She woke up a few hours later, her back pressed against his chest, his arms circling her. She felt like she was in a snug, warm, masculine cocoon. She had never realized how much that was the ideal place for her until just that moment. There was just one problem.
She had to pee.
Okay, Alexa. Just don’t think about it. Just lie here and be content in this cozy sleeping bag of pure male goodness and let that lull you back to sleep.
She listened to his even breathing, felt his chest move against her back and the prickle of the hair on his legs rubbing against hers, and smiled. She could do this.
Her bladder disagreed. It increased the pressure and reminded her of all of that champagne she’d drunk and those bottles of water that had closed out the night. Oh God, she really had to pee.
No, Alexa. Just stay here. Go back to sleep. Don’t think about anything liquid. You can do it. Enjoy this perfect moment.
She took a deep breath, clenched everything, and tried to relax against him again, reaching back to that voice in her brain for a pep talk.
I have to pee I have to pee I have to pee!
When even her internal monologue had abandoned the cause, she gave in. She slowly moved out of the circle of his arms in an attempt to not wake him up, pulled back the sheet, and tiptoed into the bathroom.
They hadn’t closed the curtains—apparently, they’d been preoccupied—so light shone into the room from the lit-up skyline. That gave her enough light to get from the bathroom to the bed without tripping over the shoes, clothes, and underwear littering the floor.
She got into the warm bed, trying to figure out how she could get back to her perfect cocoon from earlier. He was still on his side, but his arms were folded now; she couldn’t very well push herself back against his chest and wrap his arms back around herself, could she?
Well, she could, but not without waking him up, she decided after thinking about it for a few seconds. She lay down on her pillow and admired his naked chest, hoping that maybe he would roll over to her in his sleep and she would get to finish her night off with his arms and legs draped around her again.
“You going to come back over here or are you going to leave me cold and lonely for the rest of the night?” he asked, his eyes still closed.
“I thought you were asleep.” She scooted closer, and he wrapped his arms back around her. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”
He leaned down to kiss her, and their lips clung together. She really liked kissing this guy.
“Even if you had woken me up,” he said, “I wouldn’t have minded.”
Something inside of her melted. At his words, his smile, his touch. She stroked his stubbly cheek and pulled his head back down toward hers.
They kissed again, longer, slower. The urgency of earlier in the night had disappeared. They kissed like they had days, weeks, years to do nothing but lie in this bed and explore each other.
His fingers moved from her back to her neck, then to her hair. His lips touched her cheeks, her eyelids, and the tip of her nose, which surprised a giggle out of her. Not content to be passive, her hands ran down his chest, dancing over his nipples, pressing into his muscles, squeezing his hips.
When her fingers lingered there, he said, “Aren’t you going to keep going?”
At this moment, in this hotel room, this night? She would do whatever he wanted her to do. She slid down his body to where she knew he wanted her to go.
“I really like the way you do that,” he said afterward, once he got his breath back. She crawled up from the bottom of the bed and collapsed on top of him.
After a few minutes, she started to roll off to the side. He stopped her.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?” His hands were on both sides of her waist, holding her in place.
“Oh.” She tried to think of a good way to say it and gave up. “I thought I might be too heavy, so I was going to . . .”
His hands gripped her tighter.
“No, you’re perfect. Don’t go anywhere.” He pulled her against him but relaxed his hold almost right away. “Unless you wanted to move? Because if so, I don’t want you to—”
“No.” She tilted her head back so she could see his face. “I’m happy right here.”
He wrapped his arms around her again, and she leaned her head against his chest.
“Good,” he said. “So am I.”
• • •
Drew woke up the next morning with Alexa’s body flush against his, his leg draped over her hip, and her hands on his butt. What a fucking fantastic way to wake up. He thought about letting her stay asleep—he really did. But then he remembered that he was leaving in a few hours. He needed to get all of this woman he could.
He ran his fingers up and down her body. My God, her skin was so smooth. He pulled down the covers and looked at those breasts that made him salivate. If he remembered last night correctly, which he thought he did, she really liked it when he played with her breasts.
