I worry my lip between my teeth as Alex sits up, tugging on his boxers. Mentally, I’m preparing my casual “Wow, it’s getting so late!”
But Alex goes completely off script and says, “Want a drink? I’m parched.”
“Um.” I start gathering up my clothes. “That’s okay.”
“I’ve got raspberry lime seltzer,” he calls, heading to his wannabe kitchen. “Diet Coke, bottled tea, and beer. What’s calling to you?”
I hesitate for a second before I decide he’s genuinely asking. I, too, am parched from the excessive sexual intercourse. “Diet Coke.”
Alex comes back holding a Diet Coke and a can of seltzer. “Catch.”
I have to drop my bra to stop the can from hitting me in the face, but I catch it, setting it beside me in the bed. I grab my bra from my lap and try to put it on.
The sinking of the mattress only makes my hands tremble with urgency, but half a breath later, his hands are gently tugging my bra away. Deeply he says, “Could you be naked for, like, thirty more seconds, please? As a personal favor?”
The shock is obvious on my face. I’m unable to disguise it, considering I’ve never heard any line like that before. Alex grins at my expression, hair falling over his eyes, and he turns his gaze on my body, slowly but deliberately cataloging.
Though I wouldn’t consider myself fair skinned, I do flush head to toe at the slightest provocation, and right now, I’m on fire.
Let’s put it this way: I’m not ashamed of my body by any stretch, but I’d also never walk naked around a guy’s place on purpose.
He settles beside me, a finger trailing across my stomach. “I’ve thought of you like this more often than I should admit,” he whispers. I gulp, feeling heat bloom in my core again. “The fact that I infuriated you only made me want you more desperately.”
Want. It’s a very deliberate way for him to phrase it. My body gets dunked in a metaphorical ice bath when I consider that, to Alex, maybe this was all one big chase.
The girl he couldn’t get. The one who, for so long, wouldn’t bend.
He wants me. Physically. I’m an accomplishment, a win. But he also told me point-blank he understands why I think I’m nobody’s dream girl.
I want it stated for the record that I do have the thought End this now, before it starts to hurt. It blips across my mind at the speed of light, but his breath warming my ear erases it.
Completely.
“Case?”
Through my brain fog, I try to pick up the last thread of our conversation. “You still infuriate me,” I say, just to be contrary.
He frowns, attention focused on a cluster of freckles on my shoulder. “How so?”
A sigh I try to feign as exhaustion slips out, but it’s more a response to his fingers on my body. “To be honest, you can be just as much of a distraction for me.”
He smirks. “Really.”
“Not like that.” Yes, like that. “Your and Gus’s grand plans for BTH take up all my energy. Do you even know how much money launching a subsidiary company costs?”
“A lot?”
“A lot.”
“It’s worth it, Simba,” Alex says. “A social news and entertainment platform is exactly what LC needs to stay contemporary. Tell me, have you ever gotten a bonus?”
“No,” I admit.
“Are print subscribers not shrinking?”
“Yes.”
“Is BuzzFeed not a popular concept?”
“Alex,” I groan.
He laughs, reclining. “We’re so close to being ready to pitch our growth strategy. We’d get staff expansion, and Gus will probably be promoted to editor in chief.” Alex looks at me. “Maybe we’ll even get you, in a more permanent capacity.” I’m kind of distracted by his hands tracing circles on my skin, so I nearly miss the way his face changes when he says, “Well. Until London, that is.”
“Right. London.”
I have no clue whether Bite the Hand—and Alex’s job by extension—would stay safe through an acquisition. On one hand, there’s not much like it on the market, which makes the concept desirable. On the other, it’s an expensive new venture that might get put on a back burner for years.
The shine in his eyes has me arching toward him, a sunflower straining toward its light source. He’s so beautiful. Always, but especially now, lit up from the inside out as he talks about all the plans he has for BTH, all the big, bright ideas.
He’d make a good CEO.
“Alex,” I whisper. “What if something terrible happens?”
His eyes flick down to mine, and they gutter a little at my expression. “What terrible thing is going to happen?” he murmurs. It’s an unassuming question. He’s not hunting for intel, but I think he finds some anyway. “Hey,” he says. “At the end of the day, we can romanticize our jobs all we want, but we’re just selling magazines. When you think about it like that, the stakes are embarrassingly low.”
But what if the stakes were actually that we might not have jobs to romanticize?
I push the thought out and shake my head. “You’re right.” My fingers pull at the tab of my soda, and it erupts, spewing froth all over me. “Crap! You really had to throw it.”
Wordlessly, Alex leans down and slurps Diet Coke off my stomach.
“Alex!” I shriek.
He sits back up. “I acknowledge that that was weird, but I don’t want to wash my sheets yet. The laundromat near my building is … not near my building.” He grins as I shake my head and take a sip of my drink. Then, seconds later, he gives me a straight command: “Tell me what’s got you so interested in London.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Can I tell you with my clothes on?”
His face falls, which makes me giggle. “I guess.”
I re-dress and sit on the edge of the bed, and Alex reclines, one hand behind his head as he waits patiently for my answer. I fight an irrational urge to climb into his lap, but the inked reminder of his tattoo spread across his forearm catches my eye.
“My mom was from London,” I start. “Notting Hill, actually. But her parents were the stereotypical type of British stuffy that’s more obtuse than it is endearing, and she moved to the US as a band’s photographer-slash-groupie when she was my age. She and my dad met at a music festival, fell in love, and she never moved back to the UK.”
“Wow,” Alex says. “That’s, like, a whole movie plot.”
“Yeah.” I laugh.
“So, you want to move to London to feel connected to her?”
I consider this. “Yes and no,” I say, twiddling my thumbs. “I mean, yes, part of me wants to go specifically there because she was from there. But in a broader sense, I just … I just have this urge to drop everything and go. I’ve spent a lot of my life scared of change—I mean, I’ve never traveled anywhere except the Florida Panhandle and one trip out west in an RV—and then, I moved to New York, which was objectively terrifying, and I could have crashed and burned. But instead, my whole world opened up, and I just crave that feeling now. I want more of it. I can’t just settle anymore, not now that I know there’s another option. And London makes sense because Little Cooper has a branch there, which means I could afford to live abroad, and I think working for Take Me There would be the coolest. So, really, it just seems like a job and a life that’s been waiting for me to want it.”