I bring my right hand to her chin, gently tipping her face up toward me. My heart rate quickens, and I lick my lips as our gazes lock. Her eyes shimmer with desire that looks so damn authentic. I tug her close, and her lips part, a soft breath escaping as our eyes close. Judging from her reaction, it sure as hell feels like she wants this in a way that goes well beyond the reason we’re play acting. But then I stop thinking of reasons at all, as I slant my mouth to hers. The world slows, and I kiss Harper as the pair of fans across the street hoot and holler, shouting “woohoo” and “hell, yeah” and finally a victorious, “She’s saved!”
This is the payoff, and what a payoff it is.
I want to high-five them for goading her, or goading me, or whatever happened to make this moment possible.
Because this is exhilarating.
Our lips graze. There’s a hint of lip gloss, and the faintest taste of the Long-Distance Lover she drank at the bar. I brush my lips across hers, a barely-there caress that’s full of promise, a hint of what it could become if it were real, without the audience.
Whatever this kiss is, it possesses its own pulse, its own frequency, as if the air around us is charged and vibrating with sensual energy.
Or maybe it’s just me, because my body is humming. My skin tingles, and this whisper of a kiss lights me up all over, making my mind gallop far beyond the payoff.
“Your lips are so soft,” I whisper against her, and she gasps in response, then presses her mouth to me once more, murmuring, “Yours, too.”
We’ve pulled off the ruse with aplomb, but when her lips sweep across mine one more time, it feels way more than necessary for the kiss-the-girl dare to be authentic.
It feels like it’s slipped into more.
But just as the lingering build becomes almost unbearable and I’m ready to slide my tongue between her lips, the guys shout and clap, beginning a chorus of “Mister O!” that kills the mood.
We snap apart.
Harper blinks, stares down, then slides her gaze back up. The look in her eyes is guilty, like she feels bad that we locked lips. “Well,” she says brightly, as if she’s trying to smooth over an awkward moment, “good thing Mister O gave the girl the right dosage for the kissing virus.”
I clear my throat, trying to make sense of what she just said. Of what just happened. Of how we basically reenacted a scene from my show. How I’m the hero, and she’s the girl I rescued from doom.
“I mean, they totally expected you to do that,” she adds, like she needs to justify our kiss.
“Yeah, definitely,” I say, going along with her, because my brain is swimming in a sea of endorphins, and agreeing is way easier than anything else. I glance across the street and give the duo a quick thumbs up.
“She’s all good,” I tell them, as Mister O said in the show.
Harper joins in, waving, too. She turns back to me and parks her hand on my shoulder. “Those guys worship you and the ladies’ man character you created.”
I scrunch my brow, wishing we weren’t talking about fictional shit right now, because that felt really fucking real to me. But I have no idea if she liked that kiss as much as I did.
“I’m all about the show,” I say, seconding her, as the peanut gallery heads off into the night.
She laughs, then her expression shifts, and it’s earnest again, like when she first opened up at the bar. “I really appreciate your help with this whole dating thing,” she says, and the kiss has vanished into the night. The trick is over, and the magician and the show creator have left the stage. We’re just Harper and Nick now, buddies with a secret project.
“Of course. I’m happy to do it. And, like I told you, Jason is really into you,” I say, since it’s so much easier for me to make sense of the other dude right now than to sort out the tangled mess in my head.
She shrugs and quirks up the corner of her lips. “Yeah?”
“Absolutely. You should go for it with him,” I say, mustering false enthusiasm as I try to return to being her dating tutor, even though I might be a candidate for a split personality study since we just kissed, and now I’m telling her to go all-out for another guy. Maybe I caught some new strain of her babble-around-someone-I’m-into virus with that kiss.
“You think so?” she asks, with an inquisitive tilt of her head.
“Definitely. He might be the man of your dreams.” Yup. A full-blown case of it.
She shoots me a skeptical look, then shrugs. “Would you meet me after I go out with him, so I can tell you everything while it’s fresh in my mind?” she asks, placing her palms together. I’m about to say no, when she adds, “After all, I did 1919 White Sox for you.”
