Chapter 15
“Rachel Taylor!” Zack called up to her apartment window Friday afternoon. “Get down here and cling to me right now!”
He revved up his motorcycle to send the point home. And to scare half the neighborhood to death. Everyone but the old man nodding at him in approval. “Nice model!” his gravelly voice called over the motor.
Zack saluted him before looking back up at Rachel’s window. “I know you’re up there!”
Two minutes later, she threw open her apartment window and gazed down upon him. “What the fuck are you doing?”
He held up his spare helmet. “Whisking you away on my bike.”
“What?”
“It’s a beautiful day and the lake calls to me. Get down here and let me spoil you!”
“You’re nuts!”
Zack lowered the helmet again. “Would you at least come down here? I look like a damn fool and somebody’s going to call the cops.”
“You’d deserve it, weirdo!”
Nevertheless, she was down on the sidewalk within a few minutes, her hair piled on top of her head as she stood before him in a pair of old, worn jeans and a raggedy band T-shirt that barely accentuated her nice figure. Just as well. I don’t need the temptations.
Temptations! Like the ones he had every day for the past week? Zack had already made a fool of himself every time he woke up or stayed in the shower too long. The last straw was that morning when he took matters into his own hands, so to speak. Oh, sure, he was into recreational self-touch like any other man – on a daily basis, no less – but there was a huge difference between generic fantasies and specifically thinking about one woman who drove him nuts.
The latter didn’t happen that often.
Zack needed to get out of town for a few hours. There was a lake not too far away that was peaceful enough to calm his soul and beautiful enough to inspire his artistic side. But as he prepared to take off that afternoon, all he could think about was taking someone along with him. Specifically, Rachel.
The same woman who looked at him as if he were insane.
“Well?” He held the helmet out to her. “You gonna get on my bike or not?”
“You totally would have a motorcycle, wouldn’t you?”
“What’s wrong with it? You got something against bikes?”
“No. I’ve never ridden on one, though.”
“Eh, you need a jacket – I’ve got a spare, by the way – but otherwise you’re totally ready to go. Come on. We’re going to the lake. You and me.”
And doing what?”
Zack lowered his sunglasses. “Whatever we feel like.”
She studied him for a few more seconds, her face contorting between disbelief and sweet curiosity. She totally wants to do it. No woman can resist me when I’m on a bike. That included women he was strictly platonic with.
Maybe. In all honesty, the only woman he had platonically taken along for a ride was his brother’s girlfriend. And that was because it had always been a dream of hers. One ride was enough. She was practically crying afterward, and Daniel was ready to punch me for daring to do that without his knowledge. Was that really three years ago? Damn. Time flew by.
“I don’t know…” Rachel took a step back. “This is a little sudden. I’ve got work to do. Work that I haven’t been good about doing ever since you came into my life.”
“Pfft. Work. I’m blowing that off too.” He was supposed to be working on that marble sculpture. Nope. Wasn’t happening.
“Yeah, but I’m a bit more reliant on my income.”
Oooh, she went there. “Tell you what.” Zack shoved the helmet into her hands. “If you end up getting screwed because you chose to hang out with me and clear your mind instead of working, I’ll take care of it.”
“That’s…”
“Non-negotiable.”
“Fine.” She snatched the helmet, only to give it right back to him. “Let me go organize a few things and maybe lock my front door and I’ll be right back down. Five minutes.”
“Right. You’ve got five minutes.” Zack squeezed the handlebars. “Then I’m personally coming up to carry you away.”
She bit her bottom lip as if that thought appealed to her. Don’t do that to me, Rachel. Good thing Zack had his sunglasses on. He wasn’t in the mood to betray what he really thought of her. Especially when she turned around and showed him that ass in her tight jeans.
When Rachel returned, it was with a small bag strapped across her chest and her own sweatshirt draped over her torso. Everything was left up to the imagination. Just as well. “Okay. How do I ride one of these things?”
“First, you get behind me. Then you grab me, and try not to readjust my family jewels.”
She flinched. “Ew.”
“I live to inspire you.”
Rachel slowly climbed onto the bike, careful to not stretch her delicate muscles. Zack couldn’t count how many times women hurt themselves underestimating how much they had to split their legs to fit on his bike. Even the seven foot tall supermodels sometimes walked away acting like they had sex for twelve hours straight.
