One Night in Buenos Aires

by Amanda K. Byrne

  “What happens in Buenos Aires stays in Buenos Aires.” Her hand found his free one under the blanket and gripped tight. “This isn’t Buenos Aires.”

  No, because in Buenos Aires it was warm and sunny and she bared a lot more skin.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered. “You’re supposed to be home, and tomorrow we go to work like nothing happened. Back to normal.”

  Unease spread through him, his stomach doing a slow roll. “D, I’d really appreciate it if you’d say what’s on your mind.”

  She lifted her head and stared at him. “Us, on vacation, it was supposed to be a thing. A vacation thing. It ended when we got off the plane. I was fine with that, expected that. So you, here, in my apartment? Kissing me on the sidewalk? I don’t want to be that girl, but I have to ask: what is this?”

  Unease shifted to panic. He didn’t have a definition for what he wanted from her. “I don’t know.” She stiffened and started to pull away. “I don’t know,” he repeated, tightening his hold. “Why does it matter?” No answer. “C’mon. Talk to me.”

  “Because it does!” She surged off the couch and whirled to face him. “Because this was supposed to end when we got off the plane! I don’t do…this. Have flings. Casual sex.”

  Casual sex? There had been nothing casual about it. He pushed to his feet.

  She backed away. “Don’t move.”

  He ignored her.

  “Don’t. Please don’t.” Normally the plea in her voice would have made him back off, only he wasn’t feeling too reasonable right now.

  “Is that what you wanted?” he asked softly. Her eyes narrowed as he moved closer. “Someone to scratch your itch?”

  “No, that’s what you wanted.”

  He froze. Had he said that? Fuck. He had. But from the moment she’d said yes, it had become less about exploring a previously undiscovered mutual attraction and more about her. There was so much here he’d never noticed, and he wanted to see it all. If she told him all she wanted was to go back to the way they were before, he’d do everything he could to put the week behind him. He’d promised he would.

  He seriously hoped that wasn’t all she wanted. “And if I changed my mind?”

  Instead of the smile he’d been expecting, she backed even farther away, tears welling. “Don’t kid about this. It’s not funny.”

  He lunged forward, catching her before she could jump out of reach. “I’m not.” Banding an arm around her waist, he tilted her chin up. “That’s what’s been bothering you all day, isn’t it?” He sighed. “Look, I don’t know what’s here. If you’re after a black-and-white answer, I’m not your guy. The only thing I can tell you is I don’t want it to end. Not yet. I don’t think we’re done. No, fuck that, I know we’re not done.”

  Nothing. No response, no sound other than her breathing. He was holding his, waiting for her answer. The cold and tiredness and aches faded. All that mattered was what she said next.

  “I’ll beg,” he whispered. “If that’s what it takes for you to believe me, I’ll get down on my knees and beg. You and me, in that room? There wasn’t anything casual about it. Give this a chance, D.”

  More silence, longer, heavier. She had to say yes. He couldn’t walk out of this apartment without her saying yes.

  He’d about given up when she answered. “You don’t need to beg,” she said softly. “You want this? You want me?”

  The air trapped in his lungs came out on a whoosh. “Yes. You have no idea how much.” He claimed her mouth, groaning as she pressed herself to him. “C’mon, baby,” he murmured, planting tiny kisses all over her lips. “Grab a change of clothes. Unless you want to do the walk of shame.”

  “Still hate my apartment, huh?” She rested her head on his chest, slipping her arms around his waist.

  “Yes. Clothes. Go.”

  She went.

  Chapter Twelve

  “There’s nothing wrong with my apartment. It’s historical. It has charm.” Drea snagged a chip from the bag in front of Joe and popped it in her mouth.

