He pretends to work a remote. “Clicking the next channel at lightning speed,” he says, a gleam in his eyes.
“Well, I guess you’re more discerning than I am with your perversions,” I say, glad whatever weirdness he felt at the pool has vanished. “Or more discerning than the rest of the world too, since everyone seems to want to watch us kiss, what with that pic and all.”
One eyebrow climbs. “Really? I dunno, Summer. Seems like watching your neighbors go at it like bunnies is just a little different than checking out a snapshot of a somewhat chaste kiss.”
Somewhat.
That’s the key. It was somewhat chaste, but what does he make of the “somewhat” portion? I wish I knew.
“The concept is the same,” I say, sticking to the cerebral side of this conversation.
“The concept is one hundred percent not the same,” he insists, stabbing his finger against the table. “Case in point. We can look at that picture right now, in public, and that’s not perverted.” Grabbing his phone, he taps on the search bar, and seconds later, slides the device to the middle of the table so we can both see it again.
An image I checked out less than an hour ago.
And I can’t look away from this picture of a man and a woman swept up in each other.
Lost in a kiss.
They look . . . enrapt.
The memory of the kiss sweeps over me, cocooning me in a kind of residual bliss.
A somewhat chaste bliss, but I feel all the tingles you get from a memory. They float over me, reignite, send flutters all through my body.
Flutters that turn to sizzles as the memory intensifies.
They turn more carnal.
They’re hardly chaste at all now.
Heat races through me, and my neck is hot. My cheeks go red. And my wishes must be written in my eyes. I have to wonder if Oliver can read them there.
Kiss me.
His gaze locks with mine, and I swear on all that is good and holy—on Stella’s cookies and comfortable yoga pants and nights out with friends—that his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them before.
Desire flashes across them too.
But we’re in a diner.
We’re just checking out a photo.
Testing a concept.
Except I’m thinking about where this image could lead to.
To touching, to closeness, to sex.
To nothing chaste whatsoever.
“You know,” he begins, as if he has an idea. I hope it’s to pour cold water on my head or dip me in an ice bath, because I need something, anything, to deal with the heatwave inside of me. “We should take one. Post it on your feed, since you defended my kissing the other night on Twitter.”
It’s not Summer the friend who answers his suggestion.
It’s Summer the tiger.
It’s Summer who wants Oliver, the man who’s spectacular at kissing, to kiss her again.
“Yes. We should.”
He rises from his side, moves with grace and confidence around the table, and sits next to me.
I shiver at his nearness.
He raises the phone camera, then laughs, shaking his head. “This may come as a bit of a shock, but I’ve never taken a picture of myself kissing before.”
I laugh. “First time for me too.”
He holds out one arm, slides the other all the way around my shoulders, clasping me tightly, and I am dying.
His touch is electrifying.
I feel almost ashamed, because he’s not even kissing me, and it’s not even real, but I’m already awash in anticipation.
Waiting.
Needing.
Hoping.
He peers into the screen, checking the image.
“Wait. Hold on,” he says, then adjusts his hands, moving his fingers away from my shoulder, fluttering them across my neck, playing with my hair, and then he’s leaning in.
And everything happens in slow motion.
I watch him inching closer.
His eyes zeroing in on my lips.
His lips parting.
Then, when he’s dizzyingly near to me, he glides his lips over mine, and all the hope I’ve been holding escapes in one long, delicious sigh that turns into a moan.
Because here we are again, kissing for the camera.
Click.
I hear him snap a picture.
And I hear something else too.
His sexy sighs.
His murmurs.
He kisses me with another click, another moment, another image.
It’s simply for the camera.
But he flicks his tongue against my lips.
And I ask myself if this is proving Stella wrong once again, and whether I want to fully explore her laws.
When I part my lips for him, inviting more, I know the answer.
I do.
And this kiss becomes more than a kiss for the camera.
The device slips from his hands and hits the table with a thud.
In no time at all, his hands are on my face, and he’s hauling me in for a hot, hard kiss.
This kiss wastes no time. This kiss leaves no mixed signals. This isn’t a kiss for a hashtag. He’s taking it for himself.
His hands curl around my face possessively. He holds me like he doesn’t want to let go.
He kisses me fiercely. His lips are hungry, fevered, as he skates his tongue across my lips again, and then our mouths explore each other.
Not just our mouths—my hands are curious cats, slinking up his suit jacket, sliding up his pressed shirt, grabbing his tie. I yank him closer, tugging on the silk.
And he responds with a rougher kiss.
It’s no longer an exploration.
It’s a declaration.
It says, I want you, I want your lips, I want your taste, and I want to feel you, touch you, have you.
In a diner, on a Friday morning before work, we kiss like the world is going up in flames.
I’m positive that if I were to see someone going at it like we are, I’d watch.
