I looked at the sheer amount of phone calls I’d missed from Kylie. I couldn’t avoid her any longer. After racking my brain the entire weekend to try to make sense of what I wanted, the only thing I could do was call her and hope she would accept my dinner invitation. I knew things would be awkward and I knew there was a chance another fight could break out, but I had to stop acting like a coward and start acting like the man Kylie deserved.

“Adam?” she asked.

“Hey there,” I said.

“Hey. Um…I, uh…am sort of in the middle of something.”

“I know you’re at work, so I’ll make it quick. Are you free for dinner tonight?”

She paused, and I finally got the full effect of what my pause had done to her. It was a simple question, one that warranted a simple answer. When it didn’t immediately come, I figured out firsthand why my pause in the yurt had made her as upset as it had.

“I am,” she finally said.

“Would you meet me for dinner so we could talk?” I asked.

Yet another pause. Another bloated, deafening pause. I didn’t like this pausing shit.

“Sure,” she said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“What about the diner across the road from your apartment? Whenever you get off work?” I asked.

“I’ll be there,” she said. “But I have to go. I’ll see you tonight.”

Then she hung up the phone without saying good-bye. Fucking hell. My father always did that shit, and it burned my blood. Why couldn't someone just end a phone call with a decent “good-bye” or “talk to you later”?

It wasn’t that hard.

I wrapped up my filming for the day and headed to the diner. I sat down at a booth in the corner and kept looking at my phone. Kylie didn’t get off until five, and I’d sat down at four thirty. The minutes dragged on like someone had put my day into slow motion. I ordered myself a cup of coffee and kept batting the waitress off. My eyes focused on the door, waiting for her to come in. I sat up in my chair when I saw her car pull into the parking lot of her apartment complex, and I kept my eyes on her while she crossed the street.

She looked beautiful with her hair flowing past her shoulders and her pencil skirt hugging the curves of her body.

She saw me, but she didn’t smile at me. And when she sat down, she was all too eager to go ahead and order. I placed my food order before chancing a grin at her, but it was returned with a tight-lipped smile.

Things felt different between us already, and neither of us had said a word.

“Do you want me to start?” I asked.

“You’re the one who called the dinner meeting,” she said.

“I am,” I said. “Okay. Kylie, you know I love you. You know I care for you deeply.”

Her face was set in stone. There was not an ounce of reaction to what I’d just said.

“But I know you’re unhappy with the situation between us, and that’s not what I want for you,” I said.

“What do you want for me, Adam?”

“I want you to be happy, to enjoy your life and be proud of it. I want you to succeed and have all the things you could ever possibly want out of it. That’s what loving someone means—wanting the absolute best for them no matter the cost to themselves.”

“I can’t be happy if you’re unhappy, Adam. That isn’t how that works. You’re my boyfriend, not my personal martyr.”

“I know,” I said. “And I want to apologize for how I reacted to you in the woods, how I yelled at you and how I acted when all you wanted to do was talk about something.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

I cocked my head to the side as the waitress set down Kylie’s coffee in front of her.

“Are you expecting an apology in return?” Kylie asked.

“No,” I said.

It was the only safe answer I could come up with.

“I accept your apology, Adam, but I really wish you would’ve picked up my calls. That was a childish thing to do.”

“I was acting childish. I admit that,” I said.

“That isn’t how a man conducts himself in a relationship, no matter the status of it.”

I furrowed my brow in confusion as she reached for the creamer sitting on the table. For some reason, she sounded a lot like my father with that statement.

Holy shit, was she talking to my father about all of this? I shook the thought away and buried the anger driving up my throat. This was not the time to fight. It was the time to make up and keep pushing forward.

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you, though,” Kylie said. “No one deserves to be yelled at like that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We were both frustrated. It’s bound to happen.”

I reached my hand out for hers and watched as her eyes fell to it. For a second, I thought she wasn’t going to take it. Then her hand appeared from underneath the table and slipped into mine. The electricity crackled and I watched the hairs on her arm stand on end. My beautiful Kylie. She had always been irresistible. I gazed into her eyes as a grin slid across my cheeks, pulling one across hers in return.

