile on his lips.
God, I want to kiss him again.
I smile back, but then it starts to fade as reality enters my mind.
He sees it, of course.
He sees everything.
He jokes that Tony’s the good detective, that he’s in the field for a reason and Zee is just there because of dumb luck, but no one has ever been able to read me the way he does.
“Give this a chance,” he says, his voice low. And then, like he can’t resist, he dips his head down once more, and there’s another peck of his lips to mine.
“It won’t work,” I whisper, my mind winning the battle again, doubt creeping in.
“How do you know?” he asks,
“Because you’re you.” I don’t even know what I mean by that.
“I’m yours, Zoe. Have been for a while,” he says, and my mind reels for a moment.
Zander is mine.
Insert ten-year-old Zoe doing literal cartwheels.
But reality hits once again.
We can’t do this.
If we do this and it fails, not a single part of me will be able to face him again. To face this man I built childhood fairy tales on.
If I let those fairy tales I locked in a childish dreamscape into my reality, there’s the opportunity for disappointment.
Grave fucking disappointment.
And what happens if you give your dreams a chance and it turns out they’re trash? Or unrealistic? Or impossible?
Your reality shatters.
I wonder for a split second if I spent these past years of safety and security remembering the possibility, the joy, and the exuberance of potential with Zander.
I wonder if I never let myself have it because if it failed, it would ruin a part of me.
“It’s not that easy,” I whisper.
“Why not?” he asks.
I refuse to tell him that.
To tell him about my little girl dreams and how crushing them by testing them in the real world would destroy me in a way I’d never recover from.
“Because . . . Because if something happens, it impacts our families.”
Safe.
A safe answer.
“You’re my best friend’s brother. My dad’s employee. Our parents have been best friends for decades. Our families are so intertwined, and we’d fuck that up.”
He stares at me, and I wonder for a moment how much he can see through me.
And then that thought washes away when he smiles.
“Pretend.”
“Pretend?”
His smile grows like he’s coming to some kind of understanding.
“Yeah. Pretend. Pretend that it’s just us. Pretend that we’re together, and it’s easy. Pretend there are no complications, no job interview.”
My mind works over reasons I need to say no.
It runs through a million situations and circumstances and ways it could go terribly, terribly wrong.