It feels weird to knock on the door to my own place, but I decide this might be better than just walking in like this morning. It doesn’t take Erin long before she peeks out a little and sees me standing there.
“Would it be strange if I said ‘please come in’?” She laughs as she opens the door and I walk in with bags of food.
“Not as strange as me ordering everything on the menu.” I walk over to the dining room table and set all the bags of Chinese food down.
“Did you invite people to come with you?” She looks up at me and then quickly away and I wonder if that was the sound of disappointment I heard in her voice.
“No, I just wanted you to have a lot of choices.”
“I’m really just in it for the fortune cookies,” she laughs, but I grab a bag and hold it up.
“Good thing I got extra.”
“How many is that?”
“Twenty?” I shrug, and she puts her hand on her mouth as she keeps laughing. “I think it’s probably a fair number with all the food I got.”
A silence follows as she smiles at me, and I like it. It’s comfortable and although I was anxious all day for this moment to be here, I’m once again in her presence and feeling damn good about it.
“I’ll grab some dishes,” I say as I go into the kitchen and get the silverware and plates.
I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she opens a few of the Chinese food containers. She smells them before she places them on the table and I can decipher which ones she likes based on her expression at the scent. It’s cute watching her put the ones she wants on the left and the ones she doesn't on the right. It’s also cute as hell seeing her in my dining room looking comfortable as fuck.
She’s got on a white V-neck shirt that’s snug against her body and cut-off jean shorts. She’s also barefoot, which makes it look like she belongs here and for whatever reason that makes me hard. Her tits strain against the thin white material that hugs her chest when she leans over and for a second I get a long look down the front of it. Fuck, her tits are hot, and I have to force myself to turn around and take a breath. The image of her dirty-blond hair draped to one side of them is burned in my brain and I’m going to be thinking about that later tonight when I’m alone.
“Later,” I whisper to myself before I go back into the dining room. “What would you like to drink? I’ve got beer, wine, and water.”
“Wine, please.” She takes the dishes from me and sets the table.
She puts me sitting across from her and I wonder why I ever got a table so big. I grab our drinks and bring them back into the dining room but move my plate next to her so we’re both at the corner.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know where you liked to sit.”
“This just makes it easier to share,” I say and move my chair a little closer to her too. “Which one are you going for first?”
“My favorite is sesame chicken, but this one smells really good and I don’t know what it is.”
I look at the box and poke around a little with my chopstick. “Yeah, I don’t either. I think I just told them to get me one of everything.”
“That explains all the boxes.” She smiles as she takes a container of rice and spoons some out on her plate.
“So, I just want to get the awkwardness out of the way first.” Her eyes widen and she puts her food down and waits with a serious expression. “What kind of shampoo do you use because I need it.”
A smile tugs at her lips as she picks up her chopsticks. “It’s Midnight Garden. Grams got it for me for Christmas last year and I loved it so much I kept getting it.” She laughs as she shakes her head. “Why are you asking me that?”
“The scent of it on my sheets drove me crazy.”
She blushes as she looks down at her food and tucks her chin. “Is that a good crazy or a bad one?”
“Depends.” I take a drink of water and stare at her while she glances up at me.
“Are those my hair ties on your wrist?” She points to the orange and baby blue elastics and I look down at where I’ve rolled my sleeves up.
“Yes,” I answer and don’t offer them back to her.
She flips her hair over to her other shoulder. “I’ve been looking for them. My hair is driving me crazy.”
“I think it’s beautiful. But you’re not getting them back.”
She thins out her lips to try and hide her smile while her green eyes scrutinize me. “And why not?”
“Well, they’re in my house so technically they’re my property.”
“I’m in your house too.”
“I know.”
The two words hang between us for a second before she shrugs. “Fine. I’ll consider it payment for letting me stay here.”
God, she’s fucking cute when she’s teasing me. Why do I like flirting with her so much? I never spend more than a few moments with a woman before I’m ready to run. But thoughts of how I can get Erin to stay are churning.
“Oh, it’s gonna cost you more than two hair ties.”
“I’ve already agreed to dinner.” She waves her hands around as she takes another bite.
“You think that’s what this place is worth? Some lousy rubber bands and Chinese food?”
“If they’re so lousy I’ll take them back.”
“Not a chance.” I wink at her before I take a drink. “Can you tell me what happened the other night?”
She lets out a sigh and I hate that I’ve taken the mood down. “I’m not really sure yet, but someone broke into my apartment and ransacked the place. My landlord emailed me some photos and they’re pretty bad. It doesn’t look like anything is stolen, but I didn’t keep any valuables there so I don’t know what they would have taken. I don’t even have a nice TV and I had my laptop at the shop when it happened.”
“When do you have to go back?”
“I can leave any time.” She sits up straighter and looks around. “Do you need me to go?”
“No!” I say, too loudly and too quickly. “No, sorry, that’s not what I meant. I’m working on a case with my sister and staying at her place.”
“She’s a lawyer too?”
“Yeah, we have a firm together.” She asks me a bunch of questions about work and I wonder if it’s because she doesn’t want to discuss what happened at her place. I get it, but I need to follow up with the detective I put on this and see what he was able to find out.
“Thanks for stocking up the refrigerator for me,” she says as she leans back in her chair and picks at a few half-empty boxes.