“You sure you never ridden one of these things before?” Zack put his helmet back on and made sure Rachel followed suit. “Because you’re already a natural.”
She snaked her arms around his midsection and clenched her hands together. Damn. That’s night. Almost as nice having her head pressed up against his shoulder. “Prove it!”
Zack revved up the motorcycle before kicking it away from the sidewalk. “Hang on!”
Rachel’s grip didn’t falter as they went down the road, hitting every green light on their way to the pristine countryside that surrounded this concrete den of capitalism and culture. In an ideal world, he would follow the river up to the source in the Appalachian Mountains. But the infrastructure didn’t support that until they made it a few miles outside of the city limits. The only traffic allowed along the riverbank in the city were nautical vehicles, and Rachel had made it clear that she was terrified of the water.
“Holy shit!” Rachel cried once they hit top speed on the highway. “This is awesome!”
Zack would have shouted something back, but he needed to pay attention to the road.
He didn’t drive his motorcycle as often as he should, often opting to hang out on the open water as opposed to the open road. But he had been excited to take up the hobby in his early twenties after meeting a classmate at college who collected Harleys and insisted on showing Zack the ins and outs after learning he was a yacht fan. “They often go hand-in-hand,” the guy had said. Back then, Zack didn’t believe it. He was a believer now.
His family owned a lakeside cabin up the nearest mountain, but rarely used it. They definitely weren’t using it that weekend, although Zack went ahead and called the family scheduler to make sure he and Rachel would be alone – and that the place would be cleaned and stocked for an overnight stay. Even if they decided to come back into the city, they could at least have dinner first. We’ll be back in the city by sunset. It’s fine.
A man like Zack had to tell himself that. He couldn’t get his hopes up with Rachel. She had made that clear. She was celibate, if nothing else.
Still, that didn’t mean they couldn’t hang out, right?
It only took half an hour to reach the lakeside cabin, and Zack considered that lucky since Friday afternoon traffic in the summer was usually way worse than what they encountered. But thanks to getting there in record time, neither he nor Rachel were too sore to hop off with vigor and take in the sights of a sunny day by the lake.
“Wow,” Rachel said after taking off her helmet. “That was… amazing!”
“Glad you liked it.” Zack secured the helmets to his bike. “See that cabin right there? It’s ours for as long as we want it.”
“No way. You didn’t rent it, did you?”
“Ha! No. It belongs to my family. My grandfather bought it thirty years ago when he got really into fishing and my grandmother wanted to stay away from the city more often.”
“You… own it?”
“Not personally. Don’t worry, I cleared it with my family. Nobody else is here.”
“Is that so?”
Zack recognized that look. “This ain’t a romance pleasure cruise, Rachel.”
“Ew. You said ain’t.”
“Sorry. Am I too rich to be able to say ain’t?”
She giggled. “No. But I forget how rich you are until you’re showing off your motorcycles and one of your family’s vacation homes.”
Zack ignored that. “Come on. Check out the dock here. It’s my favorite spot.”
Rachel’s happiness crashed. “The dock?”
“Oh. Right.” Zack cleared his throat. “We’re not going in the water. We’ll be right on the shore. Is that okay?”
“Well… we’ll see.”
Zack offered his hand. “You’re not gonna fall in. The lake is super shallow by the shore.” He doubted it was all that deep in the center, either. Or at least he remembered finding the bottom easily enough the last time he swam in it.
He took the initiative to show Rachel how safe it was to sit at the end of the wooden dock jutting out into the tranquil lake. Zack wasn’t quite tall enough for his sandaled feet to break the surface of the water, so a shorty like Rachel wasn’t going to have any issues at all. (He assumed. He didn’t have any fears of the water, after all. His uncle Roy made sure he knew how to swim at the tender young age of five.)
Even so, Rachel approached with incredible hesitation, her feet sticking to the center of the dock and arms slightly out to protect her balance. Zack wanted to roll his eyes but kept his breath pent up in his throat. The last thing he should do was make fun of her in any way.
“Rachel,” he said with pep, “I swear if you don’t sit down right here, right now I am going to personally call your mother and demand she come in here and throw you in like she should have done when you were a baby.” That’s how he and his brothers learned to swim. Roy had shown no mercy to his land-loving nephews. (Daniel was still a little traumatized. Hm. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for Rachel’s mother to do that after all.)
