KATIE
Lying in bed, I stared at my phone, rereading Thomas’s text messages from the day before. The first message caused butterflies to flit around in my stomach. The sensation shot up to my chest and then landed in my lower abdomen. I squeezed my thighs together to make it stop.
I’d given Thomas my phone number, and as we sat on the beat-up leather couch at the back of the coffeehouse, our knees accidentally touching on purpose, he texted me so that I would have his number as well.
“Read it later,” he’d said, tapping out the words, dividing them into two messages.
I’m quite sure this is going
somewhere.
Let me know where to pick you
up for dinner.
I waited to read the texts, as he’d asked, and then I never replied.
My mother had surprised me with a day trip back into the city. After that, I needed time to myself to think things through before responding to Thomas’s confident words.
Later in the evening, he’d sent another. Reading it again now affected me the same as it had the night before. A shiver passed through me, and goose bumps rose on my arms.
Tell me where to find you.
I let the phone slide out of my hand and pulled the quilt up to my neck, folding my arms around myself beneath it.
Lena popped up from her bed and went to the French glass doors. “Why are you so cold? Look how the sun is washing out all the colors on the terrace.”
“Do you need help, prepping for your interview?” I asked, ignoring her question. I wasn’t feeling cold. I was feeling Thomas.
“Mama can help me get ready. If I get an internship at this fashion house, they’ll probably have me making coffee runs anyway. You should text your guy back. Even better, you should call him. We decided last night that you’re going to see him again, and I’m not letting you back out.”
“I’m not backing out. I’ll call, but not until after a shower and some caffeine. You know I’m hooked.”
“Hooked on what, your expensive coffee drinks or the hot Brit who’s definitely way into you?”
Tossing a pillow at her, I said, “Both, damn you. Go to your interview.”
We giggled, and she grabbed her bag and left for home.
With Lena gone and after showering and dressing, I hit the elevator, passing my father as he was coming back from his regular morning workout.
“You look beautiful, Katherine. Are you going somewhere after Jack’s?”
I shrugged, evading the question, and patted his shoulder. “Thanks, Dad. It’s just an old sweater and some lip stain. See you this evening.”
Though it was Saturday, my father would meet with clients or draft his latest ideas until late into the evening.
“Be careful, honey. You call me,” he shouted at the metal doors as it abruptly closed me inside the box.
After a short walk, which had gone by in a blur, I arrived at the coffeehouse and ordered my usual latte, found a quiet table, and snatched up a copy of Marie Claire that someone had left behind.
Once settled, I drew some frothy coconut milk and espresso into my mouth and woke my phone. I bit into my bottom lip, staring at Thomas’s text messages again without really reading them.
His words incited passion, the kind I’d been pining for. Words, not numbers. Words made up of letters, letters that formed syllables, syllables that performed a different kind of methodical dance—one that now commanded me. Gave me courage.
Another sip. And another. My favorite magazine still unopened.
Smiling, I summoned the nerve to tap on his name and call him.
“Hi,” I rushed out at the same time he said my name.
Kay-tee.
“Hi,” I said again.
He chuckled. “I’m glad you called. I’d quite like to see you.”
“My morning is open.”
There was no reason to play hard to get. I’d already done that by not replying to his messages and ignoring his dinner invite, but also because my curious heart had decided to see him again the moment we parted after our coffee date.
Lena had said it was a date.
I added, “How about yours?”
“Open. Meet me outside.”
“Wait, you’re here … at Jack’s?” I lifted my bottom out of the chair and looked through the shop’s front window. I didn’t see him. “Are you coming in?”
“I agreed to your terms. Don’t keep me waiting.”
Confidence rushed through me, filling my soul, his commanding tone encouraging me further. He was keeping his word, sticking to my terms.
I was doing it—whatever it was.
“I’ll be out in five.”
“Good. See you in five,” he said.
Not knowing where this day would take me, where I might find myself or for how long we would be together, I pulled in two more swallows from my latte cup and headed for the restroom.
When I stepped outside, the warm sunshine hit my face. Pedestrians filled the sidewalks, as usual, but moved at a casual pace, their sense of urgency gone for the weekend. The air temperature was ideal for the lightweight off-shoulder sweater that I wore with my jeans and cute leopard-print Vans.
I inspected the faces around me, the natives and the tourists moving in and out of the space surrounding me. I didn’t see Thomas, but after scanning the curb, I found him waiting for me between two parked cars.
He stood next to a black motorcycle, wearing a sports-cut leather jacket that had likely been tailored for the width of his shoulders and a dark T-shirt beneath it. His blue eyes caught mine, and a brand-new thrill moved through me.
“Ride with me, Katie,” he said.
Caught up in the moment, in his eyes, I nodded, though I’d never ridden on a motorcycle and I had no idea what to expect or even how to climb onto one.
Thomas grinned and reached for my hand. “Come here.”
Slipping my hand into his, allowing him to pull me close, I confessed, “I’ve never ridden on one before. I don’t know what to do.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of everything.” His gaze moved over me, pausing on my bare shoulder for a minute. “You’re beautiful, Katie.”
“Thanks. That’s really sweet.”