  “It’s cold as fuck, the elevator doesn’t work half the time, you have almost no storage space, and you’ve got some seriously creepy neighbors. I don’t care how much charm the place has. It’s not safe, and you’ll probably end up with cancer or something from having lived there for so long.” He nudged the bag out of her reach, grinning when she stuck out her tongue. “Whereas my apartment has heating that works, an elevator that doesn’t break down, more storage space than I could possibly need, and I don’t have to worry about getting mugged in the hallway.

  “It’s Friday,” he added casually. “We don’t have to work tomorrow. Wanna stay up late and tell ghost stories? I promise I’ll hold you if you get scared.”

  His heart thudded while he waited for her answer. Their first night home had been fantastic, and he’d woken with her wrapped around him. They’d gone into work, and that’s when everything had stopped being fantastic and slowly gone downhill. She’d blown him off all week, making excuses to go home instead of spending the night, and the two times they had been together, she’d stopped him before he could get her shirt off. He didn’t have a problem with slowing things down, if that’s what she wanted. He did have a problem with going backward, which was what it felt like. Drea was trying to steer them back to being friends, and friends only.

  It fucking hurt.

  He knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. “I’m pretty wiped.” She kept her eyes on the table, peeking at him through her lashes. “I’ll probably go home and go to bed early.”

  His store of patience was running low, but he dug down to his reserves. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.” He gathered up his trash, kissed Drea on the cheek, and stood, leaving her in the break room alone.

  He brooded over it most of the afternoon. Something was up, that much was obvious. The question was whether he let it go and hoped she’d work it out, or push her to talk about it.

  His monitor stared back at him, the CAD program a silent reminder he hadn’t gotten a thing done since lunch. He pushed away from his desk. Looked like he was talking to Drea.

  She glanced up as he approached her desk and smiled. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Get your coat. We’re going to get some coffee.”

  She paled, her eyes going wide. She stood and picked up her coat, pulling it on with deliberate care, then grabbed her bag. Head down, she followed him out of the office and into the bracing cold.

  He ignored her questioning look when they walked past their usual coffee spot. He didn’t feel like having what could be a pretty awful conversation in a place where any of their coworkers could interrupt them.

  Two blocks later, he pulled open the door to a half-empty shop and ushered her inside. Five minutes later he was holding a cup of coffee he didn’t really want and walking to a table in the back corner. It was as private as they’d get.

  When they sat down, he couldn’t get his mouth to open.

  “Joe?”

  There was fear there, a dark shadow in her eyes. He was struck by the ridiculous urge to kiss her and make it better. So he did.

  The whimper coming from the back of her throat had him curling a hand around the back of her neck to hold her in place, deepening the kiss. The fear wasn’t quite gone when he drew away, but it wasn’t as strong. He stroked her jaw and sat back, deciding the easiest way to do this would be to plunge right in. “Are you having second thoughts? Because if you are, you can stop dancing around it. You want to go back to being friends, we can do that.” He’d promised he would. That promise was a knife in his chest, waiting to twist as he waited for her response.

  She stared at him a moment, then dropped her gaze to her coffee cup, her hands curling around it. More importantly, her mouth stayed shut.

  Shit. He had to get out of there, away from her, before he did something stupid. Like push her for an answer, or yell at her. Or give up.

  He scraped
his chair back and stood. “D. Look at me.” She lifted her head, her blue eyes wide. “I don’t know what knots you’re twisting yourself into, but not talking to me is only going to make it worse.” Ironic, given that’s what Tess, and a number of girlfriends before her, had nagged him about. “You want to talk, you know where I am.”

  He headed for the door, tossing his full coffee into the trash, wondering if he was walking away from one of the best things in his life.

  Sometimes she hated her brain. Like right now. One half said she was being an idiot. The other screamed at her to step back from the ledge.

  Trouble was, she didn’t know which half was right.

  Drea stared at the lid of her coffee cup. It was soothingly blank, a bright white void of any lettering or designs. It was safer to stare at that than the empty seat across from her. The empty seat Joe had been in moments before.

