Chapter Eighteen
After that night when Flick spooked him, Tom took it easy with the coupons, going for the least emotionally taxing ones. They went out to breakfast. He dressed her for bed, in her sleep shorts and T-shirt, and then changed his mind and dressed her in nothing. They saw a movie—he did, she fell asleep during it—and had Vietnamese takeout that was delicious.
He was less easy with her about her shopping. Saturday morning she went out and bought new bikes at Target. “Glad that’s done,” she said, when they were sharing a bowl of nachos on the balcony.
“For now.”
“Right, until the girls grow again, because these new bikes aren’t as pawnable, but that’s not what you meant, is it?” He crunched a corn chip and she narrowed her eyes at him. “What am I supposed to do, Tom?”
“Set boundaries.”
“With my own family.” It was all right for him, he didn’t have people who needed his help. “What kind of person would that make me?”
“One who’ll survive them.”
“I might resent how they go about asking for help, but that doesn’t mean it’s not deserved.”
“I’m not saying don’t help out.”
“I know what you’re saying, put them on a budget, be selective, don’t let them take advantage of me.” She unfolded from the sun lounge and went to the railing, kept her back to him. “You don’t think I’ve tried all of that?” Tried and failed and put that on repeat.
“You saw how things are with Dad. They’d be worse if I hadn’t put distance between us. I don’t want things to be worse for you because your family keep dragging on you.”
“I can handle it.” Tom should stick to making nachos.
“Flick Dalgetty, you can handle anything you put your mind to, but no one should make you act out of guilt that’s not deserved.”
The tension dropped out of her neck and shoulders. He wasn’t trying to start a fight about this. She turned and rested her back against the railing. “You’re sweet on me, Tom O’Connell.”
“Is there a coupon for that?” he said.
There was for a TV marathon.
Flick made popcorn and they marathoned their way through ten episodes of Westworld. Eleven hours and a pizza later, they were sprawled on the sectional speculating about what the next season would be about.
“It’s the dawn of consciousness in artificial intelligence,” she said. “Maeve is the only one who can wake herself up in the real world.”
“What makes you think that isn’t a manipulation? She’s programmed to try to leave the park.”
“That’s so cynical.”
“The whole show is a mind fuck.”
She slumped over sideways on the sectional. “Oh my God, they’ve sucked me right in. I’m going to get more wandering around in the wilderness and distorted reality and I’m never going to know what’s true. I want a happy ending and I’m not going to get one, am I?”
“Does anyone?” he said.
Was he serious? She sat up and thumped the seat. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“They exist. They have to.” Otherwise life was guilt and fear and loneliness and too damn hard.
“Where’s the evidence? Not from my parents, or yours, or your sisters. Wren is still pining after Josh, which is a kind of complicated I can’t begin to understand. What’s a happy ending anyway, except a manipulation sponsored by Hollywood and Mills & Boon?”
She crawled across the space between them, right up in his face. “Please tell me you’re joking?” He didn’t crack a smile. He’d told her earlier he’d never binge-watched a TV series before. It was sometimes hard to believe this man existed, walked around upright, functioning in the world and caring about her family relationships.
“I don’t think everyone gets the same kind of happy ending. I don’t think it’s a marriage-only bargain. Some people find it in their work,” she said.
“That’s not the deal. The happy ending is about finding the one.”
“Says you, who said you don’t believe in it. There could be more than one over a lifetime. And the one might be more than one at a time, and the—” He laughed and she stopped. “You know what I mean.”
“I have an inkling.”
“Ooh, an inkling. You do say the darnedest things.”
He grabbed her and hauled her into his lap. She was set to get inklinged, and it was about time. They’d both been so absorbed by the show, they’d only taken breaks for the bathroom and for food top-ups. Tom was overdue to marathon The Wire and it was well and truly time for another kind of top-up.
“What’s your happy ending look like, Flick?”
She knelt over his thighs, facing him, one hand resting on his heart, the other messing with his hair. By the fix of his features she knew this was a serious question. It made her stomach swirl. What was that, nerves? This was Tom—what was there to be nervous about?
“All my coupons redeemed.”
“That’s all you need?”
No, that was a fake-news answer, but that swooping in her stomach was in her chest now and she didn’t know what it meant, except she wanted Tom to kiss her and she wanted him to cook for her and be at her back and let her be at his. What more could she expect from a roommate she was in love with?
Oh. God. That’s what it was.
She was lovesick over him.
She’d couponed herself into a corner and she was going to break her own heart. They had this mad physical attraction thing, and they liked to argue, to talk shop about work, and since the coupons they’d learned so much more about each other, but that couldn’t be love; it was infatuation at best. She did stuff that annoyed him. And his stoic adherence to a routine made her want to shake him.
If he really wanted to be with her, he’d say, wouldn’t he? He’d missed out on his promotion and if he was going to quit for somewhere new, that somewhere new could be in Washington. But he wouldn’t do that, because he was Tom and he didn’t leap into the unknown and no matter how many romantic bubble baths they shared, they weren’t each other’s one.
