Catarina

I expected Barrett to be in the office the next day toiling away at his laptop, but he wasn’t. The day after that was a skip day for him, too. I managed to tuck away my irritation long enough to ask Mia if she’d heard from him.

“He’s working from home. Why?” My boss was suspicious so I made up something about the column.

No reason. Just wanted to ask him why he kissed me and then ran out.

So here we are. Friday morning and Barrett isn’t here again. Not that I expected him. If I was going to skip work—

Wait. Do I spy a tall, ginger-haired, grouchy ex-NFL player? Why, yes. Yes, I do. It’s eight minutes after ten A.M. so he’s not exactly late, but it feels late to me.

He’s smiling his easy, carefree smile and carrying a short cup of coffee. I straighten expectantly in my seat. When he spots me his smile drops and he drinks from the cup.

I guess that particular Starbucks wasn’t for me. I look to his other hand. Empty.

He’s dressed in jeans and a navy T-shirt tight enough that I make out the outline of his muscular chest and biceps. I shift in my seat at the thought of the words “make out.” That would’ve been a better ending to the last evening we spent together.

“Casual Friday,” I quip, and then realize that wasn’t much of a quip. More a bland observation. He takes inventory of my pink button-down top and white skirt.

“Not for some of us, apparently.” In his cubicle, he unpacks his laptop bag. I pretend to read my own screen while surreptitiously checking out his ass in those jeans.

Once his laptop is open, he slaps a notebook and pen onto the otherwise barren desk and gets to work.

I try to ignore him. It works for about a half hour, and then I can’t take it any longer. I grab my gone-cold office coffee not wanting another drop but needing an excuse to walk by him en route to the break room.

“How’s it going?” I ask, my second annoying comment of the day. Why don’t I just finish out the trifecta with “Are we having fun yet?” or “Any plans this weekend?”? Except I know he has plans this weekend because they’re with me. We forewent the Art in the Park idea in favor of a beer tasting at the museum.

“Fine.” He takes his eyes off his work to peg me with a blue stare that makes my knees wobble slightly. My gaze goes to his mouth where I notice a tiny freckle at the edge of his upper lip. Either that or it’s chocolate. What I wouldn’t give to taste it and see. “Need something?”

I frown at his gruff delivery. You’d think he’d be at least friendly since I let him kiss me.

“I need coffee,” I lie. “And we need to discuss our plans for tomorrow.”

“Noon at Columbus Institute of Art, or CIA as the horrible acronym goes.”

“Are we driving separately?” I ask my coffee mug, scuffing one of my ballerina flats into the nubby carpet.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? Maybe we should cab it in case we have too many beer samples and—Hey!” I bark, startled because Barrett has shot out of his chair. His hand wraps firmly around my upper arm before I finish my thought.

“What are you doing?” I whisper harshly as he leads me across the office. My coffee sloshes onto my shoe and I gasp. He stops, takes the mug and places it on my desk calendar where it leaves a big, wet, coffee-flavored stain, and finishes marching me into Marge’s old office.

He shuts the door behind us and releases me, swiveling around to burn me with a glower.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask, fists at my sides. “You owe me a new pair of flats.”

He takes in the splatter on my shoe. “No way. Those are hideous.”

“I don’t know what your problem is, Fox, but you can’t expect to come in here and act like this after what happened Tuesday night.”

“I can’t, can I?” He advances a step and I back up two. “What about you? How are you doing after Tuesday night?”

I match his next forward step with a retreating one of my own.

“I—I don’t know. I thought we could talk about it.”

“So. Talk.” His jaw saws back and forth in irritation.

I back up another step, bumping against a bookshelf. It’s lined with dusty magazines and three-ring binders and a fat dictionary I can’t imagine anyone in this day and age would use for anything other than killing spiders.

“You kissed me on Tuesday,” I say, my voice less firm than I’d like. “I thought—”

“So?”

“So?” I repeat.

“Yeah. So? You were the one swearing we’d never kiss. I always knew it would happen.”

“You initiated it!”

“Again: So?”

“So…so…why are you acting like you hate me? Why did you avoid me this week?”

