"I'm not. All of this is just exhausting."
"Got that right," she laughs.
I sigh, snuggling down further into the couch. "What's up?"
"Not much," she says. "I was just starting to make dinner and was thinking about you. Remember, a call a day keeps the mother away."
I laugh in spite of myself, because she's said that phrase to me approximately a thousand times in the last two months. Five hundred of them possibly in the last week. "Maybe I'll order my first New York take out," I say.
"I didn't buy you all that kitchen stuff for you to just order take-out the whole time," she scolds, but I can tell she's not serious.
"Half my kitchen is still in boxes. If I wanted to spend three hours trying to cook while also trying to dig through everything to find the cheese grater, I would. But that will have to wait till everything's unpacked."
She laughs. "Fair enough. But really, I just wanted to check in and make sure that you were doing okay."
"I'm good. It's going to be good."
"It is," she agrees. "I don't want to keep you. Take your nap!"
"I will. Love you."
"Love you," she says before the line goes dead.
I'm about to take my first New York nap in my first New York apartment. I wonder how long it will be before I stop calling things 'New York.' Probably when I finally start to feel like I belong here. I'm not sure when that will be, if ever. But there's one thing I can do.
I open my phone to that same text message and look at it again. I scroll back through the messages, an archive of something that's long gone. I've been holding on to this because it seemed like a memorial almost, of the dream to move to a city together and help each other with our dreams. But that's gone now, and I have to make it on my own.
I only hesitate for a second before I delete the text conversation, and then Peter's number, from my phone. It's time to start the rest of my life.
16
Amber
Present
I wake up to the buzzing of my phone. My body immediately knows that it’s way too early. Way too early. I reach over onto my nightstand and look at the screen of my phone. It’s Peter.
A thrill goes through me and a smile even though I think I’m still mostly asleep. It’s been a couple days since we made up and made our bargain, both of us so busy with things that we haven’t been able to really find time for anything else. I had to work with the editors to get spots ready, and Peter has had press and promotional shoots. I answer. “For the love of God please don’t tell me that you’ve turned into a morning person.”
He laughs, the sound low and sexy and I can tell that he just woke up too. “No, but I’ll get up for you. I want to see you, and to sweeten the deal, I’ll make pancakes.”
I roll onto my stomach. “I can make pancakes here. What else are you offering?”
“I’ll put chocolate chips in the pancakes.”
I bite my lip, trying to hid my smile even though he can’t see me. “And?”
“Sex.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
His smirk is obvious through the phone. “I know.”
“Fine. I hate that you’re making me leave my very comfortable, very warm bed, but I’ll be over soon.”
“I’m offering sex and breakfast, you’re not going to get a better offer than that.”
I stick out my tongue at the phone. “I’ll see you soon.”
Dragging my butt out of bed I shower quickly and put on the clothes that I’ve picked out for the day, and just for good measure, I grab an extra set too. Peter is in charge of our sex life right now, and even though I know he’d never embarrass me, I’m not going to make myself late because he fucked me in pancake batter. If that’s his plan at all. He said sex, he didn’t say orgasms.
Peter is clever with his words and often makes literal loopholes. So I’m taking no chances and I switch my stuff to a bigger bag that has room for an extra set of clothes.
If we’re going to keep doing this, we’re going to have to figure out a way that our cars aren’t so recognizable at each other’s houses. It probably won’t matter so much at my apartment, unless someone follows him here. But Peter is gaining enough attention now that having photographers outside his house isn’t something that will be uncommon.
But I can’t exactly park down the street and walk in, that’s even worse. So, for this time, I just park in the driveway. I don’t see anybody with a shiny lens around, but some of them are really good, and I’m sure June Cavallaro thought there wasn’t anybody around either.
I move from the car to the house as quickly as I can, punching in the code, and I’m immediately overwhelmed with the smell of chocolate chip pancakes. Okay, so this would have been a good trade even without the promise of sex, and I turn the corner into the kitchen, that's confirmed. Because Peter is standing, flipping pancakes, in nothing but loose pants. I can see the lines of muscle in his back and as he turns towards me I follow those lines all the way as the snake down his body and out of sight. I'm lucky that I know exactly what that sight is. "That smells really good," I say.
"I have a magic recipe."
"Oh? Where'd you get it?"
He tosses another pancake to the already big stack. "I invented it when I was young and starving in L.A. and needed some kind of food that was cheap to make but also comforting. I messed with the proportions and the batter recipe until you have, what I think, is the perfect pancake."
I don't even wait for him to serve them to me. I grab one off the top of the stack and take a bite. It's light and fluffy. Peter isn't lying that is by far the best pancake that I've ever had.
"I know," he says smugly.
"You're going to have to teach me how to make these."
"At some point, I will," he says, "But I also might enjoy holding these over your head for a little while. I think they could be used as a very effective bribe."
I take another bite of the pancake. "What exactly would you be bribing me to do?"
Peter catches me around the hips and pulls me into him, and his voice is on my lips. "I can think of so many things."
Instead of letting him kiss me, I take another bite of the pancake, a burst of chocolate exploding on my tongue. But he kisses me anyway, and I know he's been sneaking some of the chocolate chips because he tastes like chocolate too. "There's no way I'm going to be able to eat more than like...two of these."
"They do really well in the freezer," he says. "You can have the rest later."
"Good," But there's something else I want. "So how do we transition from this to sex, because you promised me, but you're still in charge, so I don't really know how this works, and—"
Peter cuts off my words quickly with a kiss. "That sounds an awful lot like worrying."
"Not worrying," I say, shaking my head and pretending like just kissing him doesn't make me wet and want to take all my clothes off. "Just logistics."