“How do you know I did that for you?” I smile as I use my chopsticks to dig into a vegetable lo mein.
“Because the first time I was here there was only coffee and an old jar of pickles in the back of the fridge. I assumed you did that for me, but maybe I was on the end of your yearly grocery store visit?”
“Are you teasing me, Erin?” When I say her name her cheeks flush, and she looks away.
“Maybe.”
“What do you do?” I want to know everything about her.
“That’s a mystery to myself right now too.” She shrugs and I sit back and wait. “I finished college with a degree in graphic design last semester and now I either need to get a master’s in it or find a job.”
“And have you decided?”
“I know that I’m not going to do my masters there. Grams is here and I have nothing left for me where I was. I want to be close to her, so for right now I’m going to move this way and hopefully figure out my next step.”
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I let it go. “So you’re moving here?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s the plan. I have to see about breaking my lease and what that’s going to cost me. I also have to look at places here and find one that’s comparable in price to what I had before.”
“There’s a vacant apartment in this building,” I offer as I pick at the label on my beer bottle.
“I think this place is out of my price range.”
“It’s not,” I blurt out, and then she laughs at me.
“You don’t even know what my price range is.”
“Let me show you the place first and then we can talk about the price.”
“I’m not sure I want to fall in love with something and then not be able to have it.”
Her words have a direct hit on my chest and they hang heavy between us. Does it feel that way to her now?
“How long do you have until you have to go back to your place?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think I can put it off too long. I need to get my things and talk to my landlord. It’s going to be a pain in the ass, but I can’t avoid it forever.”
“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
“This place is pretty incredible, you know that, right?”
I smile and nod. “I bought it for the bathtub.”
“You’re joking.” She sits up and looks at me with wide eyes. “Tell me you’re not serious.”
“Oh, I am. I’m a man who loves a good soak at the end of the workday.”
“For some reason I can’t picture you in a bathtub.” Her eyes travel down my body and then she quickly blushes again. Is it always so easy to tell when she’s turned on?
“Oh, picture it, baby. Candles lit, soft music, bubbles everywhere.”
“Bubbles?” She’s laughing and I love the sound of it.
“Hey, I like to treat myself.” I watch her for a second and just enjoy that she’s happy. “It’s not like I’ve got much else in my life besides work.”
“My grams said you work too much.”
“I do,” I agree and lean forward on my elbows. “I love what I do, but I’m building something I want to last. Security for those I love is important to me.”
“I like that.”
She stretches her legs out beside her and my eyes travel up the length of her bare skin. I clench my hands together to keep from reaching out and touching her, but the urge won’t go away.
“I like this,” I finally say as I force myself to sit back, desperate to put distance between us. “Dinner with you has been nice, and I’d like to do it again.”
She nods and for a second she doesn’t answer as she takes a sip of wine. “But only if you give me a hair tie back.”
“Never.” I smile and she does the same.
“I guess I’m just going to shed all over your perfect pristine home.”
“I wish you would. It will remind me you’re here.”
“You mean long after I’m gone?”
I shrug, unwilling to think of a time when she won’t be in my space. “What’s your favorite movie?”
“I don’t know.” She looks caught off-guard but I need to change the subject. “I have so many. Maybe I could pick based on a genre, like favorite comedy or favorite scary movie.”
“Okay, start with that.”
We talk for a long time about movies and then move to music. At some point we clean up dinner while we’re discussing the benefits of live concerts versus seeing them on screen and eventually we make it to the living room. We talk for a long time and one subject leads us to the next and we never run out of things to say. We both get more and more relaxed the longer we talk and by the time I realize it’s really late and going into early morning, I’m on the couch facing her while she’s leaned back with her feet stretched out toward me.
Her cheeks are rosy, possibly from the wine, as she tells me about all the pets she’s had. She’s telling me about a dog she recently adopted named Moose that’s next door at her grandmother's place and I graze my thumb over the top of her toes.
“Why didn’t you bring him over here?”
She stops talking and watches me touch her toes before she swallows and then smiles. “This doesn’t look like a pet friendly place to me.”
“It is,” I say simply and keep rubbing her toes.
I want to rub all of her, but I’ve just been enjoying the sound of her voice and her adorable stories.
“Maybe I’ll let you meet him.”
“Are you playing hard to get?” I look up at her and grin and that’s all it takes to send her cheeks into overdrive. “I should go.”
Suddenly her smile falls and she looks around as if realizing what time it is. “Already?”
“It’s almost one.” Saying the time really has nothing to do with how I feel, but I have to leave now or I might not be able to control myself.
With one last touch down the side of her bare foot, I place my beer on the coffee table and stand up. When she starts to move, I hold my hand out to stop her.
“No, don’t get up. You look perfect just like this.” I move in closer and place one hand on the back of the couch as I hover over her. “I’d like to see you tomorrow.”
She nods as she licks her lips. “I’d like that too.”
“Then it’s a date.”
I lean down and before I can stop myself I place a kiss on her cheek. I linger there and inhale her sweet scent, the one I can’t get enough of. I close my eyes and enjoy the feel of her warm cheek against mine and take my time. It’s not enough and I crave more, but this will do for tonight. I will sleep with her inside my lungs and that’s more than I had last night.
“Goodnight, Erin,” I whisper, and then I’m moving to the door before I can change my mind.
Leaving her might be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.