“You’re right.” But Lauren didn’t know what to make of the changing nature of their relationship. Given that they’d just walked and talked and eaten food together for nearly two hours, it sure felt like they were dating. Maybe Lauren hadn’t really been with anyone since Derek, but she knew what dates felt like. Was Caleb really in this much denial?
Was Lauren?
What did she really want here? Did she really think she had a future with Caleb? No, not really. But she was growing to like him. And that was a problem.
“Did I ruin it?” Caleb asked.
“Ruin what?”
“The mood. I don’t know. Sex shouldn’t feel perfunctory.”
Lauren stood. “Maybe I should go.”
“No, sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. Sorry, it just was starting to feel like the standard date narrative. We chatted, we had dinner, and now we’re going to have sex. But even though I like plans, scheduling sex is the one thing that takes the fun out of it. So I’m awkwardly trying to put the moves on you and failing completely.”
“Do we have no passion if we’re not fighting?” Lauren was legitimately concerned about that. He was still smoking hot, his hair and clothes a bit disheveled at the end of a long workday, his body still cut, his broad shoulders and slim hips still appealing, his handsome face still drawing her attention. But suddenly, things seemed awkward between them. Maybe they just didn’t know how to initiate sex when they were both getting along. But that was insane. Normal couples got along well and then had good sex and didn’t need petty arguments to get the ball rolling. What the hell was wrong with them?
“No. Of course we don’t need to fight. Ignore anything I say. I’m being an asshole.”
Lauren decided to turn the tables on him. They would either make this work or they wouldn’t. “Do you want me?”
Caleb’s expression softened. “Yes. All the time.” He stepped closer.
The truth was, she wanted him too, at a bone-deep level. He was sexy, of course, but the more she got to know him, the more she was drawn to him. It wasn’t just that he was hot, though he was; under all his grumpiness, he was compassionate and thoughtful. The kind of guy she could fall in love with, if they could go for more than a half hour without disagreeing, and if he hadn’t sworn off relationships.
Her own baggage was starting to feel like it didn’t matter much. Derek, schmerek. He was married in New Hampshire. He didn’t matter anymore.
“I want you,” Caleb said, sitting beside her on the bed and putting a hand on her cheek. “The first time I saw you, I wanted you. Every time you come into the clinic, I feel an inappropriate jolt. Whenever you pick a fight with me about something silly, I want you. Just talking over dinner, and I want you.”
“I want you, too,” Lauren said. “That’s all that we need to get started, no?”
“I suppose so.”
Caleb bent his head and kissed Lauren. He moved his hand along her jaw and his fingers played with the hair at the base of her skull. She nearly lost the ability to breathe, it was so tender and sweet. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him closer, opening her mouth to let him in more.
He was sexy, but he was familiar, too. Not in a bad way, more like she’d unlocked a secret. She knew some of the nuances of his body, knew what things made him hiss or moan, knew where he liked to be touched. They’d slept together enough now that she was beginning to understand what he really liked in bed, what revved him up, what made him come.
So she knew if she pressed against him, he’d grasp her and hold her closer. She knew he liked her breasts, liked to rest his hand on the curve of her hip, liked the way she tasted.
Knowing these things about him made her feel powerful, made her feel sexy.
She pulled away from him slightly and took off her shirt. She met his gaze and raised an eyebrow. He practically swooned, looking delighted as he ran a hand down her chest and cupped one of her breasts.
The fact that they were doing this in secret heightened how powerful she felt. The only people who mattered here were the two of them. There was no pressure, no obligation to anyone else. Just two people who were into each other doing what they wanted. Maybe she didn’t need any more explanation than that.
She gave Caleb a gentle push back toward the bed. He took the hint and scooted back and lay down. She climbed on top and straddled his hips. He immediately put his hands on her, covering her breasts, her waist, her belly. He slid his fingers under the underwire of her bra, so she reached back and unhooked it, then pulled it off. He groaned in response.
“Do you feel less awkward now?” she asked.
“Not awkward at all.” He bucked his hips against her, and she could feel he was hard. “I want you to ride me just like this.”
“That can be arranged.”
She pushed his shirt up his chest, and he leaned up to pull it off. She had to stand back up to take off her jeans, unfortunately, but Caleb made the most of losing contact and took off his own pants and underwear. When Lauren straddled him again, they were both naked.
“Feels like we need more foreplay,” Caleb said, sitting up slightly and taking one of her nipples into his mouth.
“Nope. I’ve been thinking about this since dinner. I want you inside me now.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll ride you like a motorcycle.”
He laughed softly and shifted their position slightly on the bed. “Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?”
“Well, no. It was an expression.”
“Lauren?”
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
Lauren leaned down to kiss him, and as she slid her tongue into his mouth, she felt his erection poking at the entrance to her body. She shifted her hips slightly, and one of his hands went between them, and then he entered her slightly.
She stood up, taking him inside her in one fluid motion.
“Oh, god,” he said.
