She wriggled in my hold and worked her fingers against my sides, tickling me. “I’ve never snored in my life.”
Still in the throes of laughter from her devious fingers, I wrestled with her until we were panting and more than wide awake.
She ended up on top of me, with only the thin white sheet between us. My morning wood was no longer based solely on the time of day. I wanted to yank the sheet from between us, wrap my fingers around her waist, and sink into her. I wanted to not spend a moment of today not touching her. I wanted to barricade the doors.
But I didn’t want today to only be about sex. It would definitely be about sex, but not only sex.
Bending forward, her hair fell like a curtain being drawn around us. Her lips touched mine, so soft and sweet.
I slid my hand to the back of her neck, fingers rubbing against the smooth skin there. I rested my forehead against hers.
Her stomach rumbled.
“Let’s get you fed.” Lifting her, I rolled to the side of the bed and swung my feet over the edge while my body was screaming for her touch. Not letting temptation get the better of me, I put one foot in front of the other. I wanted her happy with a full stomach. I wanted to take care of her and make it a hooky day she wouldn’t soon forget—then I could think about getting her back under me again.
“Fed?” She shoved her hair back with confusion scrawled across her face.
“We have plenty of time. Unless you’d like us to both be unable to walk at the end of our time together.”
Her lips twitched and she shrugged with a glint of mischievous mock innocence in her eyes. “I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed.”
“Then it looks like I’ll have to save you from yourself.” I walked into my closet and grabbed a t-shirt and shorts for her and a pair of shorts for me.
She’d climbed off the bed and wandered around my bedroom. She was the ultimate temptation.
I wanted to kick my own ass for not suggesting we sequester ourselves in the bedroom, only leaving to answer the door for food delivery.
But today wasn’t only about sex. It was about us and who we were now. I rubbed at the center of my chest, where the warmth threatened to turn into a lump. Whatever happened tomorrow would happen, but I had her for today.
With my t-shirt hanging down over her hips and shorts cinched at her waist, she followed me out of the bedroom.
“This is a beautiful place.” She peered into the opened doors on the walk to the kitchen. No need to close them here. “How long have you lived here?”
“I bought it a little over a year ago. When I moved to Philly.”
“Do you usually buy a place whenever you move teams?”
“No.” I swallowed back the urge to shut down, to hide things about my past she might not like. A small step. “It was a sad attempt to make Alice happy. She wanted to settle down and feel a little less transient. But it wasn’t what we needed.”
She dropped back behind me. No longer at my side, but just behind my shoulder. The words were quiet, small. “What did you need?”
You. It was the real answer. The one I’d tried to hide from and work past, but there wasn’t anything to work past when she was what I needed.
“To not be together.”
“Were—were things bad?” Her steps slowed.
I turned to face her not sure how exactly to say I’d been with another woman, engaged to her and hadn’t felt even a tenth of what I’d felt for Bay. “No, things were never bad. We didn’t fight. We’d disagree or argue sometimes, but never fight. Things were never bad. They were good sometimes, generally fine. We were perfectly fine.”
“What happened?” Her eyebrows were creased in thought and curiosity.
“I woke up one day and looked at her and couldn’t bring myself to steal a lifetime of joy from her to prove to myself I could be in a stable relationship. She deserved someone who couldn’t take their eyes off her. Who couldn’t stop thinking about her. Who’d treasure her and felt the sun rose and fell with her every breath.”
She tugged at the end of her hair falling over her shoulder. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “You didn’t feel that way about her?”
“As much as I wanted to” —I looked away, shame burning the tips of my ears—“no, I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Confessing how much she’d stayed in my mind, in my dreams, would be heaping my expectations on her. Trying to force things when she’d only come to terms with her guilt after we talked a few weeks ago. I wasn’t going to manipulate her. I wasn’t going to twist this into something ugly like me trying to cling to her again. “That’s the kind of feeling that only comes around once in a lifetime.”
We stood in the darkened hallway between the streaming sunlight of the two open doorways. The tingling energy radiated off her, so close to breaking through this barrier we’d erected between ourselves.
The barrier was there to protect us from expectations and reality, to preserve this bubble we were in. But I wanted this to be real outside of the walls of my apartment. I wanted her to feel like we weren’t a fever dream of sex, and then to fall back into her old life without me. “Come on, let’s get some food.”
I took her hand, once again threading my fingers through hers, and we walked past the evidence of our late-night urgency on the way to the kitchen.
“Pancakes? French toast? Bacon? Sausage? What do you prefer?” I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of orange juice.
“Are you cooking or ordering room service?” She leaned against the counter beside me.
I smirked. “While it’s a perk of living in the hotel,” —stepping around her and crowding her against the granite counter, I rested my arm on the open fridge door—“I was thinking we could do it on our own.”
Her hint of a smile spread to a full-on grin. “I’d like that.”
Palming the loaf of bread, I set it down next to her. “Do you have a recipe or should I look one up?”
Her head swiveled toward me. “I thought you had a recipe.”
“Looking it up, it is.” We scrolled through the first few pages of recipes until we found one with good reviews, then went in search of all the ingredients I had on hand.
Grabbing everything we’d need out of the fridge, I set it down beside her.
She rummaged through the cabinets for bowls and pans.
I liked that she felt comfortable enough to go searching through my space, like it was a space she wanted to get to know and spend a little more time in.
Working as a team we got everything ready and started cooking.
I crouched in front of the oven using tongs to flip the bacon and sausages. The salty meat smell battled it out against the sweet, eggy fried bread aroma filling the apartment.
She flipped the French toast before relinquishing the spatula to me after a couple burned slices.
Soon, we had fresh strawberries, whipped cream, syrup, sausage, bacon and French toast, all piping hot and ready to devour. The freezer stockpile had come in handy. My cabinets were full and so was my freezer, although I stuck to protein and vegetable mainstays during the season. With everything laid out on the table, I couldn’t help the pride brimming in my chest that I’d had all this here for us to make a meal together. I felt a bit more like I was further away from the kid she’d known in Greenwood whose fridge and cabinets had always been barren.