Page 55 of IRL: In Real Life
The way her eyes held mine a beat too long, like she knew exactly what she was doing every time she let them rest on me.
The way her fingers moved slow up and down the sweating glass, absent and easy, while my mind took that and went somewhere it had no business going. Wrapped around me. Stroking me like she had time. Like she knew what kind of pressure would make me curse under my breath and lose my train of thought right there at the table.
And the air between us shifted.
“Good,” she said.
My eyes dropped to her hand again. The gold ring. The gloss of her nails. The life in those fingers. Then I dragged my gaze back up before I embarrassed myself in broad daylight.
“You had lunch?”
“I did.”
“Was it worth it?”
She made a face. “No. But I was trying to be responsible.”
“That don’t sound like you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know me well enough to say what sounds like me.”
“I’m learning.”And I want to learn so much more.
“Mmmm.”
I smiled. “That little mmmm.”
“What about it?”
“It’s becoming a situation.”
The laugh she gave me then was low and immediate, the kind that made my body answer before my mind could dress it up.
“See?” she said.
“What?”
“You do that on purpose.”
“Do what?”
“Say something slick and then sit there looking innocent after.”
I sat back. “You think I’m slick?”
“I think you know exactly what you’re doing.”
That should have felt like accusation. It didn’t.
It felt like a door opening half an inch.
We kept talking until her phone lit on the table and she glanced at it with the expression of a woman who had remembered time against her will.
She exhaled softly.
“That’s me getting reclaimed by work?”
“Very much.”
