Page 113 of Business Casual
“That’s better,” she hums. “Is that what has you mumbling under your breath over here?”
I flick off the burner and slide the sad mouse pancake onto a plate. I drop a strawberry on top for his nose and hand it to her. “I’ve got no idea what I’m doing, Nova.”
She stares at her plate. “I don’t know. This is a pretty good bear.”
I frown. “It’s supposed to be a mouse.”
A smile twitches at the corner of her mouth. “It’s a very excellent mouse, Charlie.”
I roll my eyes and grab the can of whipped cream, topping off my coffee with enough to send me into a sugar coma. I add sprinkles on top because I’m a grown adult man, then slap Nova on the ass, urging her over to the table.
She curls her legs beneath her in the chair and rests her chin in her hand, plucking the strawberry from the top of her pancake. “I don’tknow what I’m doing either, if that makes you feel better,” she says quietly. She cuts off a square and pops it in her mouth. “Our business casual turned out to be not so casual, huh?”
I rub my hand over my jaw. I’m glad she brought it up. “I like you, Nova. I like what we’re doing.”
Her eyelashes flutter against the tops of her cheeks. She looks down at her pancake and then back up at me. “I like what we’re doing too.”
“But I’m heading out in a couple of days.”
She shrugs. “That doesn’t have to change anything.”
“It probably changes some things.”
She cuts off another perfect square, reaching forward and swiping it through some of the whipped cream on top of my coffee. I nudge my mug closer to her so she doesn’t have to stretch for it.
“It doesn’t have to.” She takes another bite and drags the fork slowly out of her mouth, thinking. A bit of whipped cream clings to the corner of her bottom lip. I want to lick it off. “Who says we need to label this thing between us?”
Thingfeels too small of a word for the overwhelming sense of panic and adoration that sweeps over me every time Nova so much as looks in my direction, but sure.
“Yeah,” I agree slowly. “But thisthingis going to change when I’m about three hundred miles up the coast.”
I won’t be able to drive over whenever I miss her. I won’t be able to print miscellaneous tax forms and bring them to her just so I have an excuse to see her smile. I’ll be caught up in my life, and she’ll be caught up in hers, and I don’t know how we’ll fall together once I step foot out of this town. If once I stop coming around, she’ll forget all the reasons she let me in to begin with.
She watches me from the other side of the table, her bare foot nudging at my knee. “Will you call me when you’re in New York?”
“If you want me to call.”
“I want you to call.” She stabs another piece of pancake with herfork. “And will you text me? With all the ridiculous thoughts that are in your head?”
That was happening before we started sleeping together. I probably couldn’t stop that if I wanted to.
“Of course I will.” Especially if she keeps sending me those pictures I love so much. The ones of her in front of her mirror in ink and lace and the ones of her sitting in the studio by herself, cross-eyed and fish-faced, her sketchbook in the background.
She pushes her chair back and stands, rounding the corner of the table and climbing into my lap. I rest my hands on her hips and tip my head back against the chair, watching her face. Everything feels easier when she’s touching me like this. Like the answer is simple enough.
Maybe it is.
“And when you come back to visit…” She drags her thumb along my jaw, scraping against my stubble. I swear I feel it in the pulse of my neck. In the healing tattoo on my wrist. In my half-hard cock. “Will you be in my bed?”
I curl my hand around the back of her neck and squeeze, angling her mouth to mine. “Good luck getting me out of it.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she tells me.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. You don’t have to be lonely anymore. Not when you’ve got me.”
I drag her mouth to mine and brush my lips to hers, sticky syrup and sweet strawberries and coffee with too much cream. I kiss her until I settle, until all the doubts buzzing around in my brain are erased with her hands in my hair and her mouth on mine.