That’s what she wanted. She wanted him messy and panting and out of his mind with lust. She moved against him, bracing her hands on his chest and lifting her hips on and off him. He bucked his hips a few times, as though frustrated he couldn’t set the pace, but this was hers. She was in charge here.
He thrust his hands into her hair, brought their lips together to kiss her, cupped her breasts in his hands. When she sat back up, he put one hand on her hip to try to control the pace and the other danced over one of her nipples.
This. This right here. This was what she wanted. He filled her up, touched all the best places, made her feel like the only thing in the whole world that mattered was the connection made by their bodies. She could likely come just from the way he touched her chest, but the fact that he was also bucking against her as she rode him was creating exactly the kind of friction that would get her there even faster.
And suddenly, all that mattered was getting to that orgasm, was tumbling over the cliff with him. She rode him hard, fast, loving the way his body rubbed against hers. And just when she was about to fly apart, he said, “Holy shit, I’m gonna come.”
She got there first, the orgasm bursting within her. She threw her head back and settled her knees into the mattress as she rode it out. A moment later, he grasped her hips and seemed to stop breathing as he shook a little. She felt him come inside her, just as her fingers and toes uncurled.
Later, when they were lying beside each other, sated but still out of breath, she said, “We do that pretty well.”
“We do. I never expected this.”
“Good sex?”
“Good sex with a woman who I find incredibly sexy and also sometimes challenging.”
“Is ‘challenging’ your nice way of saying ridiculous?”
“Maybe. Don’t hate me.”
She patted his chest. “Fortunately for you, I don’t.”
And she really didn’t. But she was starting to feel things that were troubling considering they weren’t in a real relationship.
So where did that leave them? The sand was running out of the hourglass. She rolled onto her side and draped her arm around him, determined to hold on to this for as long as it lasted.
Chapter 17
The Whitman Street Spring Festival was an annual harbinger of the impending spring, falling in early April when winter’s clutches finally loosened. Ten blocks of Whitman Street shut down to give the space to food trucks, tables for local businesses and independent vendors, and carnival rides.
Paige manned the Cat Café’s table. She’d found a bedsheet covered in cats at a discount store and used it as a tablecloth. Then she set up plastic display containers and filled them with flyers and brochures advertising the café’s regular events—Paige had just started after-hours movie nights once a month with cat-themed films—and cat adoption opportunities. She’d also let Mitch come by with flyers for his own organization, and he hung out around the table to answer questions about how people could volunteer to catch and tag feral cats in Brooklyn.
Sunday had been chosen as the feline ambassador—Sadie couldn’t handle outside noise and would have panicked the whole time—and she was in a huge kennel set up on the table so that people walking by could be lured in by the very cute cat. Sunday seemed very mellow now, lying on her little cat bed and occasionally yawning and stretching like this was no big deal.
Lauren walked back and forth between the table and the café. Monique was in charge inside, with Victor slinging lattes at the counter, and they were getting a fair number of customers who had indeed been lured in by the table and wanted to check out the space. Lauren struggled a little to figure out where she’d be the most useful.
When Lauren went back outside, Caleb walked out of the vet clinic with a Tupperware bin the size of a shoebox that appeared to be full of paper. He looked infuriatingly handsome today, his skin a bit flushed, his hair neat aside from one thin tuft that had escaped and draped over his forehead. He had on his white doctor’s coat over his standard uniform of a button-down shirt and khakis. That Lauren knew what he looked like under all that clothing made her flush a bit.
If Caleb felt any of that, he didn’t show it. “Olivia said you said we could put some pamphlets for the clinic on your table.”
“You could get your own table, you know,” Paige said. “All businesses on Whitman Street are allowed to put one table out on the street here. The fee is waived just for the street fair.”
Caleb said, “There’s no one to man it. We all have patients today. It’s Saturday.”
Lauren supposed the “Saturday is our busiest day” was implied. Caleb’s haughty tone irritated her like a bugbite, though, so she said, “Oh, well, I didn’t realize you all were so important.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Oh, you know. No big deal. Just the lives of living creatures hanging in the balance. Where should I put these?”
Paige reached over and took the box. She took some pamphlets out of it and slid them into an empty slot in her plastic display, then put the box with the remaining pamphlets under the table.
Lauren looked Caleb over. It would have been nice if they could walk around the fair together like a couple instead of playing at being adversaries. Neither seemed that offended by the mocking. It would have been nice if they didn’t feel the need to be so performative in their dislike of each other, though. Or else Caleb had reverted to his bratty self, back to the man Lauren hadn’t seen in a week or two as they’d had good sex and pleasant conversation a few times. Maybe he was…overcompensating now. Or Lauren was wrong in thinking he’d turned some new leaf and this was just who he always was.
Lauren saw in her peripheral vision a blond standard poodle and a harried-looking woman going into the vet clinic. Caleb must have seen it, too, because he said, “That’s my next appointment.” He looked around. “This is quite an operation.”