“I wasn’t avoiding you, Kitty Cat,” he says with a patient smile that suggests I’m overreacting. “I had shit to do. I have a life that involves more than your silly column and a forgettable kiss at your apartment.”

Embarrassment warms my neck. Not because he downplayed the kiss we shared or that he was genuinely attracted to me in that moment. I was there. That wasn’t a forgettable kiss. But it’s the “silly column” part that cuts deep.

I work hard. I spend my life hunched over a laptop, my wrists aching from typing for hours upon hours and I don’t do it because what I do is “silly.” I may have categorized this assignment as a puff piece, but I’m committed to an outcome that is nothing short of amazing.

“My column isn’t silly.” I hear my own hurt feelings in every syllable. Evidently, so does Barrett. His eyebrows soften in sympathy.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” He glances at the ceiling then back at me. “I worked more on the column. Took your advice.”

“Mia said it was really good.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s better than okay—it has to be. It was better than okay when I read it. I may have been too harsh. I should’ve—”

“Did you sleep with North?”

“What?” I scrunch my face, legitimately confused.

“You heard me.”

“We dated for six months. Of course I slept—”

“On Tuesday night,” Barrett says, his voice raised. “Did you sleep with him on Tuesday night? I didn’t see him leave.”

“You watched for him to leave?”

“For a while.” He won’t look at me.

“Why?” Confusion is my only ally.

“Because. Because.” His eyebrows meet over his nose.

Oh, hell no. He doesn’t get to be angry.

“Tell me why you waited for North to leave.” I grab his forearms and glare up at him.

“When he walked out of there with his third-generation nose in the air I planned on telling him to leave you alone or he’d have to deal with me,” Barrett says, his teeth bared.

“Why do you care at all? Especially after some stupid little smooch that was ‘forgettable.’ ” I let go of him to air-quote the word and then wait for him to explain.

He does.

In the best way possible.

His lips slam into mine as my back presses uncomfortably against the bookshelves. One shelf is wedged against my shoulder blade, one digging into my ribs, and another bruising my hip.

Barrett notices. Never halting his exploring kiss, he cups the back of my head protectively and rests his arm vertically along my spine. He pulls his lips away and a heavy breath leaves his lungs.

“You smell like the cup of coffee you didn’t buy me today.”

“If you’re back with North, I’ll stop.”

He’s in a holding pattern, his arms stiff, knees locked. My arms are wrapped around his torso just above his hips, which he seems to be purposefully distancing from mine.

“Kitty Cat?”

I’ve gone from hating that nickname to being turned on by it.

“Kiss me, Fox.” I pull his hips against mine and am rewarded by the hard length of him pressing into my belly. “Like you mean it this time.”

He doesn’t hesitate. This is the kiss I wanted at my apartment before we were rudely interrupted. I both feared it and wanted it to go on. It’s the sort of kiss that can only end with us wearing zero items of clothing.

He lifts me, hands cradling my ass and rests me against one of the bookshelves. It wobbles, a few books splatting to the ground, their pages now hopelessly creased.

His teeth rake over my bottom lip before abandoning it for my neck, where he suckles the skin there until it’s damp.

That’s not the only part of me that’s damp. I drag my flats uselessly along the backs of his thighs wishing I’d have worn my high heels. Then I could hook onto him and anchor myself while his talented mouth committed its delicious assault.

He returns his mouth to mine, one warm hand sliding behind my knee as my breath catches. Arms wrapped around his neck, I unseal my lips from his and regard him with wide eyes.

“I won’t venture any higher,” he promises, his wicked smile full of wild promises. “But someday.” He gently brushes the inside of my knee with his thumb. “I’ll take my time kissing this part of you.”

On a sigh, I touch my lips to his and give him a hot, slow, tongue-tangling, mind-erasing kiss that has us both panting when it’s over.

I end our lip-lock with a sad hum and rest my forehead against his.

He sets me on my feet, tugging the hem of my skirt back to my knees. My (apparently) hypersensitive knees.

Someday I’ll take my time kissing this part of you.

Le swoon.