“Then you made me look like a rock star in front of my fans just now,” I say, still on autopilot. But even though I’m reluctant, I did sign up to help her, so this is, evidently, the drill. “Let me know where and when.”
“I’ll text you,” she says, then heads up the steps, and I watch as she unlocks the door to her building, turns around, and waves to me through the glass.
Then she’s gone, taking with her the best and strangest first kiss I’ve ever had.
I return to my home on Seventy-Third, a fourth-floor apartment with exposed brick walls and a huge window sporting a view of the park. As the door shuts behind me with a faint click, I ask myself if it even counts as a first kiss if you don’t know if it was real or just a dare?
I don’t think it lasted more than fifteen seconds, but those fifteen seconds echo inside me, and I can still feel the imprint of her lips on mine. I can still smell her sweet scent when I breathe in. I can still hear her soft gasp in my ears.
I wish I knew if she was in her apartment, lingering on those fifteen seconds, too.
But I can’t know, and I won’t know.
I do the one thing that’s been a constant my whole life. The one thing that never frustrates me, and that always centers me. I toe off my shoes, flop down on my cushy gray couch by the big bay window, and grab my notebook. I have another episode to work on, and even though I don’t do all the writing and animating anymore, the ideas and the storylines are mine.
But as I put the pencil to paper, I find I’m not in the mood to problem-solve for a cartoon hero. Instead, I just draw. Freestyle. Whatever comes to mind.
The trouble is when I finish, it’s a caricature of a certain redhead in Daisy Dukes and high heels, working under the hood of a car. I give the drawing the evil eye, and toss it on the coffee table. Me and my fucking imagination, getting away from me once again.
A text arrives from her a minute later, and I wish I didn’t feel a spark of possibility when I see her name.
The spark is doused coldly as I read the message.
Coffee with Jason Saturday afternoon. Meet afterward?
It’s official. It was a kiss on a dare, and it absolutely doesn't count. In fact, it’s as if it never happened, so I file it away in the not-gonna-happen-again drawer, then I tell her yes. After that, I finally write back to Spencer, making plans to see him this weekend. Perfect. That’ll knock his sister right out of my solar system.
8
“What if a Great Dane mated with a chipmunk?”
I roll my eyes at the question my brother poses the next morning as we crunch across a pile of fallen leaves on the path in Central Park. Autumn has coasted into New York City, and the colors are gorgeous. For a moment, I study a cranberry-red leaf that has drifted to the ground, picturing how I’d use that color in an animation. This is something I’ve always done; it’s second nature for me to think about color, shades, and all the permutations they can take.
“Would the Great Dane have a fluffy tail, or would the chipmunk have crazy long legs?” Wyatt continues.
“Dude, you know that’s not how this works,” I say to my brother as the Min Pin mix I’m walking tugs on the end of the leash in hot pursuit of a squirrel.
“Or a squirrel and a Min Pin,” Wyatt suggests, waving an arm at the critter.
“Again, you’re getting away from the focus of the dog mash-ups game,” I remind him as the long-haired, white-and-brown teacup Chihuahua he’s walking tries to chase the tail of my dog. Well, not my dog, but the one I’m walking for a local animal rescue, Little Friends, that specializes in finding homes for small apartment-friendly dogs. We both volunteer there.
“Iguana and a terrier,” he suggests, trying once more, then his furry friend balances on her two front legs, lifts her rear, legs and all, and pees on the grass.
“Handstand piss!” my brother shouts, doing a little victory shuffle by the tree.
I high-five him with my non-leash hand, because that is a serious win in our other dog game—dog bingo. We’re multitaskers. We can play two games at once. “Ten points. Nice work,” I say, but I’m competitive as hell with my little brother, and even though we’re almost done with the walk, I’ve still got a chance to beat him. “But not if a fire truck drives by and mine howls.”
He shoots me a doubtful look as we make our way out of the park. “Yeah, don’t bank on that. That’s both the unicorn and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in dog bingo.”
