Page 8 of Business Casual
“Massage therapy?”
“No.”
“Goat yoga?”
She sighs. “Shockingly, I am not asking about goat yoga.”
I swear to god I need a road map with this woman. I never have any idea what she’s thinking. “What are you asking about then?”
“I’m asking—” She exhales sharply and looks up at me with her bottom lip between her teeth. She lets it go and I barely track the indents left there before she releases in a rush. “I’m asking if you’ll come home with me.”
My face twists in confusion. “Sure, Nova. I can walk you home.”
“No, you idiot. I want you tocome homewith me.”
I stare at her blankly. “For snacks?”
She drops her head back and looks up at the night sky, pleading for help. I’m distracted by the line of her throat and the little black stars inked behind her ear. They slowly twist into flowers as the inkmoves down her neck, delicate petals falling across the slope of her shoulder.
“Not for snacks,” she says, still gazing unseeingly at the sky. She tilts her head back and levels me with a look. I am being weighed and measured. Probably found wanting. “You know what? Forget I said anything.”
“I don’t even know what you said.”
“Good. Let’s leave it that way.”
“Nova.”
“Charlie.”
“Nova,” I laugh. “It’s hysterical you think I’m capable of letting this go. Tell me what you meant.”
The color on her cheeks burns darker. Her eyes flick over my shoulder and back. I tighten my grip on her hip, unwilling to have her run off through the trees. I can tell she’s considering it.
“I don’t know, Charlie,” she bites out. “What in the hell do you think it means when a woman asks you tocome homewith her?”
It takes me a second, but the words finally slot themselves together in my brain. My chest pinches, my mouth goes dry, and I stumble over my own feet. I almost send us head over ass into a Douglas fir. I try to correct us and almost dislocate her shoulder.
“Shit. Sorry. Shit.”
I catch us at the last moment and swing Nova around me, arm outstretched. I tug her back into my chest and try not to freak the fuck out.
I’m wheezing. Am I wheezing? What is that ringing noise? Am I having a stroke? I might be having a stroke. Maybe I fell over one of the twenty thousand boxes my sister keeps stacked haphazardly outside of her office and I’m in a hospital bed somewhere, hooked up to some really stellar drugs. I don’t know.
The pinch is a punch now, a faint ringing in my ears. The constant chatter in my brain has gone silent. Everything around us has too. I don’t know what to do with the quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever been so caught off guard in my life.
Nova is watching me with a faintly amused expression. “You doing okay over there?”
My mouth opens and nothing comes out. I close it, then open it again. “I, ah—I don’t think so.”
For all my flirting with Nova, she has never shown an ounce of interest in return. Not once. Most of my text messages get a vaguely apathetic smiley face back. I have categorized her under the unattainable category. Unavailable and uninterested.
Not that I’ve let that deter me, but…she wants me to take her home? Tonight? I’m no stranger to a fleeting romance with a woman, but Nova—I see her every time I’m down here. I know how she likes her tea and the kind of car she drives. I know the names of her sisters and her least favorite categories at trivia night.
It’s Nova.
I’m having trouble untangling my thoughts.
I’m also unreasonably, incredibly turned on. Half of my brain is trying to make sense of her request while the other half is running wild with the possibilities. I am the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of one-night-stand requests.
