We’re not though. Are we?
Two nights ago, he’d brought over a puzzle board game he’d wanted to play that needed a second player, and they’d played four rounds because she refused to concede defeat. He’d stopped the game after her last win, letting her savor the victory and distracting her from her competitiveness with a scorching kiss. Reggie hadn’t quite known how to handle that—a lot of guys she knew got all huffy when she bested them and wouldn’t allow her even the illusion of winning.
After their walk the night before, they’d watched funny videos that had nothing to do with escape rooms or nerdery. Gus had wrapped his arms around her on the couch when she’d shivered in the air-conditioning, holding her against his heat.
She didn’t know what to make of that either, how she never had to ask with him. He knew what she needed—and wanted.
Her stomach went fluttery as she placed the dinner prep onto the counter next to her grill, not from hunger but because from remembering Gus’s strong hands. She hadn’t been wrong about how dexterous his fingers were, but she could’ve never predicted the lightning that went through her body at his touch, or the way just a look from him could pin her in place and make her forget the existence of GirlsWithGlasses and even Beyoncé’s internet itself. Or the way he made her laugh. Or the fact that he’d taken a selfie of them after their frolic in the sprinklers and she’d looked at it so often that she saw his face when she blinked.
She was completely screwed.
The doorbell rang and she checked the video feed through the app on her phone. Gus stared into the camera with his usual intensity, a slight smile on his face and his white oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck. He hated dressing up for work, but business casual was a great look for him.
She pressed the intercom widget on the screen.
“Qui vive? Human, dragon, or foe of any species?” she asked, the line used by the military school’s gate guards in Reject Squad Ultra.
“`Tis I, the sexy salad dressing sorcerer,” he replied solemnly, which was not a line from the show but worked for her.
She grinned, then tapped the screen to open the gate. A few minutes later, he strolled around the side of the house, his gaze seeking her out. A wide smile spread across his face when he spotted her, not his usual subtle grin, and something in Reggie’s chest lit up like Iron Man’s arc reactor. This was more than an eagerness to kiss or be kissed—she was genuinely happy that he was just a few feet away from her.
She’d grown used to the sight of Gus, his hair sweat-mussed and spiky from his walk to her door through the summer heat and his gaze warm from the sight of her. He was a part of her life now, one she was kind of infatuated with, like a show with episodes released weekly instead of in one bingeable go. Whenever they were apart, her heart was frantically refreshing to see when the new episode of Hot Puzzle Guy would appear. But this was more serious than a TV show, and Reggie didn’t say that about many things.
She froze as the realization of what that glowing feeling in her chest might be.
Fuck.
Had she really fallen into the insta-love trap?
No, because this wasn’t insta-anything. Gus had been her friend years ago, unknowingly by her side as she’d built GirlsWithGlasses from nothing. His voice had been the one thing that stood between her and sleep deprivation freak outs in the time since then. This was just an evolution of what they’d had in the live stream chat—evolution didn’t always take millions of years.
“Uh. You okay?” He placed his bags on the table, then walked over and kissed her mouth gently as he crouched in front of her chair. He did it with such ease, as if he’d been coming home to her like this forever instead of for a week, more proof that their relationship was moving at Barry Allen speed.
“Yeah.” She shook off the worry that had assailed her, because come on, why should the affection of a gorgeous man who seemed to understand boundaries worry her? “I’m fine. And you’re fine, too. That’s a pun by the way. By fine I mean extremely hot.”
She reached out, tugged at his collar, and pulled him close so she could kiss him again, and again, and . . .
“I’m not sure we’ll make it to dinner if we keep this up,” he said a few minutes later, breathing heavily. His hands had slid up her legs, and his big palms now cupped her calves, squeezing and releasing. A dress had been the right choice.
“You’re right. Let’s cook, eat, you can tell me what else needs to be done on the escape room, and then . . .”
“. . . and then?” Gus was extremely interested in what would come later, judging from the intensity of his gaze and the way his teeth rolled his bottom lip.
She let her gaze run down his body and then back up. “We’ll talk about that after dessert.”
He grinned and began checking the settings on the grill.
They cooked chicken breasts and eggplant, and ate it all at the patio table with the sounds of a summer evening in Queens surrounding them: the song of birds that came out at dusk, the bluster of the neighbor dog who warned away every passerby, the shouts of children as they played with their friends who’d been indoors to avoid the heat all day. She’d pulled out a bottle of fancy white wine that Portia had dropped off with some other stuff when she’d left for her apprenticeship, and they each had a glass.
Gus sat beside her at the round glass patio table instead, and he kept touching her as he talked, light caresses of her knee or arm or ear, as if he couldn’t help himself. In the past, those kinds of possessive touches had felt restrictive or infantilizing, but with him it was different. Everything was different with him, and that was kind of terrifying.
He told her about his projects at work as they ate, and she told him about the day’s meeting with the GirlsWithGlasses team. She caught him up on Portia’s exploits with her Swordbae and he didn’t say anything rude because he understood that Reggie’s sister was important to her. He showed her the latest photos of his nephew, who seemed to have inherited is uncle’s love of puzzles judging from his favorite toys.
It was all too freaking normal. She didn’t have to awkwardly fumble for what to talk about, or try not to be too nerdy, or, alternatively, try not to get into arguments about whose fandom was better. Occasionally, they didn’t talk at all; she brainstormed topics for her website—nerd dating advice? nerd horoscopes?—while he stared off into the distance contemplating whatever interested him in that moment. That felt good, too, not scrambling for conversation or listening to someone talk just to fill the silence.
“Do you ever use that?” Gus asked after one of their quiet moments, tilting his head toward a walker that was against the side of the house.
“Sometimes,” she said, trying to keep the bite out of her voice and the dread from forming in the pit of her stomach as she wondered what was going through his mind.
In her previous relationships, there’d always been a moment when whoever she was dating latched on to something that “fixed” her, like the last guy, who’d tried to convince her to use CBD oil, or her first boyfriend, who’d taken her to his church to be healed. Reggie had gotten something out of the latter—the trollish teenage joy of standing up from her chair, making the crowd think that they’d witnessed a miracle. She’d felt terrible afterward, and only in part because she’d fooled people who were well-meaning but didn’t understand wheelchair users weren’t always paralyzed. She’d caught her boyfriend’s eye as she stood, thinking he’d be in on her prank, but he’d been as jubilant as the rest of the crowd. She’d broken up with him at next day, and his disbelief that she would break up with him had made things even worse.