“Someday I’ll get it, though,” I say, since dogs howling, especially tiny dogs like these two, is kind of fucking adorable, and that’s why it’s fifty points on our scorecard of random, unplanned canine activities. That’s our version of car bingo, which we’ve played since we were kids. Points are also awarded to dog yoga poses, in honor of our dad, who’s the most laidback guy you’ll ever meet. I credit that to him being a yoga teacher, and to my mom keeping him well fed with her cupcakes. And no, I mean cupcakes literally, because I’m not even going there or thinking about that.
Ever.
Anyway, Wyatt and I both love dogs. We grew up with a bunch of small ones, as well as a little sister, Josie. Dogs kept us from killing each other. I love my brother like crazy, but he’s also a total pain in the ass. Younger brothers are like that, even though he’s only younger by five minutes.
“Corgi Mastiff pair-up. Who was on top?”
“Mastiff,” I answer immediately, as we return to our other dog game. Because who’s on top is the point of Dog Mash-ups.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, imagine how the Corgi felt. Greyhound Basset?”
“Greyhound. And now their puppies try to run with those short little legs and their toes turned out,” he says, as we leave the park and make our way uptown to where Little Friends shares space with a doggy day-care.
“Hey, you know the chick who runs the little dog center?” he asks, shifting gears.
“Penny, you mean?”
He nods. “She asked if I would help fix up a section of the rescue.”
Before I can respond, I spot a woman across the street with a long mane of red hair blowing in the breeze, walking into my building. Her hair is like the color of that leaf—red with a golden tint.
“Whoa,” Wyatt says, stopping in his tracks at the crosswalk and leaving the Penny conversation in the dust. His teacup buddy pulls up short. “Who’s the sexy little snake charmer heading into your building?”
I smack him on the back of his head. “Seriously. That’s not cool, man.”
“Ouch,” he says, rubbing his skull as a bus rumbles by.
I shoot him a steely glare. “That did not hurt. Don’t even pretend.”
He matches my evil eye. “It was a legit question. Since when am I not allowed to—?”
He cuts himself off, and his lips form an oval. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.” He repeats the sound as if it’s the refrain to a rap song. He punches me in the arm. “You have a thing for Little Red Riding Hood.”
Shit. This is my brother. My unfiltered, does-not-know-the-meaning-of-TMI, fraternal twin brother. I push my glasses up higher on my nose, and glance at the crosswalk sign. The little man is now green.
“You like her,” he continues as we cross Central Park West.
“No.” I shake my head, keeping all lingering images of the kiss that didn’t count at bay. “She’s a friend, so it’s rude to talk that way.”
“What way?” he asks, challenging.
“I know what you were going to say, Woodrow,” I say using the middle name that he loathes. “That you wanted to tap that.”
He gets in my face as we walk, mocking me. “Aww . . . and look at you going all protective. That’s adorable.” He snaps his gaze to my building when we reach the sidewalk. “Wait.”
I follow his eyes to see Harper turn around and head out of my building, grabbing at her phone, a big grocery bag on her arm.
“Randall Hammer,” he says, throwing my middle name back at me, since I hate mine, too. “Does Spencer know you’re hot for his sister?”
Fuck my life. She’s half a block away now. Her eyes light up when she sees me, and she drops her phone in her purse then waves. All I can think is now would be an excellent time for a cop car or fire truck to roar by, sirens blaring. Wyatt can have all the points he wants and then some if his dog howls.
“I’m not hot for her. She’s a friend. Besides, the chipmunk was on top of the Great Dane,” I say to distract him. Sometimes, you just have to throw a dog a bone.
That cracks him up and earns me a temporary reprieve as Harper arrives and greets my brother first. “Hey, Wyatt. Haven’t seen you in a while. How’s everything?” she asks, and he moves in for a hug. With his hand still gripping the dog’s leash he wraps his arms around Harper and then wiggles his eyebrows at me and mouths, Charming my snake.
He’s such a little shit.
“Do you have a dog now?” she asks once she separates from him, and I swear I breathe easier now that my brother’s arms are no longer around her.
“Does it make you want me?” he tosses back at her.
