“Hey,” he replied.
“So I decided I didn’t wanna sit down with your ex for dinner without knowing what you taste like,” she shared. “Hope that’s cool.”
“You wanna memorize it?” he offered. “’Cause, if you do, I’m totally down with that.”
She grinned at him.
Then she said, “You still got a handful of my ass, boyfriend.”
He started to slide his hand up at the same time apologize.
She stopped him by saying, “Just making an observation, no need to react.”
Jag chuckled, but in the middle of it, he suddenly stopped because what he said next was serious.
“You look gorgeous, Archie.”
Her fingers in his shirt went up to brush along his jaw, and she whispered, “Thanks.”
“But even if the world deserves to see you in that getup, I gotta admit, I got no motivation to go to dinner now.”
She smiled and shared, “No pressure, but my fourteen-year-old self, and fifteen, not to mention sixteen, seventeen, you get the picture, up until just now fantasized a lot about what it’d be like to kiss you.”
He felt a lot, hearing those words.
But he didn’t know what to say.
“Good those versions of me didn’t know how good it actually is or I’d be even more pissed you were such a big baby about our falling out,” she finished.
That made him move his hand from her ass to give her ribs a rebuking squeeze. “It wasn’t me being a baby.”
“So was.”
“Totally wasn’t.”
“Soooooo was.”
Jag wasn’t doing this.
So he kissed her again.
Yeah, it wasn’t a figment of his imagination.
She tasted that good.
He broke it that time, saying, “Okay, baby, even if I have zero motivation to go, this is my brother, so we gotta get going.”
She nodded, pressed up against him in a way that wasn’t meant to be sexy, just sweet, then she slid away.
He turned and watched her walk to a sofa that was in the middle of the room.
Then he took in the room.
Her place was mostly open loft space. Wood floors with some rugs. At the back, a bar with stools delineating the kitchen. Walls behind which he guessed housed a bath. Open racks that held her clothes. Windows at the back and side that had alley views, her outdoor space was a fire escape where she had a bunch of potted plants and flowers.
It was eclectic and groovy. Like her store. Like her skirt. Like the welcome mat that had Spanish and Japanese on it. He saw a hint of a lot everywhere. Moroccan. Native American. A big chandelier that looked made of gold leaves hovered in the center of the ceiling that gave a slap of Italian. Old West. Boho. Asian. African.
It was cluttered but still felt roomy, schizophrenic but it made sense.
He dug every inch of it.
When he stopped inspecting it and looked at her, she was standing, holding a compact in front of her face, and putting on lipstick.
Seeing that—and feeling the velvet smack of the extreme femininity of it—he wanted to tackle her and fuck her on her tapestry-draped, emerald green velvet couch.
He didn’t.
He asked, “What’s Archie short for?”
“Nothing,” she answered, rubbed her lips together, slapped the compact closed, wound the lipstick down, capped it, and bent to her couch to grab a bag made entirely of fuchsia pink fringe.
She shoved the stuff in and turned to him.
“Nothing?” he pressed. “Your birth certificate says ‘Archie?’”
“It isn’t funny, and it’s funny.” She started walking to him. “They made a deal. Mom got to name the first kid. And Dad got to name the second. My brother’s name is Elijah. Dad always wanted a boy named Archie. Thing was, I came out a girl. Dad said it didn’t matter. Archie was a cute name for a girl. Mom was having none of it. Sucks for Mom, but she was out of it from giving birth and falling in love with me after, so she was all about that, and he hijacked the birth certificate. Named me Archie.”
She stopped in front of him still talking, but now she raised her hands at her sides, the fringe of her bag falling over the one that held it.
“So, I’m Archie.” She dropped her arms. “Mom was livid at first. Then it got to be a joke, her giving him shit about it. But she admitted to me, she wanted him to have what he wanted. So once she calmed down, she was glad he got what he wanted, even if she wanted to name me Emilia.”
“You are so totally not an Emilia.”
Her expression was amused, but also nostalgic, and not the good kind.
“I like that I’m what he wanted, but also I’m her giving that to him. I remember that happening a lot, both ways, when she was with us.”
“Yeah,” he said softly.
She tipped her head to the side in that curious, flirty way he liked a fuckuva lot.
“Jagger? And I’ll just add for sake of time, Dutch?”
“My dad was a biker. My mom was and still is a biker babe.”
When he stopped speaking, she laughed, low and sultry, “I guess that’s enough said.” Her focus on him changed when she went on, “Though, I knew he was a biker. And not just because you’re walking in his footsteps. I go to his tombstone almost every time I visit Mom. And the epitaph there made it pretty clear.”
And again, he got that feeling in his throat and it was such a bitch, he couldn’t hold her gaze and fight it, so he turned his face away.
She put her hand on his chest and called, “Jagger?”
He cleared his throat, swallowed, and looked back to her.
“I bet he likes that.”
This head tip was not flirty.
It was concerned.
“You okay?”
He nodded and said, “We should go.”
“All right, boyfriend,” she murmured.
He didn’t know what this “boyfriend” business was about when they’d had two kisses and zero dates.
He just knew he liked it.
He took her hand, they paused outside her door so she could make sure it locked, and he noticed what he didn’t notice on the way up, such was his intent to get to her. The color-block flooring was up here too, but the tiles were smaller, and instead of the contrast color of yellow, it was orange.
There was also a lot of light from kickass sconces in the walls and two sunlights that were throwing late summer sun.
“Seems you’re a good landlord,” he noted, still holding her hand as he led her to the stairs.
“Place was a just-a-hint shy of a slum. Not purposefully. My grandparents just got old and lost track of it. When we got it, we took it in hand. Dad owns a security company. Because of that, he knows a lot of contractors. We got some castoffs, overages, stuff that was dinged and dented. He called in some favors, owed some more. Got the common places cleaned up and secured, new kitchens and baths in the units.”
They were shoving through the inner front door when he noted, “Better to charge more rent, I suppose.”
“Didn’t raise the rent.”
That caught his attention and he stopped and looked down at her before he pushed through the outer door.
“It wasn’t about regentrification,” she told him. “It was about safety and pride. This is a cool, old building. There’s history here. The tenants who lived here then, live here now, save one, in the unit I have. A couple of musicians. An older lady who’s been a schoolteacher for decades, she’s also an artist. This is their home. I didn’t want to take away their home. I just wanted to take care of them.”