  She was going to lose him. It had been less than a week, but she could see him slipping away from her, back into the friend slot he’d occupied for the last five years. It hurt, and it paralyzed. She could fix this, if she could just get over her fear.

  She pushed the cup away. He was right about one thing—not talking would only make it worse. One of her favorite things about him was he listened. It made up for wondering what the hell he was thinking half the time.

  She stood and dropped her cup in the trash. She had her purse; there was no reason to go back to the office. She’d run some errands while she figured out how to say what she needed to say without sounding incredibly insecure.

  A few hours later, she stood on the front steps of Joe’s apartment building, trying to work up the courage to press the buzzer to let him know she was there. He didn’t know she was coming, though.

  What if he wasn’t home?

  Stop it.

  She shifted her grip on her bag and hit the button next to his name. Wincing at the electronic whine, she stomped her feet a little to keep the blood circulating. It was too cold to be standing out there for very long.

  “Hello?”

  Home. Thank God. “Hey. It’s Drea.”

  Silence. “Come on up.”

  The door clicked, and she pulled it open, the warmth of the vestibule tropical compared to the twenty-degree temperature outside. Butterflies waged war in her stomach as she stepped into the elevator, their wings fluttering harder and faster as the car rose.

  Joe had the door open before she could knock, pulling her inside. “You look half-frozen.”

  She shrugged. The errands hadn’t helped, so she’d gotten off the Tube a few stops early and walked. Her toes were almost numb as a result.

  He pointed her to the couch, then headed for the kitchen. “Tea or hot chocolate?”

  She sat and started pulling off her boots. “Do you still have some of the Ghirardelli’s I brought over?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hot chocolate, then.” She grabbed the blanket from the other end of the couch and wrapped it around herself, shivering. So maybe walking twenty blocks wasn’t the smartest idea.

  Joe appeared a few minutes later, bearing a steaming mug of hot chocolate. “Ah, baby, why’d you do it?” Rather than hand her the mug, he set it on the coffee table and sat next to her, pulling her close.

  She turned her face into his neck and nuzzled, some of her anxiety fading away. “Needed to think,” she murmured. She tipped her head back. “Did you mean it?”

  He frowned. “Mean what?”

  This was the hard part. She tried to swallow past the ache in her throat and failed. “That if I wanted to go back to being friends, we could?”

  His face went blank, but he nodded. “Yeah. I did promise you I’d try. If that’s what you want, I’ll try.”

  She shivered again, and his hold tightened. It would be easier, less embarrassing, to talk to him if she didn’t have to see his face. She dropped her head onto his shoulder. “I keep thinking this isn’t going to last. That a few days from now, a week, a month, you’ll tell me it’s been fun, but we shouldn’t see each other anymore. You probably think it’s stupid, that I’m thinking about it too much, that I’m too worried about the future. I don’t,” she said softly. “I’ve had too many experiences where I’ve slept with a guy after a few dates, and a few weeks later, it’s over. It was a stab to my pride every time it happened. It made me wonder what I was doing wrong, so I stopped dating for a year. I met Zach, and he was willing to wait however long I needed. It reminded me that if I was patient, and kissed enough frogs, I’d find maybe not a prince, but a halfway decent guy.”

  Joe stayed quiet, and she plunged on. “This… I’ve done this, and I haven’t, and the part I’ve done before, my brain’s telling me to get out before I end up getting stabbed again, because that wound will hurt much, much worse than the ones before.”

  She reached for the mug and cupped her hands around it. “I don’t know how to ask you for what I want because I don’t know what I want. Words don’t mean a whole lot, and the last thing I’d ask you for is a commitment when neither of us is sure how this works.” She swallowed chocolate, trying to find more words, and couldn’t. She huddled under the blanket and cradled her mug.

  “You know what my first thought was Monday morning?” She glanced over at him. His sober look was a comfort and proof he was taking her fears seriously. “That I could get used to waking up next to you real quick. It scared the shit out of me. When you said you were going to stay at your place Monday night, I was relieved. Then I woke up Tuesday morning and missed you. That was even more terrifying.”