Harper laughs, shaking her head in amusement. “I see you still haven’t had the surgery yet.”
He smirks. “The one to install that filter between my brain and my mouth?”
She nods. “That one.”
He shakes his head vigorously. “Nope. But the surgeon has an opening next week.”
“Excellent. I’ll come visit you in the hospital.” She gestures to the dogs. “What’s the story here?”
“They’re with Little Friends rescue,” I say.
My brother chimes back in, resting his elbow on my shoulder, acting all casual and cool. “Did you know Nick and I walk dogs from the rescue two days a week?”
Her eyes sparkle at both of us, but she shifts her gaze to meet mine. “That’s really sweet.”
My heart flips, and I’m right back to last night outside her building.
The didn’t-happen kiss, you dumbass.
“It was my idea. I’m the sweet brother,” Wyatt says, turning on his sparkling smile.
“Hey,” I say, butting in. “Didn’t you say you had to talk to Penny about hammering her? Oh, sorry. I meant hammering some nails in her building.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Ha ha ha.” He reaches for the leash I’m holding. “Give me your little dude. I’ll take them back,” he says. The rescue isn’t far from here. I bend down and give one dog a scratch on the chin, then the other.
As I stand, Wyatt bows to both of us and bids a dramatic adieu. “I’ll let you two get back to your reindeer games.”
I want to whack him, but that’s par for the course.
When Wyatt leaves, I turn to the star of my dirty dreams. Her lips are curved in a grin, and she seems pleasantly surprised. “I didn’t know you did that with the dogs.”
“I like dogs. I like helping out, too.” And this ease of conversation reminds me that the kiss didn’t happen for her either, so we are all good.
“I like that. No, I love that,” she says, and her expression is soft, free of the usual undercurrent of sarcasm. The way she says it is disarming and makes me feel warm all over, not just hot for her. “I help out at the New York ASPCA. I do some fundraising for them.”
“You do? I had no idea.”
“Yeah. I hel
p organize some of the 5Ks to raise money for shelter pets, spread the word on social media, help set up the events . . . Someday, I’ll get a dog. For now, I do what I can.”
“That’s awesome,” I say, enjoying learning this new detail about her. I’ve been friends with her for so long, but not best friends, so uncovering these pieces of her is a whole new experience. “What kind of dog do you want?”
“The kind that laughs at all my jokes,” she says, and I laugh.
“Sounds perfect. I’d like that kind of mutt, too.”
She clears her throat and holds up the canvas grocery bag. “You might be wondering why I’m here.”
“The thought did cross my mind. But then I figured you were bringing me groceries. Please tell me there’s a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and two spoons in there.”
A too-big pout forms on her face. “Damn it. I really fucked up. But I know what to get you next time. For now, I have this offering of detergent. I was just going to leave it with the doorman,” she says, glancing in the direction of my building.
But she didn’t leave it with the doorman. She’s still carrying it, and she was hunting for her phone a minute ago, like she was trying to call me. Maybe to tell me she was here? Hell, maybe she wanted an excuse to see me.
Before my thoughts careen out of control, I give myself a mental eye-roll.
Yeah, right. If the chick were into you, she’d be speaking in tongues and babbling.
She’s not. In fact, she’s cool, confident Harper. Ergo, I’m reading something into nothing.
I take the bag and thank her. “You really didn’t have to. I was going to pick some up today after work.”
“But this way I can convert you to my brand. It’s cruelty-free. No animal testing.”
“Ah, that’s awesome.”
“Want to know what else is awesome? It smells really good.”
I groan. “Am I going to smell like lavender or something girly?”
“I don’t think so. I use it. Want to sniff me?”
I freeze. A million dirty thoughts dance in my head. I would fucking love to sniff her, to inhale her scent, to run my nose along her neck, down her breasts, across her belly. Then I decide, fuck it. This chick asked me to teach her about dating. She needs to know that the things that come out of her mouth are sometimes insanely naughty. I park a hand on her shoulder. “You are aware that sounded ridiculously filthy? Tell me you know that. I need to understand how far back your training must go.”
Mister O Page 6
