“Oh. Well, just so you know, I know people say they’re never late, but I’m literally never late to anything,” I said, still feeling flustered as he picked me up so I was sitting on the back of the couch.
“Yeah, I’m usually late to everything,” he said, distracted, twisting his fingers in my hair as he kissed my neck.
His words reminded me that I hadn’t set my alarm for tomorrow, and I’d committed to an early spin class with Lindy even though I hated spin. Thinking of Lindy made me remember that I needed to tell her I was “at Brad’s” so I could crash at her place later tonight since Krista thought I was already at Lindy’s. I’d have to get up extra early to go home and grab my workout clothes because I’d forgotten to pack them in my haste to get to Dean’s, finally reading his message that he was free around 9:30 if that worked for me.
“Skye, can you do something for me?” he asked after a moment of us making out.
I took a breath. “Okay, is this something I need to write down?”
He gave me a weird look. “What? No. I don’t even know what that means,” he said with a laugh. “No, this is about you. I can feel you holding your breath. Your whole body is tense.”
I blinked at him.
He kissed my neck again, trailing his mouth down to my collarbone, pushing my shirt out of the way. He pushed up my skirt with the palms of his hands, and I closed my eyes.
“Wait, what was the thing you needed me to do?”
“Just get out of your head,” he said as he dropped to his knees in front of me. “Relax.”
After, we moved to his bed, and after we fell off of each other, after we put most of our clothes back on, after we caught our breath and my body stopped tingling, everything I still needed to do came barreling back in my mind. I took a deep breath and sat up, looking at Dean who was lying down, his head at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t believe I’d been caught up in this for 34 days.
“Dean, I think we should talk—” my phone ringing interrupted me. I scrambled to try to find it in the bedsheets or on the floor, instantly wondering what I’d missed, what had I forgotten.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, sitting up and picking up his phone. He silenced the ringer and sat it down, turning back to face me. “What were you saying?”
I looked at him and then his phone half-haphazardly placed on the nightstand. “Are you not going to get that?”
He glanced at it and shrugged. “No, it’s fine. It’s not an emergency.”
“You can answer it,” I said, just the thought of not answering a call stressing me out.
He laughed. “It’s fine, really. You’re talking to me, so I’m listening. What were you saying?”
He faced me again, looking right at me.
“Um, okay,” I said, realizing I wasn’t used to having someone’s undivided attention. “Well, as you probably know, we kissed for the first time thirty-four days ago.”
He raised his eyebrows, clearly not knowing this. “You’re counting?”
“No, I just have a good memory. I just remember the night it happened because something else had happened before that, like, a big life thing,” I said, thinking of Krista’s engagement.
He nodded, still listening.
“Okay, that isn’t the point,” I said, not sure why this was so hard to get out or why his gaze was making me nervous. “What I’m trying to say is, I’m super busy. I mean, just this week, Krista has engagement photos, Lindy has SGA stuff, my mom has a Junior League activity, and, yeah, I think this was a fun thing to do for 34 days, but I just can’t focus on this anymore.”
“Okay,” he said, considering this. “But what are you busy with?”
I sighed. “I just told you. You aren’t actually listening?”
“None of the things you said were about you though,” he said, confused. “You just listed a bunch of people and their schedules.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it.
“Yeah, well,” I started, not sure what to say. I reached for my skirt and stood, feeling like the attention he was giving me was too much.
“Skye, if you want to stop, we can go back to being strangers in a coffee shop,” he said, standing and grabbing his shirt from the floor. I took a deep breath, wishing he would put it on because he was distracting me. “You shouldn’t do something you don’t want to do. So just let me know what you want.”
When he said it, it sounded so easy.
I opened my mouth to say that we should definitely end this, 34 days was enough for fun, a break from reality, but that this was just another thing I had to balance, to figure out, to problem solve, and that I didn’t want this anymore.
But that would have been a lie.