“It is,” said Lauren. “If you have a spare few minutes and can bear spending time among the hoi polloi later, I’ll give you a tour.”
“All right. Well. Uh. Break a leg?”
“Later, Caleb,” said Paige, waving in a way that looked a little patronizing. He mirrored her movement and went inside. “So he’s still a dick.”
“Yep,” said Lauren. But he was hers, wasn’t he? At least for now. Something had definitely changed between them recently, at least in private.
Evan came by the table then, a plastic bag from the bookstore hooked around his wrist. “Don’t look,” he said, “but Pablo has a table with a mix of weird used books and new releases, and there is absolutely no more shelf space anywhere in my apartment, but he had, like, eight things I want to read.”
Lauren turned to look despite Evan’s warnings. Pablo was indeed a few tables down, chatting with a woman who was pointing at books in the new release display.
“These excuses for talking to Pablo are costing you quite a bit of money. You pay full cover price for those books in your bag?”
“There’s a ten percent off street fair special.”
“Right.”
Evan frowned and looked at his bag. “He must think I’m way smarter than I am. I’ve only read a tiny fraction of the books I’ve bought from him since he started working at Stories.”
“Or you could ask him out.”
Evan shook his head. “When I was a teenager, I worked at a clothes store in the mall. There was this girl I worked with sometimes who thought my name was Jason. I corrected her a few times, but it never sank in, and she kept calling me Jason. Eventually, it had gone on too long, and I didn’t want to embarrass her by telling her she’d been getting my name wrong for months, so I just…responded when she called me Jason. I feel like this thing with Pablo is like that. I missed the window. I should have asked him out when he left Star Café, but now so much time has gone by that it’s embarrassing if I ask him out now.”
“That’s insane,” said Lauren. “Why not just walk up to him and say, ‘Hey, I really like you, let’s get a drink sometime. There’s a great bar just up the block that has amazing martinis.’ Done and done.”
Evan guffawed. “As if.” He looked around. “Hey, can I stash this bag with you. It’s heavy. That truck with the guy who makes the arepa sandwiches is just on the other side of Henry Street, and I’ve had dreams about his steak sandwich since the last one of these street fairs.”
“I’ll put your books under the table if you get me that chicken and avocado thing he sells.”
“You got it.”
***
Caleb got a break midafternoon. Rachel informed him two of his appointments had rescheduled, probably because of the street fair—a ten-block stretch of Whitman Street was closed to car traffic, and several patients had complained about the ripple effect that had on the rest of the area—so he had about an hour to kill.
He’d brought Hank with him to work that day since he knew he’d probably end up working late. He grabbed Hank’s leash from the coat hooks near the desk.
“You want to walk down to the grocery store that used to be a bank at the intersection with Court Street,” Rachel said as Caleb snapped Hank’s leash into place. “For some reason, the best food trucks park down there. The two best ones are the one with bison burgers and the one with empanadas. The empanadas are small, though, so order one of each kind to get the full experience.”
Caleb laughed. “Thanks for the tip. Is this whole street fair just an excuse to overeat?”
“Pretty much, yeah. And if you end up with any leftovers, your friendly neighborhood vet tech would be appreciative.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
When Caleb walked outside, Lauren was standing near the Cat Café table, looking at her phone. “You got a few minutes?” he asked her. “You promised to show me around. Hope you
don’t mind if Hank comes along.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.” She reached down and pet Hank’s head. He licked her hand as a reward. She looked up at Caleb. “Is it Take Your Dog to Work Day?”
“That’s every day at the clinic. Olivia gave me permission to bring Hank to work, so I have been when I work overnights. I did today, too, because my dogwalker wasn’t feeling well.”
“All right. Well, come on.”
As they walked through the center of the street, she said, “Have you ever been to a street fair in New York?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“They’re all kind of the same. This one is a little fancier because they get a bunch of really good food trucks and those have become kind of the draw, but every New York street fair is pretty similar. There are always a couple of trucks or booths with deep fryers, so you can get funnel cakes or falafel. There’s always a table with a guy selling packages of socks or bedsheets. I don’t know why. And then there are a bunch of random vendors, usually jewelry, dresses made to fit only very skinny women, and at least one table that’s just random New York tourist junk. At this street fair, most of the vendors are businesses on Whitman Street. So each of the restaurants has, like, one dish they’ll give you or samples of their popular dishes in little cups. And then all the stores are showing what they sell. Like here.”
Lauren walked over to the table in front of the yarn store and gestured toward it. There was a basket on one end of the table that held colorful balls of yarn. Hank gave it a sniff, but he wasn’t tall enough to do any damage. They also had stacks of knitting books and displays of knitting and sewing notions. A woman behind the table was having an intense conversation with a potential customer using a lot of jargon Caleb didn’t understand: roving, spinning, weight, and other terms he assumed did not mean to these women what they meant to him.
After Lauren made some small talk with the women at the table, they moved on. As they walked, Lauren said, “I’ve already had lunch, but if you see something you want to eat, let me know.”
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