She sat down on the dock before letting one foot hang over the edge. “You can try calling her if you want,” Rachel muttered. “But she won’t know who you’re talking about.”
Zack folded his hands in his lap. A dragonfly whizzed by, and the water beneath his feet rippled when he kicked a pebble off the dock. Aside from that, the private property was picturesque tranquility. Not even a boat here. Had Zack planned far enough in advance, he could have conned Uncle Roy and maybe Seth into making it a guy’s weekend, complete with freshwater fishing, should Zack convince his father to lend him one of his smaller hobby vessels. Littoral living was mostly a Zack thing in the end, though.
“That so?” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Unfortunately. My mother has dementia.”
“Wow.” Zack had certainly not been expecting that. “That’s… I take it all back now.”
Rachel chuckled. “It’s fine. I’ve grown accustomed to it.”
Accustomed to dementia? Zack didn’t even know that was possible. Not that he knew anyone who had dementia. There were rumors that his grandfather had Alzheimer’s when he died, but that was yet another family secret buried. I didn’t speak to the man the last few years of his life. Zack had been a kid, and if something happened to his grandparents, his own parents did their best to shield him from it. Like that time his dear grandmother fell down a flight of stairs and split half her leg open. Rude. I would’ve loved to have seen that.
“Who’s taking care of her?” Zack doubted Rachel had her memory-addled mother locked up in her tiny apartment. “Your dad?”
“I don’t have one,” she was quick to say. “He skipped out when I was a kid.”
“Damn.”
“After I left to go to college, my mother moved in with a friend of hers to split the rent and so neither one of them had to be alone more than necessary. My mother was always older than my friends’. She had me when she was forty. I was used to hearing her concerns about aging, and I supported her when she was in her sixties and worried about living alone.”
“Makes sense.”
“But one day I got a call from her roommate telling me that my mother had gotten in the car, pantsless, and was convinced she was going to work at a job she retired from two years before. Because the clock said it was eight, and she knew she had to go to work at eight. Except it was the middle of summer, so it was actually eight at night and not in the morning.”
“Damn,” Zack said again. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.” I can’t imagine that happening to my parents. Let alone his mother! The thought of that put-together woman running out of the house without any clothes on, convinced she had somewhere to go well into the night, sent a shudder through Zack’s body. Except, even if something like that did happen to his parents, there were people, organizations, and money in place to immediately take care of it. They could hire the best in-home care or, if it truly were too dangerous to keep someone at home, they would afford the best facility in America. Barring that? Build it. Zack’s grandfather donated an entire wing to a hospital because its oncology department was too subpar for his mother-in-law’s breast cancer treatments.
“Yeah, well, she’s in a better place now.”
Zack swallowed. “My condolences.” Wow, I sound like an asshole.
“I mean she moved into a memory care facility where they specialize in taking care of people with her condition.”
“Oh. Either way, that really sucks.”
“Yeah, in many ways, I feel like I’ve mourned her already.”
Jesus. “That’s…”
“Because she’s gone, you know?” Rachel kicked both feet over the edge of the dock. “The woman who was my mother isn’t coming back. I can’t go to her when I need something. I can’t ask her for advice. There are no more birthday presents and no more Christmas dinners. It sucks, because I knew I would have to deal with the death of my mother one day, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“And you don’t have anyone else to help? How are you paying for it?”
“She had insurance thanks to the job she had, but they’re always fighting me on making payments. So I have to pick up where it slacks off.”
Holy shit, that can’t be inexpensive. There was no way Rachel was making enough money to pay for that and her own expenses. How was she holding herself together? No wonder she kept bugging Zack whenever he interrupted her!
Like that day. I interrupted her work, making the money she needs to support her mother, and she still came out with me? Granted, she took some convincing, but…
Zack felt like shit. This may have been his first time hearing about her mother, but the least he could’ve done was be more considerate of her time.
“You have an interesting life, Rachel.”
She looked at him, the sun illuminating her brown hair from above. It’s a bit gold in the light, isn’t it? Brunettes always had the most interesting hair coloring in the summer sunlight. Rich, delicate, and bold. While Zack never subscribed himself as a man with a love for only a certain hair color, he had to admit that Rachel really raised the bar when it came to beautiful brown hair. Wonder if she got it from her mom…
“It’s not interesting. Nothing exciting has happened.”
