Maid for Each Other(59)
“Is that bad?” she asked, lowering her hands so they were resting on my chest.
“It’s distracting,” I replied, wondering what she was thinking. “Kind of makes me forget where we are.”
I wished we were at my apartment, because I was desperate to explore this further, but I was glad we weren’t because sex wasn’t going to make anything about our relationship easier to read.
She nodded. Her eyes roamed my face, and I could tell her mind was running wild.
“So what was that about?” she said, raising her fingers to touch her lower lip. “Did you see someone from Hathaway?”
“No,” I admitted. “That one was just us.”
“Just us?” she said quietly.
I swallowed and hated that our arrangement was even being brought up. But since I didn’t know what she wanted, I admitted, “I kissed you because I wanted to. You look beautiful, I like your mouth, you kiss like a goddess—and we both liked it. That’s it. So maybe let’s not overthink it…？”
That made her blink fast, like she was surprised.
I nearly shouted with relief when she gave a little nod and said, “Okay, I won’t.”
Because I didn’t know what I would’ve done if she hadn’t felt the same way about that kiss.
At around four thirty she declared she was famished, so I called my favorite little Italian place （the owner did tend to call me Dekkie when I only went in for a drink, but I wasn’t about to admit that） and they squeezed us in at the bar.
But after the server brought us a bottle of wine, that nervousness appeared again on her face. She looked at me and said, “So what is this? I was trying to not overthink it, but I can’t make sense of something I’ve never experienced. I don’t have friends who fly me to New York to hang out for a day just because. It feels very weird that I’m not paying for anything, even though I know that all these expenses mean nothing to you.”
She looked so stressed about it that I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to stop her worries with my mouth on hers, but I knew she needed to get this out.
“It just feels strange to me,” she said, the dim lighting somehow making her look even prettier. “It’s not a normal situation that happens within a friendship. It gives it more of a relationship vibe, and I’m not saying that you want a relationship at all, by the way, I totally don’t think that. But I just feel like I don’t exactly know how I’m supposed to act because I don’t know what this is.”
It made perfect sense; nothing about the day had felt like just friends.
It’d been a perfect daylong date.
“What do you want it to be?” I asked, desperate to know the answer.
“Are you kidding me?” She laughed, shaking her head and looking at me like I was nuts. “Talk about your loaded question.”
“Abi,” I said, pausing to take down a little of my Manhattan because I felt like I needed backup. I swallowed the cold liquid, feeling the warmth of the alcohol in my stomach, and told her, “We’re friends, and if you want it to stay that way, you say the word. I mean, I’ve done this for Roman before; I’ve flown him in out of boredom and he’s hung out at my place for a few days.”
“Really?” she asked, and I could tell it made her feel better.
“Sure,” I said. “So if you want to be another Roman, that’s absolutely fine.”
I considered myself to be a self-aware person, and I had become painfully aware during the course of the day that my feelings for Abi were growing at an exponential rate.
But because of how we met, I wanted it to move forward organically—if it did at all. I didn’t want her to feel pressured or like I had the upper hand in the power dynamics of our situation.
I just wanted to hang out with Abi and if it felt right, gradually move on to more.
“Another Roman,” she said, smiling. “That’s a new one.”
“Right?” I said, praying to God she felt a fraction of what I was feeling because when I looked at her, I was a little overwhelmed. “For the rest of tonight and until you leave tomorrow morning, let’s not define this. Let’s just see where this goes on its own, okay?”
27
Vibes
Abi
I could tell he was interested in more.
I wasn’t thinking that in a cocky way, like I thought THE Declan Powell wanted to wife me up, but we had good chemistry and it felt like he wanted to explore it.
Which terrified me.
Because I felt all the same chemistry pulls, dear God so much, and I was being swallowed by the urge to absolutely throw myself into it and not even worry about coming up for air.
But I knew my heart couldn’t take him moving on. I knew my heart couldn’t take him losing interest. It’d be bad enough to eventually lose my friend Dex, but the idea of completely falling into a relationship with him, something deeper, much more passionate—and losing that?
It was too much for me.
“Sorry, Dexxie,” I said, injecting a teasing tone into my voice. “I get what you’re saying, but I absolutely do not think we should do that. I like you a lot, but I have no desire to be in a relationship with anyone right now. So if we do this and find we’re interested in more, that’s a big fat fail because I don’t want to be. So I’d prefer we just stick to being friends.”