“Because you find me, what did you say, irresistible?”
“I never said that.”
“You said that it’s a miracle anyone ever tells me no. That’s pretty close to irresistible.”
“I don’t know, I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job of resisting for the last five years.”
“Yeah, but now you admitted it to yourself and it’s like toothpaste out of a tube, there’s no going back.”
“Did you just compare my theoretical attraction to you to toothpaste?”
“Theoretical? I think we’ve gone way past theoretical here.”
“No, you don’t get to deflect and pretend like that wasn’t an absolutely terrible simile.”
“Okay, I’ll admit it was awful if you answer one question.”
“Deal.”
“It was terrible and trite. Done. Now, tell me, boss, how long has it been?”
She thinks back over her years since her last boyfriend – a relationship that fizzled as soon as she left New York for the West Coast again – trying to remember exactly the last time she had sex. That one conference with the guy from Johns Hopkins she met at the bar, that was . . . how long ago now?
“That long?” he asks after more than a few seconds tick by.
“I’m just trying to remember which year that conference was . . .”
“And not that memorable, apparently.”
She wrinkles her nose. “It was a stupid hookup. It was after Frankie got married and I realized I was the last of my friends tofind someone and I wasn’t even seeing anyone and I guess I was just feeling . . .”
“Lonely?”
“Yeah.” The silence hangs between them and she needs to fill it. “How long has it been for you?”
“A while.”
“C’mon, I told you!”
“A couple of years. Last time I was just . . . stressed out and needed some relief, but it didn’t really help.”
“So it’s been too long for both of us and we’re both about to be released out into the world after not having decent sex in years.”
“We could fix that.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Wait, what?”
“You’re the one who suggested it.”
“Because I never thought you’d agree to it. I thought after what happened the last time you didn’t want it to happen again.”
“I never said that,” she insists.
“We talked about it, before, that first night, when Chloe . . .”
“Do you care, really, what we said then? And besides, everyone knows . . .”