“You’ve studied and worked abroad. You’ve moved to the city from the countryside. You’ve known what it’s like to take care of your parents and experience loss. You run your own business. You know more languages than I’ve bothered to remember. And you’re only, what, twenty-eight? How is that not an interesting life?”
“I’ve also been through some pretty nasty shit not on that list.”
“It makes life interesting, right?”
“What a privileged thing to say.”
She had him there. Then again, Rachel made a lot of her own assumptions by thinking Zack hadn’t been through anything substantial in his life – yet he was somehow more interesting than her? She couldn’t have it both ways.
“That’s not what I meant.” Zack cleared his throat. “I meant that…”
“You ever been in an emotionally abusive relationship?”
Zack wasn’t going to get through to her, was he? Not with shit like that flung at him! There goes my idea of a pleasant evening by the lake. Sheesh.
“No. I haven’t.”
Rachel hanged her head. “It sucks.”
“Was that the guy who fucked up your views of sex?”
“Yeah.”
Zack didn’t say anything about that guy, although there was plenty he’d love to spit out. Stop thinking about him. He doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t reflect how much worth you have. I swear to God, Rachel, if you base your self-worth off some huge asshole who had no manners and thinks women are disposable…
He may not have said any of that, but he said something that could have easily been seen as him not taking her seriously. “You remember that girlfriend from college I mentioned the other night?”
Rachel lifted her head again. “Yeah. The last woman you enjoyed being with?”
“Yup. She did some pretty fucked up shit too.”
“I’m sorry.”
Zack didn’t usually think of it as Sadie fucking up. He had always been so focused on the man who seduced her to think logically about the role Sadie played as well. I mean, if she really loved me, she wouldn’t have… “She cheated on me. With one of my frat brothers.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Yup. Could say it sort of spoiled me on that whole dating and love thing for a long time. What was the point of putting so much effort into a relationship with someone if it was that disposable to them?
“You really haven’t had a real girlfriend since then?”
“Have you had a boyfriend?”
Rachel blushed. “No”
“There you go. People suck.”
“When you put it that way, I can’t help but agree.”
Zack looped his arm around her shoulders, careful to not bring her too close – or to hold her too tightly. “Love sucks. Down with love.”
She snorted. “Why did you invite me all the way up here today?”
“Hm?” He lowered his arm again. “Because we’re friends, of course. I always bring my friends up here for some good old-fashioned fun. Er. Non sexual.”
Laughter rang out across the water. “You really think we’re friends like that? We barely know each other.”
“True, but let me tell you about my best friend Seth. Literally the only reason we’re friends is because we both happened to be working the same gallery exhibition a few years ago. It was right after he retired from gynecology…”
“Wow.”
“…and I had graduated art school. It’s a classic Romeo and Juliet tale of male friendship. There was me, the loud, boisterous, extroverted guy going through his Dali phase with melting metal bowls of fruit, and him, the quiet, reserved, introverted guy who had traveled through all fifty states and painted a five-by-five canvas with a scene from each. We bumped into each other in the men’s room and the rest is history. Er, I think. We got so smashed that night I barely remember it.”
“Again. Wow.”
“So I’m used to some of my best friends being people I got to know in as little as two weeks. As far as I’m concerned, you and I are on track to becoming the bestest of friends.”
“Meanwhile, it usually takes me weeks, even months to realize I’ve made a friend with somebody. Parvati didn’t actually become my friend until we both realized we love Bollywood movies. Next thing I know, she’s inviting me to one of those movies at the park and we’ve been inseparable since. Sort of. We don’t hang out as much as we should, honestly. But that’s because I like having time to myself. Plus I work so much that…”
Zack lay back and stretched his arms above his head. His fingers curled into one of the large knots in the wooden dock. “At some point you really gotta slow down and start enjoying life again. If you work your whole twenties away…”
“Thirties, at this point.”
“You’re not thirty yet.”
“Besides,” Rachel continued, ignoring what Zack was eager to point out, “it’s easy to say that I should take more breaks. I know that. If I’m overworked, it means health problems down the line. It means waking up at fifty and wondering where everything went and trying to figure out why I’m too tired and too stiff to do anything now.”