  She set the mug on the table as he continued. “Think of it like this. Those other guys, you barely knew them. We’ve had five years to get to know each other, and along those same lines, we’re not moving too fast. If anything, we moved slow. So slow it was like we weren’t even moving sometimes. You’re not the only one doing something new.” He framed her face with his hands. “But I’d really like to see if it gets less scary.”

  He wanted this. Wanted her. And that meant everything.

  She snaked a hand around the back of his neck and pulled his head down, rubbing her lips over his. Finally, finally, her anxiety quieted. This was Joe. She knew he hated pickles and that his favorite movie was A Time to Kill. She knew where he’d gone to college and that he secretly hoarded Sour Patch Kids. It might have taken her a while to find out he had a very talented tongue, but she knew now, and she was making up for lost time. She tilted her head, stroked her tongue into his mouth, deepening the kiss.

  Heat and desire tangled, and he lowered her to the couch, following her down. She wound her legs around his hips and smiled when he groaned. Long, slow minutes passed, and she lost herself in his kisses.

  She made a noise of protest as he eased back. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Slow, remember?” She glared as he kissed her again. “Can’t remember the last time I made out on the couch.” He grinned down at her. “Gonna let me get to second base later?”

  “Hmm. I might, since you warmed me up so nicely. I might even let you score a home run.” She kissed a path up his neck to his mouth, nipping into his chin along the way. God, she loved this, loved how free she felt with him. “You said something about ghost stories.” She trailed her fingers down his jaw.

  “I did. You didn’t bring stuff to stay overnight, did you?”

  She smirked. “Let me up for a minute.” He rolled off her, and she pushed to her feet and walked over to where she’d dropped her bag. “What do you think this is?”

  “A ginormous purse,” he said drily. “Similar to your other ginormous purses.”

  She made her way back to the couch and perched on the edge of a cushion. “One of the advantages of ginormous purses is all the stuff we can fit in them. Like a change of clothes. And shampoo.” An idea bloomed, and she froze. It was a step. A big one. One he might be amenable to. She reached into the bag and pulled out the bottle. When she’d thrown the clothes in the bag, she’d tossed in the new bottle of shampoo and bo
dy wash she’d just bought because they were handy. Now…

  “So you’ve got plenty of storage space, huh?” She set the bottle of shampoo on the table.

  He eyed it. “What does storage space have to do with shampoo?”

  She dug out the body wash and set it next to the shampoo. “It would sure make it easier on me if I didn’t have to cart everything back and forth to work. Clothes I can manage. Those can fold up small. Big, bulky plastic bottles, not so much.”

  He sat up so quick she almost fell off the couch. He grabbed the bottles and strode out of the room, and she hurried after him. “What are you doing?”

  He paused at the entrance to the bathroom. “Putting these where they belong.”

  She smiled. He was definitely scoring a home run later.

  Epilogue

  Three Months Later

  “I would have helped, you know.” Drea scowled at Joe.

  “The furniture was pretty heavy, and the movers took care of most of it.” He stopped in front of a brownstone that had been converted into apartments and dug for his keys. “Besides, I wanted to surprise you.”

  Joe opened the door to the building and led her inside. The vestibule was ten times nicer than hers, and better lit. There was no elevator. Off to one side was a narrow staircase, the bannister polished to a dull gleam.

  They climbed the stairs to the second floor. “There’s only three units, one per floor, so it’s pretty quiet. He unlocked the door. “Step back a little.” Placing his hand on the doorknob, he stooped, then opened the door. Two seconds later she saw the reason for his weird behavior. A tiny gray kitten shot through the narrow opening right into Joe’s waiting hand. “Seriously should have been named Houdini,” he muttered.

  She opened her mouth to ask about the cat when she got her first good look at the living room. The words died in her throat as she spun in a slow circle, taking it in.