As soon as he squeezed, she opened her eyes and smiled.
“Mmmm, what a nice way to wake up,” she said.
“I thought you might think that.”
After round three—or was it two and a half?—they curled up together in bed breathing hard.
“What time is it?” she said into the pillow.
He lifted himself up and looked at the bedside clock.
“Just after nine.”
She snuggled against him.
“Hey, Drew?”
He grinned.
“I just met you two days ago, so how do I already know that that’s your ‘I want something’ voice? Haven’t I done enough for you this morning?” he asked the top of her head.
He felt her smile against his chest.
“Mmmm, you definitely have done quite a lot. But you know what else you could do?”
He put a hand over hers, trapping it where he loved to feel it.
“Keep doing that and I’ll do whatever you want.”
She laughed and kissed his shoulder.
“Does that mean you’ll call down to room service and order me coffee?”
He flipped her on her back and pressed her against the bed as she smiled up at him. Her hair was wild, she had makeup smudges around her eyes, and he wanted to keep her in this bed all day.
“Coffee?” he said, a fake tone of incredulity in his voice. “I got the ‘I need a favor’ voice for coffee? Are you that easily pleased or do you love coffee that much?”
Still on top of her, he reached for the bedside phone and dialed room service.
“At this point, I think you know how easily pleased I am,” she said as her fingers walked down his body.
He played with her nipple again as he placed a very large room service order. She sighed and moved beneath him while he was on the phone. If they hadn’t just had sex, he’d be grabbing a condom just from watching her do that. When he hung up and pulled her back into his arms, he wasn’t quite ready for round four, but he was pretty happy to think about getting there soon.
“Hold that thought.” He rolled off the bed and into the bathroom. When he came back into the room, he hunted for his wallet so he could tip room service when it arrived. He found it in the back pocket of his pants, along with a stray room key.
“Oh my God, I forgot to tell you: Amy slipped me her room key last night.”
“What?” She sat up straight.
He plopped on the bed next to her.
“Yeah, I know, right? She said something shitty about you and then something shitty about Molly and then slid her key into my pocket.”
“Wow.” Her smile faded for the first time in hours. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted to make her laugh again.
“So I guess you were right, about her either wanting to kill me or fuck me . . . though I’m still not sure which one.”
It worked, for a second. But after her laughter subsided, that thoughtful expression came back.
“So, last night at one point I was in the bathroom.” She paused.
“Uh-huh?” Was she going to tell him about people having sex in the bathroom? That would start round four off with a bang.
“No one knew I was in there . . .” Oh good, this was getting even better.
“And I heard Amy tell someone about when you broke up with Molly? Am I remembering incorrectly or did you imply that it was the other way around?”
Oh shit. His hand dropped.
After he didn’t say anything for a while, Alexa pulled the sheet up to her neck. That did not seem like a good sign for round four.
“So I guess that means I wasn’t remembering incorrectly.”
He sat up and sighed. Why was it just too much to ask for him to get through this weekend without having to talk about this?
“Yeah, I broke up with Molly. Yeah, I implied that it was the other way around to you. I don’t know why.”
She sat there for a while looking at him, her knees drawn up and her hands clasped. Guess he could wave good-bye to round four. Oh, the hell with it.
“Fine, I do know why: because I was an asshole to Molly, and I don’t like telling people, especially the cute women kinds of people I’m trapped in elevators with, that I was an asshole to a good person.”
The tight grip of her hands relaxed, and she touched his arm, just for a second.
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you for being honest and not bullshitting me right there.”
He shrugged, looking at his knees instead of her. He might as well tell her this whole story now.
“Molly and I dated for about a year and a half. She’s a very nice person, as you probably noticed.” He could see her nod out of the corner of his eye. “And I really cared about her. I maybe even loved her. I’m not sure if I was in love with her, but I think I loved her. If that makes sense.” She nodded again, and her hand went back to his arm, staying there this time.