My dad often said the same, but he was my father, and it was his job to say so.
I had never considered myself anything other than average at best. In the mirror, I saw boring, colorless eyes and lips that were much too large, like someone had just punched me in the mouth. And as puffy as my lips were, they hardly covered my two front teeth.
My face betrayed my thoughts, and Thomas leaned in with his chest.
“It’s the truth,” he said, his warmth filling the space between us.
Just this once, I wanted to lose my mind and feel nothing and feel everything. I wanted to touch his face, slide my hands to the back of his neck.
But I only looked up at him. Listening, waiting.
“We’ll ride to Tryon. My car will be there as well, just in case.”
Fort Tryon was a huge park set on a ridge in the northwest corner of Manhattan. It had amazing views of the Hudson River. The wildflowers along the walking paths and the Heather Garden and the lawns were so gorgeous in the spring.
Tryon was also home to the Cloisters, a branch of the Met Museum and another place in Manhattan where I loved to spend my free time. Dad and I used to go together on our skip out on real life days, as he’d called them. While he had sketched, I’d photographed the flowers.
Smiling, I said, “Sounds nice. I’m all yours.”
Thomas smiled with me, and then he let it drop, his face turning serious, his hand pushing through the underside of my hair to find the nape of my neck.
“I want to kiss you, Katie.”
He didn’t kiss me. It was an ask even if he hadn’t framed it as a question.
While I stared into his eyes, considering his unpunctuated way of communicating, my brain busied itself beyond that. Not in the usual way, not with numeric expressions. Strange as it was, math was the last thing running through my mind. Being near him released me from that burden.
Instead of revisiting patterns and formulas, I thought about what I wanted from this man. He was older and further along in his life than I was with mine.
Still, I did want something. I wanted more.
My behavior was changing. I was growing selfish and imprudent after knowing Thomas for such a short time. But with him or for him, the means didn’t matter.
“Take it from me, Thomas.”
His fingers pressed into my neck, and he lowered his mouth close to mine. Only his words touched my lips. “Understand, sweetheart, I’m not the kind of man you want to tease.”
I wasn’t teasing him. In that moment, I wanted his kiss more than I wanted anything. A small voice inside my head told me to push my lips against his and take it from him. He was right there, so close.
A different voice stopped me, telling me that my first instinct was right. He was not only the kind of man who shouldn’t be teased, but also one who needed to own our first kiss. This kiss, it would be his way or not at all.
I lifted my hand and dragged my fingertips along his jawline, over the scruffiness of his unshaven chin, taking in another new sensation as it shot through my body.
“I want you to kiss me,” I whispered.
As Thomas held my neck, he ran his other hand along my rib cage to my bare shoulder, where he paused for a moment before taking my fingers away from his face to kiss them. A reward for touching him.
More than that, he was teaching me to give him physical consent, I realized. He’d picked up on my inexperience.
Thomas kept my hand inside his and rested them together against his chest, and then with our gazes still connected, our eyes still open, he kissed my lips.
My heart pounded faster, and my breath stopped. I wanted to scream. I wanted to laugh out loud. God, I just wanted more.
Neither of us looked away.
“Katie,” he said, a half-smile on his perfect lips, “you’ll give me this day.”
I nodded, allowing myself to get in deeper, throwing caution and well-behaved Katherine to the wind. “Today is yours,” I said. “Show me how to ride with you.”
He winked and turned to his motorcycle to grab a leather jacket that he’d draped over the seat, that damn smile staying on his face. The jacket was smaller than his, styled in the same sports-cut but more feminine. He held it in front of me, as if he wanted me to put my arms into the sleeves.
“It’s for you.” With a slight nod, he encouraged me to slip it on. “You’d be quite cold without one, and you need the protection. I have a helmet for you as well.”
“Oh. Thanks. See? I wouldn’t have known that. How did you know my size?”
I wanted to take the question back as quickly as it had left my mouth. I knew the answer. We were human calculators, and I’d watched him study my body the day before.
He lifted a brow, as if he was saying I didn’t need an answer to that question. “There are two rules you must follow. The rear wheel and the exhaust system on this bike are covered. That said, you’ll still keep your feet on the pegs until I let you know it’s safe to remove them.”
“Got it,” I told him.
“And you’ll hold on to me while you’re seated on the bike,” he added, stepping close to me again, the heat of his body escaping from his open jacket and seeping into mine. His arms were at his sides.
The lesson. He was testing me.
I placed my hands on his leather-covered biceps, consenting to his touch.
He pulled our bodies together, his hands gripping my waist.
“We’ll be quite close, as we are now. You must hold on to me, Katie. Move your body with mine.”
Again, I lost myself in his eyes, standing on that Manhattan street curb. I didn’t want to be found. I didn’t want him to release me from the command of his white-hot stare.
More heat moved through me. His or mine—I didn’t know. I knew only that I ached from it and that he was the variable and the solution, the most beautiful mathematical equation.
“I will,” I said.
He could see me, I thought. All of me.
Thomas abruptly dropped his gaze and backed away from me, breaking our connection, as if he’d read my thoughts and they had burned him.