My hand is at my ear. I drop it. “You watch me that closely?”
Jesus Christ, my clit just did a backflip. I need to be escorted from this diner immediately.
“That’s my job.”
“Is it?”
He looks up. Meets my eyes. “Maybe not all of it,” he admits.
It hits me low and dirty, like the first sip of tequila or a text from an ex with good dick. The kind of feeling that ends with someone getting railed against a jukebox.
My entire reproductive system just filed a group petition for him to continue talking.
Dario is the before.
Saul is the after.
Enzo is the sideways.
The part of me that didn’t die, didn’t survive, just got weird and dangerous and hungry for something just... easy. Like breathing. Like sitting in a shabby diner eating fries dipped in milkshakes with someone who’s seen the worst of you and finds it entertaining instead of alarming.
“I should go,” I say, even though I don’t want to.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t move. “Probably.”
Neither of us gets up.
I’m one blink away from licking the whipped cream off his shake straw and calling that foreplay. I think if he touched me right now, I’d combust like an unattended toaster oven.
“I’m going to keep coming back,” I tell him. “You know that, right? I can’t stop.”
“I know.”
“And you’re going to keep watching me.”
“Yeah.” He almost smiles. “That’s the plan.”
“This is insane.”
“Sweetheart, we passed insane at the first cookie drop-off. We’re halfway to feral, detouring through public indecency.”
I laugh. Can’t help it.
He grins back.
And I think: Oh no. Oh no no no. Enzo looks at me like I’m chaos worth watching.
We split the check despite his protests. Walk out into the afternoon sun.
His car is a few spaces from mine. Black. Nondescript. The kind of car someone drives when they don’t want to be remembered.
“See you around, Stevie,” he says. “And hey, for what it’s worth?”
Here it comes. Brace for ovary combustion.
“You looked better in the tie than he ever has.”
My uterus is filing a change-of-address form to his lap.