Oh God.
“Whatever you’re thinking, Flick, I’m convinced I won’t like it.” He traced a finger down her nose to rest on her lips.
She bit it softly. “Do you believe in love?”
“I believe in attraction. The chemistry. Can’t claim to understand it, but it exists. We have it. People do crazy things in the name of it.”
They did. It wasn’t a terrible answer. It’s just that she wanted more than a chemical reaction to build her life on, because after the froth and steam, after the color change and the oxidization took effect, what were you left with?
“Think I’d like to go to bed now. I’ll play the brothel madam and you can play the innocent-but-ready-to-be-debauched tourist who has no moral qualms about doing it with a robot woman.”
“I didn’t choose the fantasy coupon yet.”
He had a lot of things left to choose, before their chemical reaction was a finished experiment. “Consider it practice.”
He made her whoop when he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, a slap to her ass to hold her in place. He played the brothel-visiting ready-to-be-debauched tourist surprisingly well for a man who’d only recently learned to enjoy a blow job, and enthusiastically requested another one, and the next morning he hung her black satin off-the-shoulder body-con dress on the bedroom door.
They were going out for dinner. She had to scramble to get a reservation somewhere decent.
And that dress called for some quality primping. She sent him to the gym while she did the full overhaul including an avocado clay mask, mini facial and hair treatment. He did not need to see her wandering around with green goop all over her face and her head in a plastic bag.
She exfoliated and moisturized from top to toe. She curled her hair and put it up. She took extra care over her makeup, and the first thing Tom said when he saw her dressed and ready was “How does that stay up?”
“I have to breathe carefully.”
“You can breathe in that? I had no idea it would look like that from seeing it on the hanger.”
“You don’t like it?” She wanted to take that back. She looked edible and if he couldn’t see that, he was blind, and outside of having to dress a specific way for work, to hell with dressing to please a man, which was what she’d spent all afternoon attempting. Goddammit.
“I’m in—”
He paused, and in the gap, she heard love.
“—awe. I’m worried about touching you in case I wreck something.” He said that as he hesitantly ran a hand around her waist to spread his palm over her back.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Heartache, despair, the return of the sleepless nights she’d stopped having, mostly because the sex was exhausting and she didn’t want to leave a bed Tom was in.
“You could flash your underwear in a restaurant full of nice, unsuspecting people.”
“What underwear?”
He double-blinked and then his eyes narrowed as his hand went first up her back, feeling for a bra strap, and then down looking for a panty line.
“Fuck me, are you naked under this dress?”
“It’s not going to fall off.”
“Oh Lord, you are. Why are we leaving the condo?”
“Because you chose the dinner-out coupon.”
“I need my head examined.”
“I thought that’s what I’d been doing since I moved in.”
He tried to pinch her butt, but he couldn’t get a grip on the slippery satin and she danced out of his arms.
The restaurant was one of those hip places Flick loved, with an interesting menu and a talented chef, with stunning décor and a way of being both forbiddingly elegant like Tom’s apartment and yet not snobby or off-putting.
Tom wore his dark navy suit with a crisp white shirt but no tie. He held her hand in the cab and did the gentlemanly door-opening, ushering and chair-settling. Whenever she looked at him, he was watching her. Not once did he pretend he wasn’t. It was a visceral thrill.
Chemistry, huh. Let’s see what reaction we can get.
She started by accidentally flirting with the waiter. He was cute, and he started it. He’d failed the waiter-school lesson that said you won’t get a tip if you appear to be too into a guy’s date. It was sixty seconds of giggling over the menu’s use of the word bolao, meaning tomato balls, but it made Tom bark his order of the most expensive beer on the list. The most amusing part was when he realized he’d done that and looked sheepish.
She let all that fly past as if she hadn’t noticed, but that flash of annoyance looked a lot like jealousy and that wasn’t a reaction she expected.
She faced him across the white linen cloth and a table light that looked like a tiny flying saucer made from gelatin come to land between them. That queasy, fluttery, nervous feeling was back. She swallowed it down. “How long has it been since you took a woman out to a nice restaurant?”
His brows went down and his lips compressed. He usually had a good poker face, didn’t telegraph his feelings, but that was a tell, only she wasn’t sure of what.
“My gram was the last woman I took to a starred restaurant.”
Flutter, queasy, flutter. “Sweet, but doesn’t count.”
“I can’t remember.”
She hoped her inner squirm wasn’t all over her face while she was trying to psych him out. “That’s the kind of answer someone gives when the real answer is never.”
“It’s not never. It’s not recent. What kind of man do you think I am?”
“That question was rhetorical?”
It had to be because he’d palmed his face. He mumbled through his fingers, “Yes, because I’m terrified of what you might say.”
Psych-out achieved. “But I like you.” In a too much, too serious way. “I’d say only good things.”
