I palmed my face. “I’m not looking for anything serious,” I said, making myself. His fingers paused on my elbows and I turned within his hands. “I just moved here, got a new job I’m starting soon, then getting this place together?” I shook my head. “I’ve got my plate full.”
All of these things were very true—in fact, so true I forced myself to believe they weren’t complete and utter bullshit. That they were the reason I didn’t want to see him again and ignore the fact that all I actually wanted were his hands all over me and to be completely surrounded by him. We were in different places, him and me.
And I really couldn’t add to my own drama.
Ramses’s fingers grazed a jawline on the cusp of shadow, like he had a lot of thoughts but wasn’t quite sure how to voice them. He opted, in the end, to hitch himself back against my kitchen island, his big hands handling his biceps. “Was it something I did?”
Oh, fuck.
Yes. “No.” Both answers really, both of us and our shit. I touched my face before my fingers settled at my neck. “I’m just busy. Don’t have time for anything serious.”
He should be used to this, right? Young and turning women down himself. Ramses was a very handsome man, and I was quite sure he’d been through his own fair share of letdowns.
Though maybe not so much on his end with his response, taking a seat before facing me. He opened his hands. “I get it. I actually just moved back here. Busy too.”
I hated that my heart squeezed, like someone kicked me in the gut and sucked all the air out of my chest at the same time. That he was denying me.
He took a seat, his fist dropping between his long legs. “Well, can I at least have your number?” he chuckled, but I noticed the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Not like last night anyway. “I’d like to keep talking to you. We can just be friends.”
Yeah, I couldn’t be this guy’s friend without something more, impossible.
How did he have so much of my heart already?
It must have been infatuation only and a hell of a lot of good sex. Ramses was great at sex, great at oral sex. I lifted my hand off my neck, saying nothing, and this did get a full laugh on his end this time. Though, a clear hint of frustration weaved within it the way he smoothed his hand over his curls before setting back at his neck. I wasn’t going to give him anything. I couldn’t.
It would make all this easier. Cutting off ties was easier. Bracing his arms, he stared at me.
“Jersey girl…” He sighed before reaching and dipping two fingers in my robe’s belt loops. He hooked me over and though I didn’t want to, I did. His arms came to fall around my waist and though he sat, he still had to look down at me with his size. “I can’t change your mind?”
Since he couldn’t, I shook my head. “We had fun. Let’s not complicate it.”
The way I’d simplified last night, everything that went down clearly didn’t sit well with him, and he showed me that when he let go of me and picked up his fork. He started eating food that’d long gone cold, but that didn’t stop him from distracting himself from me.
“Yeah, fun,” he said, his tone dry, and I hated that I did that. He’d thank me for this later. He didn’t want any more drama in his life either, and he’d get a lot of that with me. It was like it always seemed to follow me.
Even if it hadn’t always been this way.
Chapter Eight
Bri
I ended up running late for my first seminar of the term, go figure. Apparently, testing my daily commute nearly two weeks before the start of classes meant nothing. The city of Maywood Heights had been gridlocked the entire way out of it, then my almost two-hour commute to campus the same. Queenstown Village, where Pembroke University and my new teaching job happened to be, had been just as much of a cluster fuck coming in so I’d been screwed either way.
The past two weeks had been me trying to get my life together as much as trying to forget about how it had basically started. I hadn’t heard from Ramses. Obviously. I hadn’t given him my number, nor had we exchanged full names. We hadn’t even been intimate before he left. We’d just left things.
And that was that.
Easier, I think for both of us, in the end. I could focus on my new life in Maywood Heights, and he could do whatever he was doing. He clearly did pretty well for himself if his choice of ride and the fact that he rented a condo out to his friend was any indicator. I rented myself at thirty-five and on a professor’s salary. He didn’t need the distraction of me in his life any more than I needed him in mine, and as I felt before, we saved each other from that with a clean cut-off.
We’d also given each other a night not to think about our own shit, and I’d had a lot of it. I’d chosen to move to Maywood Heights via a direction from my friend and support system, Evie. She also happened to be the dean of the history department at the university, so when it came to deciding being close to her in town versus my new job, I’d decided to rent in Maywood Heights. This was apparently pretty common for both students and faculty to commute. Pembroke was the closest university to the city, esteemed, and lots of money came out of Maywood Heights just to go into the university’s programs. At least, according to Evie. I guess even her family funded several programs in the campus’s rigorous curriculum.
“You’ll love working there,” she’d said to me, the pair of us getting coffee over the weekend before my first day. She’d apologized for basically ditching me at that wedding, and since I was hard-pressed for friendships as of late, of course I’d forgiven her. I also owed her a lot. She’d taken more than one phone call through the panic of my failed marriage and understanding of my quick need to get away from both the place and the person I’d been with. She’d gotten me this job at the university and heard all about my ex-husband, Alec.
At least, all the stuff I could verbally say out loud.
I’d had to sign an NDA in the end, customary since my ex-husband used to play sports for a very popular team. He was still a fan favorite, despite being retired for more than a few years. Had an image to protect.
I just wished he’d cared about protecting me more.
My ex-husband was an asshole, a pathetic, uninspired has-been who spent more time indulging himself in vices instead of trying to rise above the problems in this life. I suppose we were the same in that aspect.
No, you’re nothing like him.
No, I would never have done the things he did to me pre-divorce and definitely not after what had transpired to basically cause the divorce. We’d both been a mess, but at least I’d tried to handle things, keep my chin up.
Refusing to think about all that now on my first day, I peeled my Benz into the faculty parking lot of Pembroke University. The weather had cleared a little since that wedding a couple of weeks ago, but still, the evidence of slush and dirty snow remained. It packed onto my heels good upon sliding out of my SUV and nearly sucked me beneath my car like Alice into Wonderland.
On concrete, I scraped and slid around in my woman’s cigarette pants, a taupe-colored crop-style to go with my blazer. I didn’t want to be matchy-matchy today, so I went with a warm brown to complement my black top beneath. Honestly, the juxtaposition of tones reminded me of what I used to wear back in the days when I frequented dig sites in Egypt and other more remote areas of Africa. Of course, that’d been before I’d decided to become a sports star’s wife.