“Right before her birthday I overheard her on the phone talking to one of her friends. She thought I was planning to propose and was all excited about it.” He was still staring at his knees. He had a scar on his right knee from that fall he took while running a few months back. He would be happy to tell her that story instead of this one.
He took a deep breath.
“I pretty much panicked. I wasn’t ready for that. I definitely hadn’t been planning to propose, and now I didn’t want to deal with her disappointment when I didn’t. So of course, like an asshole, the next day I told her I didn’t think it was working out and broke up with her. Right before her birthday. And then I dated three other people in the med school in quick succession. Kind of a jerk move.”
Her hand moved up his arm to his. He grabbed it and held on.
Molly had hated him after that. Hell, he’d hated himself. She’d forgiven him eventually, because she was Molly and (he strongly suspected) because Josh had gone to bat for him. Which is why he was at the wedding in the first place.
“And the whole Josh thing?” she asked.
“They didn’t start dating right away. In fact, they didn’t start dating for well over a year. But I still felt betrayed when they did, even though I had no right to feel that way. And even though Josh asked me if it would be okay. I guess I felt like . . . when I was ready to get married, Molly would be around for that.”
He sighed and let go of her hand.
“Anyway, we dated, I was an asshole, eventually I apologized for being such an asshole, Josh is a great guy, last night she married him. There, the whole story, more or less.”
She tightened the sheet around her body and turned to him.
“So . . . this wedding was kind of your penance, then?” she asked him.
He leaned against one of the pillows they’d pushed out of the way during the night and finally met her eyes.
“I guess so,” he said. “Maybe that’s one reason why I was dreading it so much. And why I needed a sandwich so badly.”
He hoped that she’d laugh at that, but she didn’t. She didn’t even meet his eyes.
“Hey.” He touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you before you came here last night and not just because you found out somewhere else.”
She met his eyes and nodded.
“Okay,” was all she said.
“Are you mad?” he asked. He didn’t want to push this. And he definitely didn’t want to keep talking about it. But he didn’t want her to be mad at him. They only had a little while left.
“I’m not mad,” she said. She looked at him for a minute, and her smile became more of a real one. “I did find out last night, you know. If I was mad, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
He shouldn’t ask. He really shouldn’t. She’d think that’s why he apologized, and it wasn’t. But he couldn’t help himself.
“Does this mean there’s a possibility for round four?” he asked, and he reached for the sheet she’d used to cover herself up.
She looked down at his hand on the sheet and met his eyes.
“Three and a half, you mean.”
He pulled the sheet covering her torso down and drew his thumb over her breasts. Her eyes followed his thumb as it stroked her body.
“I guess that means that I have some work to do,” he said.
He pushed her back down on the bed as she laughed. As they kissed, his fingers played with her nipples in the way that he now knew she liked. When his lips trailed down to her breasts, her fingernails dug into his back. Did she know that he liked that? He hoped so. He’d make sure to tell her in a second. He drew a nipple into his mouth, and—
“Room service!” came the call from outside.
She groaned and covered her face with her arm.
“Hey,” he said as he stood up. “You’re the one who insisted on coffee.”
She sighed dramatically and he laughed.
“Don’t remind me.” She got out of bed, too. “I’m going to the bathroom. The room service guy doesn’t need to see me naked, even if it’s under a sheet.”
Once she was safely in the bathroom, he let the room service guy in and tipped him well. While the guy set up the tray on the bed, Drew double-checked what time his flight was. Noon. Which meant he’d have to leave for the airport in, like, thirty minutes.
Damn it. It wasn’t enough time.
But there were a ton of flights from San Francisco to L.A. every day . . .
“Is the coast clear?” she shouted from the bathroom after the door closed behind room service.
He laughed.
“You can come out now.” When was the last time he’d laughed this much? He’d been laughing with her ever since that first moment in the elevator.
She padded out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel this time, and took a big sniff of the air.
“Ahhhh, coffee.” She got back in bed and poured herself a cup from the carafe on the tray.
