by Julia Kent
I never—not once—thought I’d meet an actual hot guy who I’d want to date.
And here I am.
Andrew.
His name slides through my mind with an echo of need. My eyes take in Chris as the waiter comes over and he orders pints for us, picking our two professed favorites. I could date him. Kiss him. Maybe even sleep with him.
There really are plenty of fish in the sea after all.
Too bad the fish I want is in Tokyo right now.
I have a choice here. If I’d met Chris on the very first DoggieDate, life might be very different.
Then it hits me.
I don’t want different.
I want Andrew.
At that precise moment, warm fingers take my hand. That zing? The one you’re supposed to feel the first time you experience affection from someone you’re getting to know romantically?
It’s not there. Holding hands with Chris is nice. It’s comfortable and sweet, and as I look up and meet his eyes and smile, I remember that I am playing a role here. We’re supposed to be talking about our dogs and bonding over my teacup chihuahua and his little affen puppy.
“What’s Snoozer like?” I ask, bringing this back to my actual job requirements. The mystery shopping evaluation form has been taking shape slowly as I go through enough of these dates to start to form an idea of what we need to evaluate in terms of customer service and client experience.
Chris gets an uncomfortable look on his face. His eyes drop to my boobs. I’m wearing a shirt that could pass muster in a convent, so I’m not sure what he thinks he’s actually looking at.
“I have a confession to make,” he says in a sheepish voice, squeezing my hand. I have to lean forward slightly to hear him.
Outside, cabs stop and go, dropping off and picking up customers right outside the window. The brew pub takes up nearly half a block in this trendy neighborhood, and it’s a bustling area that’s gentrifying. Enormous old factories are being renovated into new lofts, hotels, and business spaces. I’m guessing the brew pub has two to three years, tops, at this location, before the rent increases drive them away.
“I, um...” Chris stumbles, then sits back with a long sigh, letting go of my hand. The waiter brings our pints and we clink glasses, then each chug about half our respective beers. I fight back a belch.
Chris leans forward again and puts his palm on my shoulder. Our faces are half a foot apart.
“Are you okay? Is something wrong with Snoozer?” I’ve learned to direct all the attention to talk about the dogs whenever anything gets strange on these dates. Works like a charm.
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong with him. Actually, though,” he says, leaning in another inch. “This is about Snoozer. He, um, he’s not my dog.”
I press my lips together and frown. “Huh?”
“I don’t actually have a dog.”
“You don’t?” My voice contains a little more glee than it should, because I predicted this exact scenario when I spoke with the client. I said there would be fakers, and my God, here we are. The thrill of being right mixes with the beer, which I grab and finish off with a flourish.
“No. I just invented him so I could join this dating service,” he says as he gets closer. Any closer and my eyes will cross to a blur.
But just then, he freezes.
“Don’t look,” he whispers, “but there’s a creepy guy outside staring right at you.”
I turn and look in defiance of his order and—
Andrew McCormick is standing three feet away, his limo behind him.
And if looks really could kill, Chris would be dead right now.
Chris pulls back and gives me a menacing stare. “You know him? Because—”
I’m on my feet, throwing the napkin down before he can finish. “Hang on,” is all I say as I fly through the warehouse-style restaurant, the enormous painted duct work above me, metal ceiling fans dropped along thick wires that lend the place the feel of a hipster brew pub.
I run out the door and find Andrew exactly where he was seconds ago, his hands in his suit trouser pockets, his face a grim scowl.
Directed entirely at Chris.
“What are you doing here?” I cry out, fighting twin urges to smack him and hug him.
“Interrupting something, apparently,” he answers, eyes staying on Chris, who has pulled out his phone and has a bad case of self-invoked text neck as he pretends to ignore Andrew’s ire.
“No, I mean, aren’t you in Tokyo?”
“I came back early.”
“What are you doing here? In this part of town? Did you come to find me? Are you stalking me?”
His nose pugs up, jaw tight, like he’s trying hard not to let his temper fly. He still won’t look at me. “Gerald had to take the limo on a detour. We were stuck at the light. I looked out the window to see you on your....” He clears his throat like he’s eaten a bug. “Date.”
I’m stuck.
I can’t tell him the truth. I just can’t. And technically, we’re not exclusive. He’s sending me mixed signals and if this were a real date, that would be fine. He has no claim on me. We’re not—
“Is he your boyfriend?” Andrew asks, eyes narrowing as he stares at Chris.
“What? Him? No. First date.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you dating?”
“Because I can?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Excuse me? I most certainly can.”
“Do you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Date other men.”
I open my mouth to answer and stop mid-movement, eyes blinking. The cool night air dries out my mouth quickly, and with my hammering heart and beer-soaked blood, I realize that everything in me is screaming:
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because you haven’t given me a reason not to.”
Okay, technically, that’s not true, either. But knowing how competitive Andrew is, and being stuck in this absolutely, utterly impossible horror of a situation with three brain cells left for making decisions, it’s the best I can come up with on the fly.
