“Will I walk you upstairs?”
Apparently, I’m not the only one having those kinds of thoughts and having those kinds of dreams.
But this doesn’t make me feel better.
“I’m not home alone,” I say, almost relieved. I’m terrified now at what might happen to us if we were left alone.
Eric sighs and looks over my shoulder, where my sister and my friend are waiting, before glancing back at me.
“But if we were alone, Mr. Quinn… God, if we were…”
He steps back and walks away, leaving me with a thousand questions swimming around my mind, but only one painful answer in my heart.
30Sean
“This is a disaster of epic proportions!” I say to Jake as soon as I close the door to my office.
Jake puts our lunch down on my desk then sits, calmly opening the containers.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“I heard you. And I heard you on the phone, too, when you asked me to come over as soon as possible.”
I sit across the desk from him.
“It was eight o’clock in the morning.”
Jake shrugs. “I came as quickly as I could.”
I take off my glasses and drop them onto the desk, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
“I got you a Caesar salad.” He pushes a container towards me and I shake my head. My stomach is inside-out with nerves, and I haven’t slept a wink.
Last night was the beginning of the end for me.
Our evening all together, the laughter, the alcohol, the heat of his thigh pressing against mine as we sat at the bar; the way he looked at me, lifted the corner of his mouth when he realised I was watching him, too; his fingers brushing against mine on the counter not once, not twice, but far too many times for me to remember them all. And then there was that walk, my hand wrapped around his arm, the smell of Christmas in the air around us, the way he left, leaving me suspended between his words and my own breaths.
“Tell me about this disaster of epic proportions,” Jake says, sticking a forkful of what looks like rice into his mouth.
“We kissed.”
“No way…”
“Not just once.”
“Mmm-hmm…”
“And it wasn’t pretend.”
“And…”
“And God, help me?”
Jake studies me knowingly. “And nothing else happened?”
“Like what? Sex?”
“Even if that did happen, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to imagine my two best friends…”