“I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the bathroom, his phone still in his hand. In few clicks, he changed his flight to the one at eight that night. Now he could relax.
He came back out of the bathroom—not covered in a towel—and was pleased to see her eyes follow him as he crossed to the bed.
“I thought you were going to start flexing any second,” she said as he climbed into bed next to her and reached for his own coffee cup. He pulled his hand back, met her eyes, and slowly made a fist. She laughed at him but bent over and kissed his bicep.
“I poured you coffee,” she said, sipping her own. “But I didn’t know how you take it.”
He poured half the container of cream into his coffee and shook in few sugar packets. She looked from the pale brown liquid in his mug to the unadulterated blackness of her own and laughed.
“I would make a ‘I like my coffee the way I like my men’ joke, but it would be either inaccurate or just really dirty.”
He put his arm up next to her mug, pretending to be injured.
“What, I’m not black enough for you?” he asked.
She put her arm up next to his mug.
“Sweetheart, it seems like I’m too black for you,” she said.
His coffee was paler than her skin color; she was right. Oops. Somehow that didn’t seem like the right observation to make.
“I didn’t mean . . . I wasn’t trying to . . .” He looked from his cup, to her, covered up by the white sheets again, and back to his cup. Everything he could think of to say sounded like a terrible idea. “Um.”
She turned his face toward hers, forcing him to look her in the eye.
“Stop. It’s okay. I was just joking.”
He saw the smile on her face and relaxed.
“Now,” she said, uncovering the room service plates, “let’s eat some bacon so we’re all fortified for round three and a half.”
Afterward, they lay curved around each other in bed again, his head on her chest, her fingers drifting through his hair.
“Drew?” she said eventually. “When do we have to get out of here? What time is your flight?”
“Not until eight tonight.” Hopefully, she wouldn’t ask why he was leaving so late. If she did, he could make up something. “I have to check out in”—he glanced at the clock by the bed—“twenty minutes, though. So . . . if you aren’t busy for the rest of the day, we could hang out. We’ll have to get out of here, but we can go somewhere else. Eat tacos, relax in the park, go for a walk, I don’t know.” Or go back to her place, maybe? “I mean, unless you’re busy. You probably have a work thing to do, or something, so no worries if you do.”
He was rambling, but he couldn’t help it. Why didn’t it occur to him when he changed his flight that she might have something else to do today? Now, not only was he going to have to say good-bye to her very soon, but he would then have to wander around San Francisco alone for the rest of the day. He was so preemptively annoyed that he almost missed her response.
“Sure, why not? Let me jump in the shower.”
• • •
Alexa grinned at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. How exactly was this happening to her? Not only had she had crazy, dirty, great sex all night with a really hot guy, but said hot guy wanted to spend the day with her? For once, she was going to ignore all the work she had to do today.
Thank God she’d gotten ready in his room yesterday, so she had her hair stuff and something to wear other than a cocktail dress.
As they loaded their bags into his rental car, she mused over the past two days, all of which the Alexa of Thursday afternoon would have never believed. Hell, the Alexa of nine a.m. Sunday wouldn’t have believed she’d still be with him at noon. The sex had been great—really great—and he’d made it pretty clear that he’d thought so, too. But she had figured he’d want to get out of the hotel as soon as he could on Sunday and leave all of the reminders of the wedding behind. Including her.
She shrugged. He had a late flight back to L.A. and needed something to occupy his time, and she was around and available. It wasn’t any more than that. She probably shouldn’t have jumped so quickly when he asked her if she could hang out today, but she couldn’t fool herself. She didn’t want this weekend to end yet. At this point, when he said jump, she’d ask how high.
She could hate herself for that on Monday. Sunday was all his.
“Didn’t you just eat a bushel of bacon?” she asked him as he drove toward the Mission. “You’re really ready for a burrito already?”
“Number one: I worked off that bacon, as you well know,” he said. He grinned at her, and she grinned right back. “Number two: I’m not quite ready for a burrito yet, but I know that I will be soon, so we might as well get them and find a good spot in Dolores Park. It’s already nice and sunny, and it’ll get busy.”
