Page 87 of Business Casual
“Sure.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why are you being so nice?”
She reaches across the counter for the flour and drags it closer. It leaves a little streak of white across the tabletop. “I’m usually nice, Charlie,” she tells me with no shortage of snark, echoing my earlier statement. But then she looks at me and her face softens. “Just…be careful, all right?”
I know what she thinks. It’s written all over her face. She thinks what everyone else always thinks about me. She thinks I’m fucking around. That I’m using Nova to have a good time before I go back to my reality. But it’s not true. I like Nova. If I won the watch bet, I was going to ask for another Katharine Hepburn movie night. Pizza on her lap and my legs on the coffee table.
Nova’s making all the calls. She’s setting the boundaries.
“It’s not like that,” I say quietly.
“Like what?”
I adjust one of the apron ruffles so it lays flat against my chest. “There’s nothing going on.”
Nothing that will last, anyway. There’s no point getting all twistedup about it when we’ll both be moving on in a couple of weeks. We’ll have our fun, and that’s that.
Layla smirks at me. “Oh, Charlie. Sweet, sweet Charlie. I was once as oblivious as you.” She hands me a measuring cup, then a bag of sugar. “Now sift that into there. And find me some blueberries.”
19
NOVA
“Do you thinkeveryone sees the same colors?”
I lean my head out of the bathroom and look at Charlie. He’s spread out in the middle of my bed in nothing but his black Calvin Klein boxer briefs, a bowl of chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels resting in the middle of his chest. He digs one hand in the bowl and pulls out a single pretzel, holding it above his face as he stares at the ceiling.
I drag a towel through my wet hair. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, like, your walls are painted pink, right?”
I glance at my bedroom wall and then back to his prone body against my disheveled sheets. We actually made it to the bed this time, a rare occurrence despite how often Charlie has been in my bedroom over the past two weeks. He stopped by with some blank tax forms, spent thirty seconds pretending like he was here for a legitimate reason, then scooped me up, carried me up the steps, and tossed me on the bed. He made me come twice, then bent me over and took his own pleasure with both hands braced on my hips. I have three little bruises in the shape of his fingers against the curve of my waist. I think I like them more than my tattoos.
“They’re more of a blush than a pink.”
He leans up on his elbows and tosses a pretzel up in the air. He catches it in his mouth with a loud crunch. I have no idea why, butsome part of me finds that wildly attractive. The part of me that’s still blissed out and boneless, apparently.
Charlie notices my staring and winks. “All right. Blush. How do we know we’re both seeingblush?”
I look at the wall and then back to him. “Because it’s…blush?”
“But how do we know? Because we both describe that color as blush, right? But what if the blush I see is different from the blush you see?”
I toss my towel over the edge of the door and shuffle my way over to him, the back of my hand pressed to my mouth. “Is this what your brain does all the time?”
He grins at me, bright and boyish. “You’d be surprised.”
I doubt that. Charlie is almost alarmingly transparent. He thinks he hides himself away, but I can read the lines of his body now. He sets his bowl to the side as I get closer and reaches for me. His hands open and close in a grabbing motion.Come closer, he’s saying.Come here.
He cups his hands around my thighs and squeezes, tugging until I’m perched in his lap. I drag my fingers through his hair and yawn again, right in his face.
He frowns at me. “You’re tired.”
“I am.”
“I’m taking up too much of your time.”
“You’re not,” I argue. These stolen moments with Charlie might be my favorite way I’ve been spending my time lately. Everything else is deadlines and rushing and paperwork and crossing items off my list. But when we’re together like this my brain is only focused on Charlie’s warm body beneath mine and the delicious ache in my muscles. Unplugged.
