Page 37 of Only for Tonight

I sit in my car and call Desiree.

She picks up on the second ring. “Finally she calls. Someone’s dead or you slept with the football player.”

I press my lips together. “Nobody’s dead.”

Silence. One beat. Two.

Then a scream so loud I have to pull the phone from my ear.

“Ryleigh Marie. Tell me everything. Right now.”

“You have to be calm about this.”

“I will not be calm. Talk.”

I maneuver the car onto the street. “He got back from his away game last night. We were on the couch. He was rubbing my feet—”

“He was RUBBING YOUR FEET?”

“Des.”

“Sorry. Continue.”

“And he said he missed me, and I said I missed him, and then he said come here and—”

Desiree makes a sound I can only describe as feral. “Come here. He said COME HERE. That’s straight out of a movie. Then what?”

“Then we kissed. And then, um, more than kissed.”

“Define more.”

I wait for the streetlight to turn and make a left, heading toward work. “He carried me to his room.”

Desiree makes a sound that can only be described as feral. “He CARRIED you. How good? Scale of one to ten.”

I think about his mouth on me. The way he took his time. The way he said my name against my skin. “The scale doesn’t go high enough.”

“I need you to understand that I’m on my kitchen floor right now. You’ve put me on the floor, Ry.”

“Get up. I need advice.”

“My legs are broken. But go ahead.”

“He asked me to sleep in his room tonight. And he told me he doesn’t want me working at the club.”

The screaming stops. “Oh. Okay, that’s… complicated.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you feel about the room thing?”

“Terrified. Happy. Mostly terrified.”

“And the work thing?”

I stare through my windshield at the club’s parking lot—the neon sign unlit in the daylight, the dumpsters along the side, the cracked asphalt. “He’s right. I know he’s right. But I can’t just quit and let him support me. That’s not who I am.”

“Babe, there’s a difference between letting someone support you and letting someone be there for you.”