She watched his profile as he drove, a little sad he had shaved that day. His smooth skin was nice against her face, but just the thought of the feel of his stubble last night on her cheeks, her lips, and her thighs made her shift in her set.
“You used to live in the Bay Area?” she asked. He’d mentioned something about that to one of the wedding guests the night before. She’d nodded and smiled along like she already knew his whole life story, but now she actually got to ask questions.
“Yeah, had a fellowship for two years at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. I loved it. Great hospital.”
He glanced to his right as he went to turn and slid his hand onto her leg. She hoped he left it there for a while.
“Why pediatrics?” Apparently, now she couldn’t stop asking questions.
He shrugged and laughed.
“Is it corny to say ‘because I like kids’? But . . . it’s because I like kids. I thought I was going to be a regular surgeon when I started med school, actually. But I did a pediatrics surgery rotation, and it was just so much more fun. The doctors were great, the kids cracked me up, there were always toys around . . .”
She laughed and touched his hand to interrupt him.
“You picked your specialty because of all of the toys? Figures.”
He turned his hand over and held on to hers.
“See, I knew you would make fun of me. Tell the truth: if you had to choose between two jobs, one with toys all over the place and one without, which one would you pick?” She thought about it for a second, and he squeezed her hand. “See?”
He flicked on the blinker, waiting out the people behind him also vying for the parking spot he’d found.
“So, what does a mayor’s chief of staff actually do?”
“Everything, really.” They got out of the car and into the line outside of La Taqueria. “Manage everything day to day, supervise a lot of different departments, stay on top of major events going on around the city and the Bay Area, crisis management, policy, and on and on.”
When they got to the front of the line, they ordered carnitas for him, al pastor for her, and guacamole and salsa and chips for both of them. He won the fight for the bill.
“How did you get a job like that?” They stood in the corner while they waited for their food, his arm around her waist, her body snug against his.
Don’t get used to this, Alexa, she reminded herself. She almost pulled away from him but decided to hell with that. She had six hours left with this guy; she might as well enjoy it while it lasted.
“I worked in the city attorney’s office one semester in law school, and I really liked it. You got to do a little bit of everything, but you still felt like you were doing something for the public good. After law school, I managed to get a job there full-time. A few years ago, the old mayor retired, and my boss—then the city attorney—decided to run for the job. When he won, he made me his chief. I’m kind of young for this job. It probably should have gone to someone older and more experienced.”
“But you wanted it more,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“I did want it more. I worked damn hard for it, too.”
She tucked their burritos and chips in her tote bag and they left the taqueria.
“You want to walk or drive to the park?” he asked.
“Walk. We can’t count on getting another parking space. This isn’t like L.A., you know. There isn’t going to be a valet up there for us.”
He took her hand as they turned up the street.
“Ooooh, I guess we’ll have to see if my slow Los Angeles legs are up to walking up these great big San Francisco hills.”
She laughed at him. As they walked the mile to the park, they talked the whole way, about their jobs and what they liked most about them, their daily aggravations, their stress relievers.
The park was crowded, but they found a spot in a sunny corner. He reached inside her tote bag and pulled out a towel for them to lie on.
“Where did that come from?” she asked, looking from her bag to the towel and back at him.
He flopped down onto the towel and gestured for her to sit next to him. She stood there looking down at him, the bag of burritos in her arms, not moving.
“A genie put it there?” he tried.
She raised her eyebrows.
“It was a gift from the hotel? An apology for the stuck elevator?”
She pursed her lips.
“Okay, okay, fine, I took it, but it should have been an apology for the stuck elevator. We needed something to sit on. What did you want me to do, take the sheets?”
Alexa gave in and sat down next to him. She handed him the bag of burritos and cracked open her Mexican Coke.
“For the record, just because I sat here doesn’t mean I condone this theft. I’m a public servant, after all.”
He laughed and reached for his burrito.