“Would you?” He stopped playacting and hit her with a look that had to make colleagues, reporters and clients alike think twice about their answer. This was not-to-be-trifled-with Tom, and she loved that hard-ass boss in him.
And that she got to trifle with it.
It was a challenge question with only one response. “What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“The kind who runs the show and does it well.”
“That was a rhetorical question.” But oh, oh, the answer was very fine.
So were their meals. She had the flora tasting menu and he had the fauna. Her meal started with jasmine roe trout and his with guinea hen. There’d be nine courses in all.
She waved a tiny fork at him. “What’s your ideal date?”
“You want to sit here in that dress that performs magic on your body and talk about my other dates?”
Self-preservation. Yes. “Would you rather talk about world events?”
“I would not rather talk about world events.” He took a sip of his beer, held the glass and focused on it as though it had all the answers. “My ideal date is something like this with a woman whose company I liked. But it wouldn’t matter what we did if we enjoyed being with each other.”
She’d made him uncomfortable and that hadn’t been the plan. Stir him up, tease him, but not make him regret being here with her. “You might go bowling.”
The glass went back to the table and his eyes went to hers. “We might.” He took the lifeline.
“You might hike.”
He smiled. “I would definitely want to do that, if she was up for it.”
Firmer ground now. “What else?”
“We’d eat food I cook, and go out to eat, because food is important.”
“And...”
“We’d talk about world events and uncomfortable family relationships and tomato balls.”
She laughed. “You got jealous.”
He screwed up his face. “Yes. You wore that dress, picked this place for me. You’re mine tonight. I have a coupon and I intend to max out on it.”
She might’ve melted except the next course arrived. Alaskan king crab with lemon mint for Tom, and English pea ricotta with olive oil and lavender for her. For the distraction value, she slipped off her shoe and bumped his shin with her toes. He moved his leg.
She almost laughed. She’d never played footsie before, wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to work, but probably chasing your partner’s leg around under the table while he ate crab wasn’t it. She tried again, touching the point of her toe to his ankle.
His brows jumped, but he kept eating. She dragged the arch of her foot from his ankle to mid-calf and he looked up from his plate. “You’re doing that deliberately.”
“I am.” That was an invitation to work her toes under the cuff of his trousers to touch his skin above his sock.
“You should probably know I don’t want to talk about hypothetical dates and future timelines,” he said.
She could settle her instep against the curve of his leg, but go no farther inside his trouser leg. “I’ll change the topic.”
“Figured it was better to be straight about that.”
She changed the position of her foot, skimming his ankle, calf, tapping his knee, and when he wet his lips she pushed her foot between his legs against his thigh. He shifted, but to open his legs, sit forward in his chair, not away, forward so with a bit of slumping she could touch her toes to his lap. “You’re a very straight-up guy.”
He wrapped a warm hand around her foot, held it. “I try.”
She was too short to work out if this had made him hard. “It’s in your DNA.”
“You don’t have to seduce me, Flick. I’m a sure thing.”
Maybe it had.
He pushed his thumb into the middle of her foot, an impromptu under-the-table massage that was hygienically ill-advised but a lifetime top-ten turn-on that made her sigh and close her eyes. Oh, the chemistry was every letter in the alphabet, and the alphabet was freezing, melting, burning, giving off vapor, reducing, expanding and fusing.
While he was eating bay scallops and she tackled white asparagus, she faced an uncomfortable truth. Somewhere between becoming his temporary tenant and a TV marathon, she’d discovered he was the one.
During her pear-banana finger limes and his cashew-cocoa crème fraîche it became obvious she’d fallen in love for real with Tom.
That could not be more inconvenient.
Least of all because he didn’t believe in it.
“Do you want to marry, have a family?”
“I want you to try this.” He held out a forkful of his dessert.
She leaned forward and let him feed her. The taste explosion was nothing on the way she hung off his answer, or the way his eyes settled on her lips.
“Since we’re talking about things I don’t want to talk about, I think marriage is an outdated institution. Childless couples are a rising demographic. Look at South Korea and Japan, shrinking populations. And I don’t even want to own a goldfish. I’ve never spent any time thinking about having a kid.”
There it was, sanity restored. Tom was her temporary roommate, couponing partner and the hottest lover she’d ever had, her soon-to-be long-distance friend and maybe lifelong regret. But not tonight. Tonight, he was as much hers as she was his, no future considerations need get in the way of that.
“Would you like a taste of mine?” He leaned forward and she forked a generous mouthful, ready to feed him.
He stopped her hand. “I would like to taste you all over. Start at your toes, move up your legs, pay serious, sustained attention to the honeyed space between them. I’d like to suck on your nipples till they’re hard candy in my mouth and nibble on your lips till you’re desperate for one of those kisses that wipes out history and changes the world.” He brought her trembling hand to his mouth and ate the portion. “And then, I’d like to do it all over again.”
She’d meant her chocolate with grapefruit, chartreuse and celery heart, but his idea was infinitesimally better and for now—for now, it would paper over the cracks in her own blood-and-tissue heart.