“Are you sure you don’t have anywhere else to go?” he asks.
“Nah, that’s it.”
“Because I have time,” he says, checking the watch on his wrist. “The boys won’t be home for an hour and a half. I can take you somewhere else if you have more errands.”
“Those are all my errands, Darren. Pull in here.”
He sighs as I direct him through my apartment’s parking complex.
“So, this is where you live?” he asks, leaning forward over the steering wheel to look up the side of the old industrial building-loft apartment conversion. I live on the third floor with three other roommates. The rent is great — when split four ways — but the insulation is trash, and it’s too hot year-round, which doesn’t make any sense. Still, it’s okay. And I’m not freaking out about him seeing where I live.
Not really freaking out. I mean, I’m trying, okay?
“This is where I live,” I sing-song.
“It’s nice,” he says. “Is there exposed brick in your place? Nadia has this thing about exposed brick. She was mad as hell that we couldn’t afford an older house.”
I bite back a smile. I know what he’s doing, and I appreciate it. “Do you want to see? You can tell Nadia about all of my…” I lick my lips and smile. “Exposed brick.”
He’s so excited that he misses my very obvious innuendo, and for some reason, I think that’s adorable. God, I’m a simp.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah. I’m sure. Besides, I don’t want to carry my own grocery bags up all those stairs. Park there.”
He grumbles, but he does as I tell him, and always with a smile on his face. And, of course, he carries all of the grocery bags for me.
I unlock the front door to my building and hold it open for Darren. He stares at me. I stare back at him. He doesn’t budge.
Finally, I roll my eyes. “Jesus,” I huff and then walk into the building ahead of him.
“Thank you,” he laughs. “Oh, it’s dark in here.”
I sigh. “Yeah…my landlord keeps telling us this is mood lighting instead of just lightbulbs that need to be replaced because he’s too disorganized to do it himself and too cheap to hire a super.”
He grunts in agitation and barely suppressed worry. For me.
I can feel Darren’s agitation growing the higher we climb. I try and divert him by pointing out the industrial staircase they saved from this factory and one that had to be destroyed somewhere else in the neighborhood.
Darren grunts again, and not in the sexy way he does when I press up against him but in the way he probably does at work when he needs to discipline a teacher. When I look at him over my shoulder, he’s glancing left and right, which lets me know how pissed he is because I know what my ass looks like in this skirt. Fantastic. And Darren’s not even looking at it.
“It’s affordable,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says, still looking around. “I’m not saying anything. Just looking.”
“Looking very loudly,” I mumble. I’m holding my keys so hard that they bite into my palm, and I have to focus on opening my hand. When I get to my door, I unlock it slowly — mostly because I want to have enough time to thoroughly pray that all of my roommates are gone.
I push the heavy door open slowly, looking quickly around the open-plan apartment and listening for any sound that we’re not alone. I exhale and turn around, holding the door open for Darren. I beckon him inside, but he stops in front of me.
“Hey.”
I bite my lip because he’s doing that gentle voice thing that I love again. I tilt my head back, and he bends down, brushing his mouth against mine. “Not judging,” he says against my lips. “I promise.”
I wish I could stop myself from smiling and giving in to him so easily, but I cannot. “Okay,” I say and grab him by the neck so he can kiss me properly.
And if there is one thing I am obsessed with about Darren, it is that this man does not miss a moment to kiss me to within an inch of my life. Even though his hands are full of my grocery bags, and it’s not the most comfortable angle, Darren does not disappoint.
He tips his head to the side and licks into my mouth. He slides his lips against mine and pries them open, and then our tongues tangle together, and we both sigh into the cavern of our joined mouths. We could have done this for a while. In fact, I am very much into encouraging him to drop my bags and lift me into his arms so we can make out like teenagers against my open door. We probably won’t break anything, and if we did, I have faith in Darren to kiss me hard enough that I won’t care. But then his phone rings.
He pulls away from me, and I whine.
I AM DOWN BAD TODAY.
“Sorry, shit,” he says, “that’s the boys’s ringtone.”
I sigh because I can’t even be mad at that. Darren drops to the floor and carefully places my bags down, and then he stands straight and pulls his cellphone from his back pocket. “Hey, hey, I’m here. What’s wrong?”
My entire body tenses up. I…don’t even know these kids. I spent no more than twenty minutes in Nate’s presence, and yet, the worry on Darren’s face and the tension in his body is infectious. I can’t help but stand stock still in front of him with clenched fists and wait.
I don’t even realize that I’m holding my breath — because Darren is holding his — until he exhales, and I follow suit.
“Daniel, who packed your gym bag?” he asks in a tone of voice that makes me grab some of my bags from the floor and make myself scarce. I know what a parental lecture sounds like, and that ain’t none of my business. Blessings to the kid, though.
Darren grabs the rest of the bags with one hand and kicks the front door closed while still lecturing Daniel. I try not to eavesdrop, but he’s making it very hard.
“If you knew you might need an extra pair of shorts, why didn’t you pack one?”
I’m not sure what answer Daniel gives, but it makes Darren so mad that he squeezes the package of frozen fruit in his hands. That was by far the most expensive thing I bought today, and I swear I hear the plastic bag strain in his grip. I imagine it bursting, little bits of frozen berries flying around the room and rolling under the fridge or something. We don’t need ants or fruit flies. I carefully rescue it from his hands and ignore how the veins popping up on his forearms are incredibly attractive to me, every single one of them.
My God, I’m wet.
But what turns my heart into a puddle of goo gushier than my pussy is the way none of that frustration translates to his voice. I throw the fruit into the freezer and turn around to see Darren strangling the lone head of broccoli he forced me to buy and speaking to his son in the sweetest voice. “Okay, take a deep breath, Danny. It’s okay.”
I have to clutch my chest at those gentle words. Darren inhales loudly, clearly for Danny’s benefit, and so I do as well. I press my hands against my abdomen as we hold our breaths, and then we all exhale together.
I swear there are tears in my eyes.
“Did you ask your brother if he has an extra pair of shorts?” Darren asks gently. “Okay, can you ask him now? I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere.”
If there weren’t tears in my eyes before, there are now.
I hold my breath again while we wait because we’re in this together; at least we are in my mind.
I guess what Danny says by the small smile on Darren’s face, and I exhale in a slow, thin stream, trying to make as little noise as possible. “Okay, great!” He sounds so excited about these shorts. I’m so excited about these shorts. “It’s okay, as long as you learned a lesson. Yep,” Darren nods, “we’ll start checking together, but now you know. Okay, buddy. Have a good practice.”
Not to sound like a complete whore, but I’m on my knees before Darren can toss his cell phone onto my kitchen counter. But fuck, I’m a complete whore for this man.