“Well, I guess I want … to know if you wanted to do this again,” I said slowly, weighing the pros and cons, deciding. “You know, if I stuck around for a while longer.”
★☽★★☽
“Are you sure this isn’t breaking Rule 3?” I asked, pulling the blanket closer, slightly shivering, the frozen grass crunching under our boots.
“I didn’t ask you to come out here with me,” Dean said, not looking over his shoulder at me. “So, yeah, I don’t think this is breach of contract.”
“What was I supposed to do, just sit on your bed and wait for you to come back?”
He laughed, his breath coming out white against the cold. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”
We’d been hooking up pretty regularly over the past two weeks, and as we got in the swing of things, I’d started coming over to his place more since he’d been working mornings and afternoons during the week instead of nights. We’d hook up, I’d wait around a while — able to focus on my homework or wedding stuff on his bed while he did whatever it was he did on the couch — and then we’d hook up again. I’d leave after, swing by a fast-food place, home by 10:30 p.m., ready to catch up with Krista. She was so immersed in wedding planning, the poster boards on our living room wall dictating all our conversations, that she hadn’t even thought twice to ask me about my dates or to look at my date notebook.
So I’d been surprised when, after our first round tonight, Dean put on all his clothes and a jacket, saying he was going outside to look at the moon.
“The moon? What?”
“It’s been raining for the past two weeks,” he said as if that was an explanation. I stared at him blankly. “So I haven’t been able to see it,” he added.
“Is it a full moon or something?” I asked, sitting down my accounting textbook.
“No, I just want to see the light from it,” he said, not feeling the need to explain more as he kneeled to tie his boots. “It’ll take like two seconds, I’ll be right back.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, grabbing my sweatshirt and a patterned blanket off the floor to wrap around my shoulders.
He laughed. “Rule 1, don’t ask questions.”
“There is no way this is a personal question,” I said, rolling my eyes and pulling on my boots. “You can’t just call Rule 1 when you don’t want to explain things using logic.”
He laughed again, headed toward the door, and I followed. He glanced over his shoulder. “Wait, are you really coming?”
I nodded, and he held the door open for me, rolling his eyes. We walked in silence down the steps and across the large backyard.
“There’s nothing special about this moon.”
“It’s not just about the moon,” he said, not breaking his step.
“What does that mean? Are you sure this isn’t breaking Rule 3?” I asked skeptically, pulling the blanket closer, wondering if this was his weird version of trying to turn sex into a date.
“I didn’t ask you to come out here with me,” Dean said, walking farther away from the carriage house and the farmhouse. “So, yeah, I don’t think this is breach of contract.”
“What was I supposed to do, just sit on your bed and wait on you to come back?”
He laughed. “That’s exactly wh
at you were supposed to do.”
He stopped suddenly, turning to look at the two houses in the distance. We were probably half an acre from his carriage house, closer to the trees dotting the property, the farmhouse’s porch lights far away.
“Why did you stop?” I asked, standing next to him, trying to figure out what this was.
He put his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky. “I’m trying to focus, Skye,” he said, sounding distracted.
“On what?” I pressed.
“Just look up,” he said. “And be quiet.”
I looked up at the moon. Then I glanced at Dean who actually seemed to be concentrating, taking in the sky, the moon, the stars, and the houses. I’d never seen him so still, so focused, like this before.
Then I thought about what he said — that it wasn’t just about the moon — so I tried to take in the whole scene like he was. The cloudless sky made the moon seem whiter, the light from it casting the houses in uninterrupted, dreamy wash. The stars seemed even brighter, glimmering against the dark sky. I’d never seen stars so bright, always surrounded by city or streetlights, never looking close enough.
It was beautiful.
He took a breath and then turned to me. “Okay, I told you that wouldn’t take long. Ready?”
“I really need an explanation here.”
He smiled. “I just couldn’t remember this view clearly in my head,” he said with a shrug, walking back toward the carriage house.