“At fifty?” Zack must’ve known some fairly spry fifty-year-olds.
“But I can’t stop working because I’m tired. Do you know what’s it like to actually depend on self-employment income? If you stop working, you stop making money. And you don’t know if the client you have to turn down now will still want to work with you when you have the time. So you take on anyone who offers to pay you for whatever skills you have. You want to build a rapport with them right now. You want their money right now. Clients are fickle as fuck. They know you’re not the only one who can do what you do. So not only do you take on more than you can realistically handle, but you undersell yourself so you have an edge over everyone else. You tell yourself that it will pay off in the end. You’ll have your client base and will be able to raise your rates. You’ll start paying off debt and take a breather. It may take ten or twenty years, but hard work and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps works like that. Right?”
Zack dipped the tip of his sandal into the water and kicked a light spray toward the center of the lake. “I’m an artist. You think I don’t know what it means to hustle and to worry about clients?” Zack didn’t take commissions for a lark. He did it to build his prestige and a name for himself in the critical art world. His friends and family liked to joke that he was playing around and could get away with anything because he was good looking and knew how to turn up the charm. But that was a part of his package. Zack knew how to use his natural good looks and the personality he had acquired over his life to grow his reputation.
“I’m not saying you don’t work hard.” Rachel flipped her hand as if she flicked a bug off her shoulder. “I’m saying you don’t have to rely on that income. You don’t have fear and financial insecurity making you overwork yourself. I know you take your art seriously and stressed out about completing things and having them be up to par. But it’s not the same if you’re counting on selling a piece to cover rent or even get some food for the next month.”
Zack was pushed into a corner without a thing to defend himself. What? She’s right. I’ve never relied on the money. It was only a bonus to shove in my father’s face. “Look, Dad, I made a hundred grand off this painting I did in two days.” That money went straight into his yacht, trips around the world, spoiling whatever woman he fancied at the moment, buying the rarest art supplies, investments… all it meant was that he didn’t have to touch his trust fund as often. He wasn’t much different from his older brothers in that way. They worked for most of the money they spent, too. But they didn’t have to. The Feldmans were collectively worth billions of dollars. Not a single child of the family had to work in any field if he or she didn’t care to.
“If you’re that worried about getting work done,” he said, careful to choose his words. “Then why did you blow it off to come up here with me?”
Rachel was quick to shrug. “Because I wanted to that badly.”
“Badly enough to stop making money for a few hours? Money you really need for rent and food?”
She turned her head away from him. “You offered me a quick escape with the promise we could go home later. I’ll stay up late tonight and finish my work then. I don’t have any plans in the morning. I can sleep in a little.”
Zack sighed. I feel like I keep fucking this up. Every time he tried to bring a little excitement to Rachel’s life, he ended up inconveniencing her or giving her some kind of crisis. His fault, he supposed. He kept making assumptions about her life. They hadn’t known each other that long. He was liable to make a fool of himself, treating her like he would one of his for-the-weekend girlfriends. How many of those women had fears and worries like Rachel, but they never shared them with me? Because he was a fling. A sugar daddy. A man that needed to be impressed or seduced. Women saw him as a reprieve and an answer to their temporary problems. Deep down, Zack had always known this. His father and brothers had warned him, and Uncle Roy had flat-out told him that women saw Feldman men like that.
“A quick escape… yeah. I guess I do that. I blindly decide to do things because, like you said, I can. I can afford it. I have access. I don’t deny it.” He jerked his thumb toward the stately lake house behind them. “I was able to put off some work because I don’t need the money. It’s a passion I’ve made a career out of, but it will always be a passion first. It’s not a legacy I would leave to any children to pick up unless they really wanted to. It’s not Feldman Steel.” Zack lay back on the dock, shielding his face from the sun making its slow summer descent to the forest canopy. “And you always seem so stress out. I haven’t known you that long. You’re right. I’m not a good friend yet if I don’t know these things about you.”
“No, I’m being too hard on you.” Rachel hovered, her wispy ponytail blowing in the slight breeze overtaking the dock and lake. Zack parted his fingers so he could catch a glimpse of her illuminated face. “I’m sorry. You’ve done a lot of nice things for me and I keep throwing them back in your face.”