They ate their burritos in silence and watched the people go by. Dolores Park on a sunny day in San Francisco was like a public party, everyone coming out to enjoy the brief escape from the fogbank. There were groups of shirtless men drinking beer, women in sundresses eating ice-cream cones, tech bros in dot-com T-shirts and baseball caps checking out the women in sundresses, multiracial families pushing strollers on their way to the playground, teenagers on skateboards, solitary people with books, churro and hot dog and coffee vendors, old men chatting together in Spanish or Russian, the scent of weed wafting in their direction every five minutes.
Alexa wrapped up the second half of her burrito, kicked off her sandals, and lay back. She could feel the grass under her toes and the sun on her face. A few minutes later, she felt Drew lie down next to her. Not quite touching her, but almost.
“I should check my email.” She made no move to do so. What she really wanted to do was reach for his hand, but now that they were out of the hotel room—and the hotel room bed—she had lost some of her nerve.
That was a couple-y thing to do, and despite everything that had happened this weekend, the two of them were not a couple. They both knew that they were only together right now because he had time to kill before his flight. And she knew she was there because she didn’t want the weekend with him to end yet.
He picked up her purse and moved it to his other side, out of her reach.
“No, no checking email,” he said. “You’re here with me now—no email, no phones, no checking in with your boss.” He put his hands behind his head and gave her that smug—and, okay, fine, sexy—grin. Damn it if she wouldn’t do anything to make him keep grinning at her like that.
But . . . she’d felt her phone vibrate a few times through her tote bag as they walked to the park. She really should check.
She looked around, grateful that they were behind a tree for what she was about to do. She rolled on top of him so she could reach into her purse for her phone. Just when she was about to roll back off, his hands came around her waist and held her in place.
His face was so close to hers. This smile was really all for her. Not for show, or for photos, or to convince her to be his date, or to sleep with him. It was just for her, Alexa, right now, in this moment.
“Oh, you think you can distract me with your body so you can get to your phone, do you?” She moved, not really trying to get away, just seeing what he would do. His hands tightened on her hips. “Well, you’re right about that. You don’t play fair, Monroe.”
She grinned and pushed away from him for real. He released her but kept his arm around her as she lay on her side next to him and checked her phone, her head on his chest.
She ignored the texts from Maddie—no way she could answer them with him right there—and went straight to the emails from Theo and a deputy city attorney. She emailed Theo back a quick answer but paused to think for a while about the other email. She finally suggested that they meet on Monday afternoon; some conversations were easier in person than in text.
When she looked up, Drew was looking down at her, no longer smiling.
“Everything okay there? Or do you have to go?” he asked.
She moved away from the curve of his arm and sat up, and he let her go.
“Why do you ask?”
Did he want her to go? Did he want her to say, Yeah, as a matter of fact, my boss has a public park–related crisis. I need to rush back to Berkeley immediately. It was nice knowing you? Was he tired of dealing with her and her wide hips and all of her talk about her job and was he ready to go home to L.A. and leave this weekend behind?
He sat up, too.
“You were frowning at your phone. I thought something might be wrong.”
Oh, the hell with it. She might as well take one more risk this weekend.
“No, I don’t have to go,” she said. She paused and looked down. “Unless . . . you’re ready to go?”
“No,” he answered immediately. She looked up at him, and his smile was tentative now. “I don’t want either of us to go anywhere.”
• • •
When Alexa smiled at him, relief shot through Drew’s bloodstream. She lay back down on the towel, and Drew lay down next to her, facing her. They moved the conversation away from the big topics of jobs and weddings and ex-girlfriends. Instead, they made up pretend conversations for the people around them, fed leftover tortilla chips to a friendly puppy who came by with his owner, and tried not to laugh when a teenage skateboarder attempted to fly down the church steps across the way and fell.
“Shhhh,” he said when she couldn’t hold it in anymore. “You’ll hurt his pride.”
She giggled, and he giggled with her, and suddenly they were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. At the delight of watching someone fall down, at the joy that they’d both found it so funny, at the pleasure of being together in the sun, enjoying each other’s company so much. He didn’t even realize when it happened, but somehow his arms were around her and her head was against his chest as they shook with laughter.