Before I could ask questions, he stopped and kissed me, pulling the blanket around both of us.
“It’s cold,” he said, his lips against my skin.
I laughed. “I know, I’m freezing,” I said, slipping my hands around his waist, under his jacket, trying to get warmer. “Can we add a time-sensitive amendment to Rule 4?”
He pulled me even closer against his body, burying his face in my neck, kissing my collarbone. His skin was cold, and his piercings were even colder.
“What’s Rule 4 again?” he asked, his voice muffled.
“No cuddling,” I said, closing my eyes to visualize our contract. “Or any romance stuff, like hand holding and arms around each other, you know, those kind of things. Intimacy.”
“Oh, right,” he said, slipping his hands in my back pockets.
“So can the time-sensitive amendment be that if it gets below 20 degrees we can touch each other, even though it might not lead to sex, just for the warmth?”
He laughed, wrapping our makeshift blanket cocoon around us tighter. “Yeah, we can add that in,” he said, his voice still low, pulling away from my collarbone to look at me with a smile.
Under the cold moon and bright stars, I kissed him, finally starting to feel warm again. After a moment, he took a step back, slowly walking us backward to the carriage house as we kissed, until we had to break away to walk up the stairs.
Once inside, he sat down on the couch, glancing at me with a smile, and I stood there, still wrapped in the blanket, about to walk back to my accounting textbook where it was waiting for me on his bed. But I didn’t feel like thinking about math.
“What are you doing?” I asked after a moment, still standing.
He looked up. I realized he hadn’t been holding a notebook this whole time, but a sketchpad.
“Nothing really,” he said with a shrug, closing it and sitting it on the coffee table. “Hand me the contract. I’ll add in the amendment.”
Over the past couple weeks, even though he respected the contract and cited it almost as much as I did, Dean also thought it was hilarious we actually wrote down the rules and amendments.
Now he was incredibly committed, making sure we kept everything documented, somehow finding this as a great way to tease me, his overly dramatic seriousness and persistence always making me groan.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the paper from where we kept it on his nightstand. I’d asked him weeks ago if he cared if we kept it here, not confident Lindy or Krista wouldn’t somehow stumble upon it if I held onto it. I was so careful that they never found out about us, almost getting caught when Lindy walked up behind me as I’d been texting him about meeting up after one of my dates.
Since then, to play it safe, I’d changed Dean’s name in my phone to Brad. Dean also found this hilarious, changing my name in his phone to three fire emojis followed by a star even though I told him that was stupid.
I passed him the contract, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch. He pulled a woven blanket over his shoulders, wrapping it around his outfit. He was wearing torn jeans, an oversized navy shirt with a patterned pocket, a long dusty red knit cardigan, all his jewelry bright gold. One of his earrings was a stud of a star and the other was a moon. I shook my head, not understanding, as he wrote the amendment down.
“So I guess this will be the last time we hook up for a while,” I said once he’d finished. “Because of Thanksgiving. I’m going out of town,” I clarified.
“Yeah, some lake house, right?” When I looked at him, not recalling when I’d told him that, he shrugged. “Sorry, I can’t help what I overhear from your loud friend in the coffee shop.”
I laughed. “Yeah, so maybe we could cool it on the texting for a while? Since I’ll be trapped with my family.”
“You mean sexting,” he replied with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes, hating how direct he was and how nothing seemed to embarrass him. “Yes, whatever. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll be busy, too, so it won’t be a problem.”
I glanced at the contract between us.
“I guess I can’t ask what you’ll be doing.”
He laughed, running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t think that’s personal. I think we can ask each other stuff you’d ask or answer at a dinner party, right? Add that in,” he said, nodding toward the contract. “I’m just going to see my dad. So kind of a mood killer even if I wanted to text you.”
I smiled. “So if I were at a dinner party and saw you, I’d probably ask if you’re from here.”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t see me at a dinner party,” he said with a laugh. He reached out, grabbing my hand, pulling me toward him, kissing my neck. “What kind of dinner parties do you go to, Skye?” he said, whispering in my ear. “You think a guy like me is there?”
