“Why can’t you let me take care of you?”
“Why are you arguing? Argument delays the action. It says so in the book. Thesexbook.” It isn’t a sex book, but saying it will make him back off.
“Okay. All right,” he says, holding up his hands. He throws the truck into reverse with a snap.
For some time, there’s only the sound of windshield wipers, tamping the sleet into an icicle at the bottom of the glass.
“It’s true,” Tobin says, out of nowhere. “I held things back from you. But you held things back from me, too.”
I did hold back, but not for the reasons he thinks. Iwantedto tell him when I broke a fingernail and when I got more likes than usual on my social media and when I thought the football commentator looked like an egg with a face painted on.
But that’s the stuff that’s hard to love. Nobody wants to hear that.
“You didn’t miss anything good,” I say.
“Didn’t I, though?”
The way he says that. Like it’s the boring stuff that makes a marriage. It can’t be all his fault that he didn’t know me, if I didn’t let him in. Not twenty minutes ago, I didn’t have the courage to tell him how scared I am about that damn pitch competition, even though I wanted to. I wanted to, so much.
We’re almost to Amber’s when he speaks again.
“It’s because I’m trying not to… you know.”
“I’m sorry…?”
“You said I don’t talk in bed. It’s because I’m trying not to, uh, not to finish.”
The air inside the cab turns heavy and slow, like a summer night. Every part of me is burning. What the hell kind of nuclear-powered heater has he put in this old piece of junk?
His eyes are deep navy under the streetlamp as we glide to a stop in front of my parents’ house, his face thrown into sharp relief, cheekbones and jaw and generous mouth.
“You’re so, uh. You smell so good, and your skin feels, um. Really soft. And the way you move, it’s…” He scrubs one hand across his beard. “Anyway. I have to try not to. I have to work on making it good for you.”
Jesus, that’s hot. But heat alone can’t sustain us.
“I’m lonely, Tobe. When I talk and you don’t answer, I feel like I’m the only one there.”
“I’m there, Diz.” He turns to me, one arm resting on the wheel, the other slung across the back of the bench seat. In the dim light, he shines. “I’m here. I’m talking.”
Air. I need air. I have to tear off my clothes and lie in a slushy puddle until this fire under my skin is good and drowned. But somehow, I’m not leaving. He’s leaning toward me, and I’m leaning toward him, and we’re not stopping.
The deep, brassy honk hits like a horror movie jump scare, sending us reeling backward. Tobin belatedly pulls his elbow off the horn, while I scrape my soul off the ceiling.
“Wait,” he says, but I’m out the door and halfway to the house.
“Bye, Tobin!” I shout, too forcefully. “Thanks for the ride!”
He’s laughing, the big jerk. Sexy lines pop up next to his eyes. His head is thrown back (a lot like when he… nope, not going there), and his hands look like they want to grab me and hold me and do all the things to me.
I can’t slam the front door because it’s Eleanor’s bedtime. ButI can close it and lean against it, and get my breathing under control, and feel the deep warmth of his laugh like a shot of scotch burning its way from my mouth to my heart.
Maybe true love only happens once in a lifetime.
But what if it happened again with the same person?
Chapter Eleven
Support and trust are as important in improv as they are in partnerships. It’s much easier to jump fearlessly into a scene when you trust someone to catch you.