When their laughter finally slowed, and then stopped, he looked down at her. Her cheeks were pink from the laughter and the sun, her hair was tousled, and her eyes glowed. Without even thinking about it, he leaned down and kissed her.
He hadn’t kissed her since they’d left the hotel room. He didn’t know why—was he nervous to do it in public? Did they have some sort of tacit agreement that all of that had been left behind in room 1624 of the Fairmont? Whatever the reason, it was clearly a stupid one, because as soon as he kissed her, he wondered why he’d spent all of this time with her today without his hands and lips on her.
They lay there in the sun, kissing lazily. He touched her like she was made out of precious china, like he couldn’t grab too hard or make any sudden movements. He wanted to throw his leg over her body again, wanted to push her over and roll on top of her, but they were outside in full view of hundreds of people, and she was a public servant, after all. So instead, he kept up the long, slow kisses, the gentle touches on her arm, her neck, her back, and hoped she was as frustrated as he was.
Eventually, she pulled away and rested her head on his chest. He wrote his name on the small of her back with his thumb.
“What time is it?” she asked him.
“After five,” he said after checking his phone. Too late.
“You know.” He’d just realized something. “My flight is out of the Oakland airport, so I can drop you off at home in Berkeley on the way to the airport. If you want, I mean.”
She lifted her head.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure that my flight is from Oakland, or that I can take you home? Either way, the answer is yes.”
She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him again.
“That sounds great,” she said, and rested her head back on his chest.
“Do you want to get some ice cream on the way back to the car?” she asked him a few minutes later, her voice muffled, her hand on the bare skin of his hip, right above the waistband of his jeans.
“What does ‘ice cream’ mean exactly in this context?” He pulled back to see her face, to check if he made her smile.
He did.
“I mean ice cream ice cream!” She pinched him, and he laughed. “There’s a great place right down the hill.”
“Sure.” He was willing to go wherever she wanted. “Let’s go get ice cream.”
She hooked her finger under his chin, pulled him down to her for another kiss, and stood up. After they tucked the towel back into her purse and tossed the remnants of their burritos, they walked back down the hill hand in hand to stand in line for ice cream.
“What’s good here?” he asked her. The burrito had been hours ago at this point, and all of the ice cream flavors looked great to him.
“Well, my favorite is the salted caramel, but I also love the coffee toffee. And I always love cookies and cream.” She was so animated when she talked about the ice cream that it made him excited about what was coming next. She was like that about everything she cared about, it seemed.
He wondered how she would talk about him.
He moved closer to her and hoped their closeness had the same effect on her as it did on him. She shivered. He smiled.
“All of those sound great,” he said. The line ahead of them moved, and they moved up. He stood behind her and massaged her neck. She sighed and leaned back against him.
“Why, exactly, did you wait until now to let me know you could do that? You could have been doing that this whole time?”
“I didn’t mean to hold out on you,” he said. He ran his thumb down the middle of her neck, and she let out a low moan. “We were a little busy with other things, you know.” He kissed her bare shoulder.
“Next customer in line!” the ice-cream lady shouted at them.
“Salted caramel in a cone, please,” Alexa said.
“And you?” the woman behind the counter said to him as she packed ice cream into a waffle cone.
“Um . . .” He’d stared at the menu all that time they’d been in line, but he’d been distracted by Alexa’s closeness and had barely paid attention. “Cookies and cream?”
They walked slowly back to the car after they got their ice cream, sharing bites with each other.
He drove them across the bridge and followed her directions to a side street off Alcatraz Avenue. The conversation stalled as they got closer and closer to her house. He looked down and saw her hands clasped together, her nails digging into her knuckles.
“So, this is me.” She pointed at a little yellow house. He pulled up in a spot in front of it and hesitated for second before he turned off the car and got out. He pulled her bag out of the trunk and walked up to her front door.