“A little, yeah.” Zack flung one hand over the side of the dock. A mosquito came close, but he waved it away. “I don’t mind, though. I’d rather you throw my nice stuff back in my face than point out every one of my flaws like I don’t know them.”
“Yeah, right. Like you know of all your flaws.”
“You think I don’t?”
“It’s impossible to know all of your own flaws. Some are impossible to see from your own point of view.”
“All right.” Zack pulled his knees up, feet flat on the dock again. “So what’s one of my biggest flaws you don’t think I know about?”
“This is a trap. You don’t really want to know.”
Damn, she’s already thought of something? From the woman who has only known me for a couple of weeks? They certainly were moving quickly. “Now I have to know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Rachel gave him a contemplative look. Let me have it, Rachel Taylor. Fuck me up with the truth.
“You don’t understand how good you’ve got it.”
“Come again?”
“I could say that your biggest flaw is that you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to be financially insecure, stuff like that… but that’s easy. You seem like the kind of rich boy who understands that to a point.” Rachel sat on her legs, hands in her lap. “But what you’ll never understand is how much other people would kill to be you. Regardless of what downsides there are to being who you are, who your family is, and the kind of shit that uniquely comes with being a billionaire heir, you’ll never, ever understand what drives someone to become like you.”
“Wow.” Zack snorted. “That’s pretty deep.” She wasn’t wrong, either. Zack wasn’t pompous enough to suggest that he knew what it was like to be poor. He also didn’t know what it was like to go from being poor to rich overnight or over a lifetime. God willing, he would never have to know either of those things.
“All right.” Rachel looked away. “My turn.”
Zack claimed to not have heard her.
“I said it’s my turn. What’s my biggest flaw that I don’t realize?”
“We’ve already covered that you barely know how to chill and are probably going to waste your youth with this whole work thing…” Zack grinned. “Nah. I know what a dangerous game this is. I’m not about to tell a woman her fatal flaw.”
Rachel furrowed her beautiful brown brows. “Do it. Give me the hard truth, Zack.”
“You don’t want the truth.”
“I think the phrase is You can’t handle the truth.”
“That too.” Zack propped himself up on his elbows. “You really wanna know what I think your biggest flaw is?”
“Yes.”
“You promise not to freak out at me?”
“I won’t. Even if I disagree with you.”
“All right.” Even so, Zack braced himself. “Your flaw is that you will never know how much you’re worth.”
Rachel didn’t respond. If anything, her silent response sounded more than a single word she could say.
“You’ve been colored by shitty life experiences. Apparently people, especially men, have made you feel like you’re not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, whatever. You don’t have to tell me that your self-esteem was shattered back in college. Now you have to take care of your mom? It’s a lot to ask. Surviving that kind of stress requires you to…”
Zack didn’t have a chance to fully explain himself. Not when Rachel pounced on him, her face coming dangerously close to his.
For a man who had kissed countless women before, he was forever amazed by the kind of punches Rachel packed.
He was also in shock. Because one of the last things he expected from this quick getaway was Rachel Taylor kissing him like he had dreamed of kissing her more than once.
Was she as pent up as he was? Was she willing to go back on her vow of celibacy? Does kissing count toward breaking that vow? Or was it only sex? Rachel had made sure Zack understood that boundary a few days ago. Absolutely no sex. Making out in the lobby of her apartment building was as far as it went, and they weren’t going to talk about it afterward.
This whole “friendship” started because I asked her out.
If Zack needed any convincing that Rachel was into him too, he now had it. He also now understood her hesitancy to make love with him. People – men – had hurt her. She was under a lot of stress and using casual sex as an outlet. Somewhere along the way she decided that was harmful to her psyche and growth as a person. So, celibacy. For a whole summer.
Yet she was kissing Zack? With tongue?
Like hell he’d let her do all the work. It took two to kiss well.
Zack wasn’t going to stop it. If Rachel wanted to kiss him? Fine! He’d kiss her back! He’d show her how much beautiful worth she had, and he said this as a man who had only known her for a fortnight.
It felt like years. Those two kisses they had shared so far screamed that they had a bond so old it would never be matched by anyone else in the world. A scary thought, since Rachel had never seemed that interested in him.
Until now. When she straddled his waist and bent down to kiss him some more.