Oh, hell would I watch.
Because kisses like this don’t come around often.
I’ve never had one like it in my life, and I don’t have a clue what it means, or where we go after.
Someone coughs, and we break the kiss as the waitress passes us.
I blink, breathing out hard like I’ve run a race.
He looks at me the same damn way.
He swallows, trying to collect himself, his voice hoarse. “So, yeah. Looks like we got that one. You want to post it?”
I don’t know how he’s speaking. I don’t know how anyone can speak after being kissed senseless by her best friend.
But he’s doing it, so I follow his lead. “Yes. Sure. Of course. Do you want me to say anything special?”
He waves a hand. “Oh, you’re great with that stuff.” He looks at his watch. “I have a meeting. I should go.”
He’s leaving? Just leaving? Though he did say he had a meeting. Still . . .
I furrow my brow. “Oliver?”
He scoots away, grabbing his phone and tossing bills on the table. “Yes?”
But the look in his eyes is nothing I’ve seen before. It’s distant and masked.
Actually, I have seen that look before. It’s how he looked for months after his sister died.
My chest hurts. It aches terribly.
He regrets kissing me, while I regret stopping the kiss.
I try to draw a big, fueling breath, like it can reroute the pang in my chest. I purse my lips. Then, against the tightness in my throat, I manage to say, “I’ll meet you at the jeweler. Before the hockey game?”
“That’d be perfect.”
He turns and leaves me and my bruised lips and heart at the table.
21
Oliver
Blinders come in handy.
I put mine on all day, zeroing in on the contract work ahead of me for Geneva’s firm, then on the deal memo for my new client, Hele
n Williams Designs.
I focus on that rather than on how utterly fucking complicated this fake fiancée gambit has become after this morning’s kiss.
I have half a mind to call it off. Because how the hell am I supposed to spend time with her and pretend I don’t want to kiss her again?
It’s all I want to do.
Wait. That’s not true. I want to do much more.
Which is the real problem.
So I bury myself in work, since the law is reliable.
With every line of legalese I write, I remind myself of why I am faking it—I have to protect this firm and its rep.
I meet with some of the junior partners handling various deals for the firm, and we review the terms. When we’re done, one of the newest attorneys here mentions that his one-year-old just took his first steps, and then shows us the video.
“What a cutie-pie,” one of the women says.
That’s another reminder.
These people depend on me. I sign their checks so they can pay their student loans and take care of their one-year-olds.
I can’t call anything off.
Even if I want to.
Even if it’s getting harder to pretend.
At the end of the day, I change into running shorts to hit the park, chatting with Jane on the way out.
“I see you’re the toast of Twitter now,” she says as the elevator doors close.
“Am I now?”
With a sneaky look on her face, she grabs her phone from her handbag, slides it open, and shows me the latest comments.
* * *
@LovesListsofMen: The kissing pics!!! Dying. Just dying.
* * *
@ManCandyFan: Dying twice. Dying dead again. Dying from the hotness of the kissing.
* * *
@GossipLover1andOnly: I am dead. I am literally dead.
* * *
@ManCandyFan: *collects your body* *gives it a proper funeral befitting a death from hotness*
* * *
I laugh at the exuberance. I guess it’s better than the first rush of tags. “That’s good. Wait—” I narrow my eyes and point to the next one in the thread. “Is that the pen twat again?”
* * *
@TheThird: I dunno. Something about the two of them is almost too good to be true.
* * *
@LovesListsofMen: Jelly much?
* * *
@TheThird: Not one bit. I’m just saying, who’s like that?
* * *
@HZRedhead: He wasn’t like that with me.
* * *
@ManCandyFan: Uh, hello. He’s not with you. He’s with her.
* * *
Jane closes the app. “Your public is amused.”
“Seems to be.”
She pats my arm. “You know, I’m happy to keep this up as long as you need me to, but do think about what happens down the road,” she says as we exit the lift.
Down the road. I let those words echo, as I slide a thumb across my mobile, checking out the latest text from Christian.
* * *
Christian: Tell me every entertaining detail. Also, have we discussed the importance of an exit strategy?
* * *
But I’ve got no time for down the road, or exit strategies, when I have to deal with now and with this morning and what will happen tonight.
I head to meet Jason in the park.
“It happens to the best of us.”
That’s Jason’s sage advice that evening after I updated him on my morning bolt-from-the-scene routine during our four-mile run through Central Park.
“And what exactly is the ‘it’?” I ask as we walk along the Reservoir to cool down.
“Being an arsehole,” he says.
“You’re saying I was an arsehole this morning?”
He blinks. “Are you saying you were anything but?”
“I had a meeting. I had to go.”
He rolls his eyes. “‘Had a meeting’ is a load of shite for an excuse. You kissed her in a diner full of people and then left like your trousers were on fire. Face it—you just punched your ticket at the ‘I’m an arsehole’ counter.”