Suddenly, his mouth is on me, slanted against mine, tongue ravaging and claiming. This is no welcome kiss, no soft hi there after a week apart. The rough push of his lips, scruffy with a day’s growth of beard, will leave my mouth raw with the demand of this man who is making it quite clear that this is the only reason I need to stop dating anyone else.
This kiss.
This man.
His hands fill with my ass, fingers digging in to the flesh, his hardness against my belly, my arms hanging loose by my sides as my mouth knows what it’s doing but the rest of me needs a few seconds to catch up. The zing! that fills every square inch of my skin screams out his name in ecstasy, as if all the vibrations in the world came into one single frequency that pumps through my veins like thunder.
And then my body remembers what to do, hands clutching his waist, sliding up over those rolling shoulders that are attached to fingers that won’t stop giving me reason after reason after reason not to date anyone else.
And promise to give me multiple, mind-shattering reasons right now, if I just go with him.
“Ahem.”
Someone is clearing their throat, but my throat is currently occupied by Andrew’s delicious tongue, so I—
“This is not how my dates typically end,” declares Chris.
I reach between me and Andrew, brushing against his erection as my palms slide up his hard wall of abs and chest, then make a space between us. Our mouths separate with near violence, and I turn to look through blurred vision at—
Oh. Yeah.
My date.
“Normally I’m the one kissing my date,” Chris adds.
“Go away,” Andrew growls.
And Chris does.
I’m not torn. I should be, but I’m not. As I watch Chris the Fake Dog Dater roam off into the night, my
staring is interrupted by a strong hand on my cheek, fingers raking through my hair, my head tipped up for another kiss that leaves me breathless and knowing even less than I knew a moment ago.
Until:
“You won’t date anyone else.”
“I won’t?”
The savagery in his tone and the bluntness of the words makes my feminist heart rise up and shake its outraged fist.
“No.”
“Says who?”
“Says your boyfriend.”
“He sounds like a troglodyte.”
“He prefers the term Neanderthal. Someone applied it to him once.”
“Boyfriend? That makes me your girlfriend?”
I’m thrilled and horrified at the same time, because I have eleven dates to go for DoggieDate. And I can’t say a word about this, because the owner of DoggieDate is a rival of Anterdec’s. I would not only be violating the basic tenets of mystery shopping, but also a slew of non-disclosure agreements. I’d lose my job in a heartbeat.
“Yes.” His voice softens.
“Is that what you want?”
“I just said so.” He kisses me again.
“You know what I want?” I stand on tiptoes, my lips against his ear.
“Mmmm?”
“A breve latte for breakfast.”
He leers at me. “How about that latte for second breakfast. First breakfast in bed can be...you know...”
I leer back.
He grabs my hand and pulls me to the limo, whispering, “Okay, girlfriend. Done.”
I fall into his lap in a tumble of giggles and gasps—then groans.
His groans. I’ve missed the sound of his sigh in my ear, how his breath lifts the hair from my neck, how his throaty laugh rumbles along my skin.
Andrew reaches behind me and grasps the door handle, shutting the limo closed with a thump. We begin to move, but I don’t really notice much, as Andrew’s kissing me like we haven’t touched in years.
How can a week of distance feel so much longer?
“I missed you,” he whispers, dragging the tip of his nose along my neck, from earlobe to collarbone, his lips hard and soft at the same time, arms circling me like I’m meant only to be here.
“I missed you, too.” A thin wisp of guilt floats through the air as I inhale. I must tense, because he stops moving his hands, his arms tightening.
“Is this okay?”
“Of course,” I reply, my laughter muted. “I just feel bad about ditching my, uh...” The word date feels dangerous right now. Inappropriate.
Incendiary.
“Your date?”
“Yeah.” When he names it, I’m off the hook.
“Why?”
“Because he was a nice person.”
“Just because he was nice doesn’t mean he gets to be shielded from consequences.”
“Consequences?”
“Right.”
“Explain.”
Andrew’s head dips down, and as he moves his chin glides along the top of my breasts. A fireball of want replaces whatever silly little bit of guilt was there a second ago.
“People don’t live with a rope tied between you and them emotionally. Not people you aren’t attached to, I mean.”
I frown, tilting my head as if the physical shift will give me a different perspective on his words. “Explain again.”
“I see you doing this. Shannon, too.”
My ears perk up at the mention of Shannon. Although she’s about to become his sister-in-law, I’ve rarely heard him mention her. This is definitely new territory.
“You both,” he continues, “act like you owe some debt to people you aren’t attached to. As if you have to take care of everyone else’s feelings, even when you’re not asked.”
My cheeks begin to blaze. It’s not from arousal.
“I don’t understand,” I admit.
He swallows, and I feel the tension in his neck. “Ah, maybe I’m getting too serious here.”
“No,” I whisper. “You’re not. This is interesting. I’m really trying to understand. I think you’re on to something. Please,” I urge him.