She unlocked the door, and he followed her inside. They walked through a long hallway covered in photographs and into a big living room. A plush yellow sofa lined one wall, covered with bright cushions. It was flanked by fat red chairs and faced a big wall-mounted TV. Magazines and nail polish covered the coffee table, and overstuffed bookshelves lined the walls. It suited her. Bright, attractive, warm. He wanted to flop down on that couch and curl up with her.
“Where should I put this?” he asked, gesturing to the bag.
“Oh.” She paused. Her eyes darted from her bag to his face, then back to her bag. “My bedroom is easiest, probably.”
The afternoon light streamed into her bedroom and lit up the pale yellow walls, the big unmade bed with its green and white striped comforter, the vase full of drooping daffodils on the low bookshelf. He dropped the bag on the floor and turned to her. She had that big smile back on her face. The fake one she’d given Amy and Bill.
“I had a great time this weekend,” she said. Even though he knew, he knew she’d had a great time, that smile made him unsure.
Screw it.
He cleared the two feet separating them in one step and pinned her against the wall. Her arms went around his neck, pulling him even closer to her.
“I know you did,” he said. “And you know I did, too.”
He slid one hand up her body and enjoyed her sharp intake of breath when he got to that spot she liked. Her lips parted and her eyes followed his hand. He pulled her dress and bra down. He needed to touch her, without anything in between them. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders. Oh yeah, he knew she’d had a great time this weekend.
“Don’t you have to go to the airport?” Her voice was hoarse.
“I’ll drive fast,” he said. The hand that wasn’t on her breast skimmed her knee and slid up her thigh under her dress. He kept going up, and then stopped, surprised.
“Have you been walking around all day with no panties on like this?” Without waiting for an answer, he pressed a finger inside of her and she cried out. She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Tell me, Alexa,” he said. She kept making those noises that he couldn’t get enough of. “Have you been like this all day without telling me? When we were in the park, lying in the grass, could I have done this as easily then?”
She opened her eyes a sliver and smiled at him.
“I didn’t”—she gasped—“pack extra panties yesterday. I didn’t know I was going to sleep over. What was I supposed to do?”
He groaned.
“If I had known that, I would have pulled that dress up long before we left the park. You are evil.”
She laughed and gasped all at the same time.
“I’m going to get you back for that sometime,” he said. “Just not right now.” He fell to his knees. Her fingers slid through his hair. All at once, her fingernails clenched against his scalp, and her whole body relaxed.
“My turn.” He stood up, pulled a condom out of his pocket, and pinned her arms against the wall over her head. “Hold on.”
He was so turned on from what had just happened, from the thought of her without underwear on all day, from those little noises she made, that he had no finesse. He heard the wall creak and the light fixtures shake, saw her breasts jiggle, felt her writhe beneath him and clench around him.
Her leg slid down his body, her arms fell around his waist, and they stood there, quiet and shuddering for a few minutes until their breathing slowed. God, her body felt good against his.
He kissed her cheek, her lips, and leaned his forehead against hers.
“I hadn’t planned that, but I’m not going to pretend I’m sorry.”
She laughed. He had maybe gotten addicted to that laugh. There was always so much joy in it. At the wedding, he’d heard her laugh from across the room a few times and each time had wanted to rush to her side to enjoy it. A few times he had.
“I’m not sorry, either. But . . . and I hate to say this . . . shouldn’t you head to the airport?”
He moved away from her reluctantly and pulled his pants up. He grabbed his phone out of his pocket to check the time.
“Shit. Yeah, damn it.”
She adjusted her dress as he buckled his belt, and they walked to her front door. She reached out to open the door, but he pushed it closed.
“Drew, you have to—”
He reached for her.
“I know. I just have to do this first.”
He kissed her, long and slow. He felt her relax against him and wanted to forget about going to the airport. He wanted to pick her up, get in that cozy-looking bed with her, and have a few more rounds, then tuck her against his side all night long. He pulled away from her with a sigh.
She kissed him on the cheek.
“I’m so glad I got stuck in that elevator with you,” she said.
“Me, too.”