I shoot him a betrayed look. I knew it was a dick move, but I wasn’t prepared for this sort of character assassination, not even from the renowned hitman of men’s characters. “And I suppose you’ve never done anything so stupid?”
He lets out a deep belly laugh, hands on his stomach. “How the hell do you think I know about the ticket counter for arseholes?” He pats his chest. “You’re looking at a once-upon-a-time card-carrying member. I did some very stupid shit when I was figuring out things with my wife, before she was my wife.” He gives me a wry smile, one that I know means he’s about to give me shit. “However, I never ran from a kiss like I might catch something. Now that I think about it, you’re the bigger knob. I’m getting you a plaque.”
“Thanks. This is grand. Simply grand.”
He claps my shoulder. “Just apologize. Say you were overcome by the taste of her lips or something.”
I recoil. “That does not sound like anything I’d say.”
“I know. With you, it’s more like grunt, tits, arse, sex.”
I roll my eyes. “Pot. Kettle.”
“I’m calling it as I see it,” he says as we head around the bend toward the park exit. “Anyway, say you were stressed about the meeting, you know it was rude, and you’d very much like to kiss her again.”
I flinch. I can’t say that. We can’t kiss like that again. “That won’t work.”
He stops at the edge of the park, trees overhanging us, other New Yorkers running, walking, blading by, and shoots a serious stare at me. “Why exactly did you leave?”
I stop, rubbing my hand across the back of my neck. I left because I didn’t know if I could stop kissing her. I left because I wanted to say, Screw the meeting, come spend the day in bed with me. I left because I want to know what the hell is going on with this brand-new mess of desire I feel for my best friend.
Somehow I wrap that all up into one simple answer. “Because it was easier.”
He drops a hand to my shoulder. “I hear you. But now you have to do something harder—find a way to say you’re sorry for being an arse. Probably won’t be the last time you have to say it, so consider it good practice.”
I blow out a long stream of air, nodding. “I hate that you actually know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t worry. It came from years of being a dickhead too.”
“I feel loads better.”
22
Summer
I see the puma first. The gold figure waggles out of a doorway in front of me as I walk down the hallway of Sunshine Living’s fifth floor.
“Summer,” Roxanne says, poking her head out, scanning the hallway. She sets the cane on the floor, puma-head down. She blinks, flustered, then switches the puma to its upright position.
“Hey, Roxanne.” Curious, I slow at her door. She doesn’t seem her savvy self at all. “What’s going on?”
“Help,” she whispers.
The hairs on my neck prick. “Are you okay?”
She shakes her head and beckons me. “Come inside for a second. I think I’ve made a grave mistake.”
“Okay,” I say, following her into her apartment.
The door stays open as she ushers me to her living room and motions to a high-backed cranberry-red upholstered couch. “Sit.”
I park myself, and she brandishes her phone. “I don’t know what to do,” she says, almost distraught. “It’s this damn Tinder. I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
“What happened?”
Shaking her head, she lowers her voice. “I’m now chatting with a man I’m not interested in. Actually, I’m chatting with a bunch of men I’m not interested in.”
I frown. “Can you just stop talking to them?”
“I could . . .” She trails off.
“But?”
“But there are things I like about them. Hen
ce, my dilemma.”
“I’m a little confused. How did you wind up chatting with them in the first place if you’re not interested?”
She gives me an innocent grin. “They have cute dogs. I swiped right on their dogs.”
A laugh bursts out before I can stop it. “You swiped right on their dogs? How does that happen?”
She squares her shoulders. “Sometimes the dog picture shows first, and some dogs are so adorable I can’t help myself. Especially if they look like my collie, Sally.” She wrings her hands. “Can I just go out with them to see their dogs? I miss my Sally so much.”
I take a breath and consider my answer. “That’s an idea. But I think you should probably tell them that you’re only interested in their dogs.”
She sighs heavily, but after a moment, nods and pats my knee. “You’re right. Honesty is usually best,” she says. “And speaking of honesty, can I tell you my idea for classes?”
“Sure. Of course.”
She sweeps her arm out wide. “Exotic dancing. I want to learn exotic dancing.”
I keep my expression neutral somehow as she tells me about the dance moves she wants to learn.
“Can you please work on getting an exotic dancing class here? Or else I’ll have to set it up myself.”
“Sure. I can look into it,” I tell her.
Throughout the rest of the day, her words echo in my head. Not about exotic dancing, though if she wants that, I will try to help.
But what she said about being honest.
I should be honest with Oliver.
Let him know we simply can’t fake-kiss again. It’s hurting my heart too much. It’s throwing me off.
Nothing against the man, but I’d rather date someone who was more into my dog than me than go through that again.
Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend Page 12