I laughed, biting my lip, and shook my head. “No, definitely not. Well, maybe the waitstaff.”
He burst out laughing, pushing me down on the couch, climbing on top of me. “You are such a princess,” he said, kissing me hard as I let him pull me under, closing my eyes, thinking of the moon, the stars.
★☽★★☽
Mom loves to tell the story of how she and Dad met. Both accounting majors, they met as juniors, sitting next to each other in their Cost Accounting class. Dad asked her out on a dinner date, some place nice, so Mom would know he was trying to impress her, but not too nice where he would seem too eager. They went on three more nice dinner dates before he kissed her. They dated exactly one month before they “started going steady,” Mom would say with a laugh. From there, everything fell into place. They bonded over Financial Accounting Standards and Internal Auditing courses, graduated at the top of their class, got engaged exactly two years later, and worked at the same firm until they decided to have kids.
Krista loved this story, using it as a blueprint for her own love story. She nudged Kyle after Mom finished the story as we sat around the fire on Thanksgiving.
“If only you’d been an accounting major, it would have been perfect,” she teased. He put his arm around her, kissing her cheek, as she added, “Although, I guess opposites attract, right? I mean, an accounting major and a finance major, that’s crazy.”
I laughed and walked out of the room.
As I stood in front of the pumpkin pie in the kitchen, I paused, just briefly, thinking of when I had smashed my own pumpkin. I smiled, shaking my head, and pushed the memory out my head.
“Tick tock,” Krista said as I sat back down. “Ju
st one semester left of your junior year, lil sis. Are you going to carry the family tradition of love? Any prospects in one of your accounting classes?”
“I’m acing the class. Does that count?”
She rolled her eyes before standing to pluck a board game from the den closet.
Every year — after a perfect Thanksgiving dinner made from the same recipe book Mom been using for 24 years, and after Dad built a fire as we sat around to hear the story of how they met — we would play a board game.
Dad would always win, Krista would come in second, and I would usually space out halfway through. The only part that ever changed was which game Krista chose. And after the board game, our parents would go to bed, saying chardonnay made them too tired to stay up past 9 p.m. anymore.
“I can’t wait until we’re old enough to go to bed that early without feeling lame,” Krista said, leaning against Kyle’s shoulder.
He kissed the top of her head. “That’s our future, babe,” he said, squeezing her hand and smiling at the sparkling ring on her finger.
I held back a yawn, glancing out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Oh wow,” I said, walking to the window. “It’s a full moon.”
Krista glanced at me. “So?”
“Look how bright it is on the lake.”
It was a perfect reflection despite how the water moved, making the bright ball of white ripple ever so slightly.
“It’s so pretty,” I said, wanting to commit it to memory.
She stood, not moving closer, and yawned. “You know, we should just go to bed. We have to get up early tomorrow for photos. Skylar, you should, too. You don’t want to be late.”
“I won’t be late,” I said with an eye roll.
I wanted to tell her that the moon in the water was sparkling as bright as her ring, but I knew she would just get annoyed, not seeing the beauty in it. I stepped away from the window, pulling out my phone, and for a brief moment, thought about texting Dean to see if he could see the moon where he was. I shook my head at the thought, double-checking that I’d set my alarm for tomorrow instead.
The next morning, as soon as my alarm went off, I sat up and got out of bed. Even at the lake house, I had my morning routine down to a perfect beat, no second unaccounted for. I would make a mental to-do list as I showered, blow dry my hair as the coffee pot brewed, brush my teeth as I checked my email, pour a cup of coffee in a travel mug — never bothering to waste time by sitting down — before putting on my makeup and changing into an outfit pre-determined from the night before. The whole family was so synchronized that all of us were dressed and photo-ready at the exact same time.
A Guy Like Him Page 8
