“Right.”
“I . . . I’m sorry if I . . .” he starts.
“What?” she asks, her eyes flying open wide as she takes a step toward him. “No, you . . . you shouldn’t be sorry. I was the one who . . . escalated things.”
Yeah, that’s not how he remembers it. She might have led them somewhere private, but he was the one who’d strayed from PDA to indecent exposure. “You didn’t, not until after I did.”
“Maybe we both . . . we both took it too far. I’ve never . . . done anything like that in public before,” she admits.
“Me either. Except . . .”
“Except . . .” She trails off, tilting her head, making her curls fall gently over her shoulders.
It’s an embarrassing story and maybe, he hopes, it’ll be enough to break this tension that he cannot stand between them. “When I was in high school, the girl I was dating decided it would be a good idea to jerk me off in the middle of a movie theater.”
“What?” Her eyes fly wide open.
“I was sixteen and, you know, wasn’t going to say no,” he admits, shrugging helplessly. “I lasted, I don’t know, maybe half a minute before it was all over. But she’d never done it before and she wasn’t, um, prepared for the end result? She kind of screamed at me?”
“You’re kidding?”
“No, right there in the middle of one of theTwilightmovies that sheneededto see for I think like the fourth time . . .” He trails off, shaking his head at his sixteen-year-old self. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure the lady a couple of seats down saw us and she was already, like, out of her seat on the way to get the usher, so we booked it out of there and then she dumped me in the car when I was dropping her off.”
Bianca lets out a wild, throaty sound. He knows that sound now. Knows she doesn’t just make it when she’s laughing. “So your second foray into public sex was way better, is what you’re saying?”
For a moment and then another, he pretends he’s considering, putting a hand to his chin, tapping a finger against his cheek and raising his eyes to the ceiling in mock thought.
“Xavier!”
“Way better,” he affirms.
And suddenly, so are things between them.
“So we’re okay?” she asks, biting down on her bottom lip, which doesn’t help his attraction to her at all.
“I’m okay if you’re okay,” he agrees, lifting one shoulder in question.
“I’m okay,” she affirms.
“Then we’re okay.”
“We need to stop saying okay. It’s starting to lose its meaning.”
“Semantic satiation,” he says helpfully.
“You’re such a nerd.”
“Like you didn’t know that.”
“I only know it from watchingTed Lasso.”
“Me too.”
“The most perfect show.”
“Truly,” he agrees.
“So, if we really are okay . . .” She trails off with a mischievous grin.