“You were always easy to read,” I said.

“Shut up. It’s a natural reaction,” she said.

“To want for something I most certainly can’t give you in here.”

I slid my foot against hers and began creeping my toe up her bare leg.

“Adam, stop it. Everyone is going to be able to see us,” she said.

“Let them,” I said. “Because I’m not ashamed to love the woman I love.”

“You’re going to start something you can’t stop.”

“Good thing your apartment’s right across the road.”

She shook her head and bit down on her lip, but she didn’t pull away until I got to the crook of her knee. She reached underneath the table and swatted me away, causing a chuckle to fall from my lips. She giggled and her cheeks turned a deep crimson as the waitress set our food in front of us.

“I love you, Kylie.”

Her beautiful eyes fluttered up to mine as her thumb stroked my skin.

“I love you, too, Adam.”

Our dinner was filled with eating and joking. We laughed so much, I grew hoarse. She wiped tears of joy away from her eyes and I began to sweat when my abs ached from all the laughing. We barely were able to touch our food as we regaled each other with positive memories of our relationship: the first time we met, the first time we kissed, the first time we had sex, the first time we made love. I mentioned the first time Kylie ever passed gas in front of me, and she mentioned the first time she’d ever walked in on me taking a shit.

So many small things that defined the comfort and resilience of our relationship.

I knew we would be okay. I didn’t know what the future held for us, but I knew we would be all right. I paid for dinner and reached for her hand, helping her from the booth before we started out of the diner. We ran across the road, laughing at cars that honked as I picked her up and spun her around.

She gazed into my eyes before she dropped her lips to mine, and as we stood there on the sidewalk in front of her complex, I felt her chest tighten against mine.

The make-up sex would be astounding this time around.

“Race you to the top,” Kylie said with a grin.

She took off in her heels as I followed her up the steps. It always amazed me how quickly she could move in those things. I grabbed at her waist and pulled her to me, crashing our lips together as she flung her door open. I walked her backward inside and kicked the door closed with my foot, kissing down her neck as her hands tangled in my hair.

“I’m so full. I’m so full. Can we just…pause this for a second?”

I looked into her eyes and an unfamiliar sensation fell over us. Nothing had ever stopped our intimacy before. Kylie had never stopped the train once it had gotten on its track. I rose up and looked into her eyes, cupping her cheek as my thumb slid across her soft skin.

“Want to take in a movie while dinner settles?” I asked.

I allowed her smile to force away the uncomfortable atmosphere that had quickly bloomed.

We fell onto her couch, and I wrapped her up in my arms as she turned on her television. She flipped through the few channels she had before landing on a movie we’d watched a million times before. Kylie loved the Rocky movies. I, however, couldn’t stand them. But Rocky III was on and it was at her favorite part, and soon she crawled into my lap and cuddled against my chest.

I pulled her as close as I could get her, hoping to squeeze the tension from between us.

The movie dwindled down and the credits began to roll. She looked up at me with those peaceful eyes of hers, locking onto my gaze as I held her in my arms. There would never be anything that could replace these moments with her. These raw, unfiltered moments when Kylie was nothing more than my girlfriend, the woman I’d come to love and the woman I wanted at my side for as long as I could have her.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental had changed.

I dropped my lips to hers, hoping to erase the thought for good. My tongue slid across her lips, begging for entrance as her hands skimmed up my chest. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled herself up, straddling my hips. She cupped my cheeks and pressed herself deeper into me, giving me perfect access to that full lower lip of hers.

I raked my teeth across it and groaned at the whimper that fell from her mouth.

Our tongues did battle as her hips ground into me. I slid my hands up and down her thighs, rolling her pencil skirt all the way up to her hips. Her panties were damp, heated with her lust for me as she rolled against my body. Her hands raked through my hair as she drew in a deep breath, and I felt my lips swelling against her attack. She was rabid, raw, passionate and desperate in her movements.

“Let me have you,” Kylie said breathlessly.

I opened my eyes and found her staring back at me with something in her eyes I couldn’t explain.

“You have me,” I said. “Take me any way you want.”

Her hands fell to my pants before she made quick work of pulling out my aching cock.