He adjusts his length so that it’s standing upright behind his fly, the outline of his erection obvious and mouthwatering.

“Eyes up, sweetheart, or else it’ll never go away.” His voice is sandpaper. Every gritty word combs over my sensitized skin. “Get going. I’ll follow after I collect myself.”

I steady the shelf and bend to retrieve the books.

He catches my elbow and straightens me.

“Let me get it. Please. I cannot watch you bend over right now.” His desperate expression matches his plea.

“Okay.” Feeling a zing of excitement for behaving like a rule-breaking teenager, I smile and turn to leave.

“Did you though?”

My head is a wad of turned-on fuzz. “Did I what?”

“Sleep with North on Tuesday?”

The fuzz sharpens to needles and I shoot laser beams from my pupils. I yank open the door, slam it behind me, and march to my desk. I spot the coffee ring on my otherwise perfectly pristine planner and grow angrier.

“Idiot!” I say about myself as I hastily pack my bag. Laptop, charger, cellphone. “Asshole,” I say about Barrett as I cram my notebook into the same bag and pull my purse from the bottom drawer. Does he really believe I’d sleep with North on Tuesday and then make out with him on Friday?

“Bad timing?” Mia interrupts, a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. “Where are you off to?”

I have not a single clue. There’s no good excuse for my actions save the truth and I sure as hell can’t tell her that. Or can I?

“Barrett Fox. Mia, honestly, what were you thinking with this story? Why me? Why him?”

“Come on, sweets.” She grips my arm and once again I’m being dragged off to parts unknown. My deflection worked a little too well.

I’m now sitting in her office, my butt in a chair while she leans over her desk, her hair frizzy and frightening.

“I’m sorry,” she says and my response is naked shock. “I hope this isn’t what caused you and North to break up.”

“How do you—?”

“Is it?”

“No. Not at all.” It’s not a secret, and it’s not hard to guess she overheard me on the phone with him or mentioning it to Nanci.

“This assignment is a complete marketing ploy. You and Barrett are opposites in every way. It makes for a great story. And he writes with this blatantly clumsy edge, and you with this sharp, pinpoint snap. Readers are going to eat this up.”

I blink at her once. Twice. “You knew we wouldn’t get along.”

“Of course! It’s great fodder for advertising and for your reporting. If you two were simpatico the whole time, who the hell would read that? Conflict sells.”

“What if you were wrong?” I mumble, hoping I don’t look like I was pressed against Marge’s bookshelf and ravaged by him not sixty seconds ago.

Mia assesses me and I begin to worry that she knows exactly what happened sixty seconds ago.

“Like you’d ever be wrong!” I cover with a nervous laugh and a lot of flair. I don’t want her to get the wrong impression. Or, well. The right one. I stand and tug my skirt down, remembering Barrett doing the same. “Anyway. I have to get out of here. Write from the coffee shop for a few hours.”

“Go home.” Mia waves. “Take the day off.”

She’s stopped assessing me and is now shuffling through a pile of folders on her desk.

“Will do.”

“Date this weekend?” she asks.

“Yes. With Barrett.”

“I know. That’s what I meant.”

“Right. I know. The beer tasting.”

“I’ll pay for your cab or Uber. Whatever way you kids travel nowadays.”

“We’re driving separately.”

“No!” she practically shouts. “You’re going to drink and do something worthy of our advertisers’ dollars. Especially now that you’re single.”

“That’s not—”

“Your next column is due Monday, so fit in some work alongside your play.” Her sweet smile is anything but.

Day off, my ass. She’s just made sure I have plenty to do.

I close her office door behind me and find Barrett standing in front of my desk.

“Going somewhere?” He lifts the strap of my bag.

“Working from home,” I reply. Calmly, since I’ve slowed my roll. “Mia insists we take a taxi or an Uber to the beer tasting. She wants us to be drunk enough to do something questionable, but not so drunk that we blackout. Our next column is due Monday.”

“Fuck.” His expression is a touch of anguish with a dash of dread.

“Better brush up on your technique, Fox,” I tell him, still sore over his accusation that I boinked my ex.

I turn on my ballet flat and leave the office.

He doesn’t follow.