What I don’t say is that there’s a deep intimacy to his words, to this discussion, that I don’t get from him elsewhere. Not in restaurants, not in the boardroom—not even in the bedroom.
I feel his shrug. “Maybe it’s a male/female difference. Maybe it’s personality. I don’t know. That guy back there—”
“Chris. His name is Chris.”
“Who cares. Anyhow, that guy is walking home right now, probably a little pissed that I sniped his date, but he certainly doesn’t feel an attachment to you. There’s no connection. No mutuality. You don’t owe him a thing and he doesn’t owe you a thing. He’s a separate person who has autonomy over his behaviors and emotions.”
“Still not getting you.” And yet, something deep inside me is stirring. I can feel it. A dawning recognition that Andrew has zeroed in on an essential part of who I am, a piece of me that I know subconsciously is there, but that lurks within the subterranean mess of my chaotic soul. The fact that he intuitively sees this part of me is both thrilling and terrifying, because it involves being more real than I’ve ever been with anyone.
“Amanda, you have a loyalty and a need to fix problems for other people. You do this not because you want the accolades, but because you deeply enjoy being the person who solves problems.” He tightens his grasp of me, touching my elbow with a stroke. “You connect ideas with solutions and implement them. You’re the perfect operations person.”
Coming from the former VP of Operations at Anterdec and now CEO, that’s high praise.
“If you’re just saying that to get into my pants,” I tease, “I’m a sure thing tonight.”
His laugh makes my body lift and bounce slightly as I burrow into the embrace. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean. Take the compliment.”
“Then...thank you. I’m still not sure I understand everything you said, but I find it fascinating.”
“My middle name is Freud.”
“I thought your middle name was James.”
“Don’t ruin a witty comeback,” he says, crushing my mouth with his so that, indeed, I cannot say another word.
Five minutes later we come up for air. Oxygen deprivation is the only explanation for why I reach for his face, caress his cheek, look him square in the eyes and murmur, “I’ve never felt this way about any man before.”
He smiles, then reaches up to brush my unruly hair from my forehead, the movement profound and fleeting.
“What do you feel? For me?” he asks, head tipped slightly down, eyes lifting up.
“Attachment.”
Love, I want to say, but the word is like a fire starter, inert until it gets close to a flame.
And then it ignites.
I don’t say it. Can’t. Not yet.
His face breaks into a wide smile at the word I do use.
“Good.”
“I thought you just told me I attach to people too easily!” My heart is pounding. My skin feels exquisitely sensitive. What I’m saying and what I’m thinking are wildly divergent, and yet totally integrated.
“You attach emotional outcomes to the wrong people too readily.” As he nuzzles my neck, a whiff of his cologne takes over the tiny space.
“Semantics,” I scoff, trying to pretend that this is banter. It’s not. This is a kind of truth I’m trying so hard to be ready for.
I get a long, hot kiss as an answer.
Before I can turn the tables and ask him what he feels for me, the limo slows and motors into the garage at his building.
And then we’re out, walking to the elevator, hand in hand, Andrew pushing the button and like magic, the doors float open.
“Nice trick,” I say as we walk on, my heart bouncing like popcorn on a stove.
“I have lots of them.”
The stakes tonight feel higher. The question of whether to sleep with Andrew isn’t part of this experien
ce. And the aroused speculation of what it’s like to be naked with him in bed is gone. I know what that is like.
And it is damn fine.
What I feel, as the doors close and his fingers unlace from mine, his body closing the distance, mouth finding my own as his hands skim up my spine, is the wholly unfamiliar sense of familiarity. I do know what this is like. The fact that I get more is what is so startling.
I’m sleeping with him again.
I’m spending the night again.
His tongue is lush and ripe and doing that again.
And again.
Oh, God, please.
Again.
He pushes me forward, using his thighs and hips, his hardness making me lose my breath.
And my sense of control.
Yet I have to know.
“What about you?” My words come out in a rush, as if I can cram them in between passion, as if they have to be hurried and said before this all goes away.
But he takes his time as he thinks about his answer. He is in no rush.
And then:
“I spend long stretches away,” he murmurs against my mouth, “sitting in stupid business meetings with people from around the world who think a merger is more important than anything else, or that a change in online branding will change the world. I fly in planes at crazy hours of the night and do whirlwind tours in countries that changed names during my lifetime. And lately, Amanda, I spend every waking hour away from you wondering what the hell I’m doing.”
Something in me breaks and blossoms at the same time, illogical and breathtaking, like cracking open an egg and finding a beautiful rainbow inside that takes over the sky.
“I’m good at what I do. Top of my game,” he continues as I splay my palm flat against his abs. He’s talking, and he needs to, and the words wash over me like the warm sea, welcoming and eternal, ancient and true.
“But not one bit of it matters. I have everything. Everything I could possibly want. Or, at least, I did. Until I realized I didn’t have you.”
“Is that why you really kissed me that night after the marina?” I ask.
“I already told you why I kissed you that night.”
“Tell me again.”