“Pizza?” I ask sadly, noticing the bare counters. Technically they’re anything but bare, but I’ve become so desensitized to Lo’s liquor bottles that they might as well be invisible or another kitchen appliance.
“It’s on its way,” he says. “Stop giving me those doe eyes. You look like you’re about to cry.” He leans against the fridge, and I subconsciously eye the zipper to his jeans. I imagine his gaze on the strap to my robe. I don’t look up to ruin the image. “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”
“I’m not sure.” I have a one-track mind, and it doesn’t involve food.
“That’s discomforting, Lil.”
“I eat,” I defend poorly. I see him pulling my robe in my fantasy. Maybe I should drop it for him. NO! Don’t do it, Lily. I finally look up and he watches me so carefully that my face immediately begins to heat.
He smiles into a sip of his glass. When he brings it down, he licks his lips. “Do you want me to unbutton them, love, or should I wait for you to get on your knees first?”
I gape, mortified. He saw right through me. I’m so obvious!
With his free hand, he pushes his button through the hole and slowly unzips, showing the hem of his black tight boxer-briefs. He watches my breathing go in and out, jagged and sporadic. Then he takes his hands off his jeans and leans his elbows on the counter. “Did you brush your teeth?”
“Stop,” I tell him, way too raspy. “You’re killing me.” Seriously, my entire body, not just my lungs, hyperventilates.
His cheekbones sharpen, his jaw locking. He sets his drink down and then zips up his jeans, fishing the button back through.
I swallow hard and tensely hop on the gray wooden bar stool. With shaky fingers, I run them through my tangled, wet hair. To stop replaying the moment, I pretend it never happened and go back to our earlier conversation. “It’s a little difficult to constantly stuff my face when we never have food here.” We eat out way too often.
“I don’t think you have a problem stuffing your face,” he says, “just not with food.”
I bite my gums and flip him off. His words would hurt more from anyone else. But Lo has his own issue that rests in the palm of his hand. Everyone can see it, and as I glance between him and the drink, his crooked smile hardens. He presses the rim of the glass to his lips and turns his back on me.
I don’t talk to Lo about feelings. About how it makes him feel to watch me bring home a different guy every night. And he doesn’t ask me how it feels to watch him drown into oblivion. He stifles his judgment and I withhold mine, but our silence draws tension between us, inescapable. It pulls so taught that sometimes I just want to scream. But I keep it inside. I hold back. Every comment that undercuts our addictions fractures the system in place. The one where we both live being free to do as we please. Me, bedding any guy. Him, drinking all of the time.
The buzzer rings beside the door. Pizza?! I beam and head over to the speaker box in the foyer, pressing the button. “Hello?”
“Miss Calloway, you have a guest downstairs. Should I send her up?” says the female security attendant.
“Who?”
“Your sister, Rose.”
I internally groan. No pizza. Time to pretend with Lo again—even though he’s fond of keeping up the charade when no one’s around, just to taunt me. “Send her up.”
Lo goes into roadrunner mode and zips around the kitchen, shutting liquor bottles into locked cabinets, pouring his drink into a tinted blue cup. I click the remote and the flat-screen TV blinks to an action flick. Lo plops on the gray-stitched sofa and kicks his feet onto the glass coffee table, acting like we’ve been immersed in the movie for the past half hour.
He pats his lap. “Come here.” His amber eyes swim with mischievousness.
“I’m not dressed,” I retort. And the spot between my legs already pulses too heavily to be in touching distance of him. The thought electrifies my nerves.
“You’re wearing a robe,” Lo rebuts. “I’ve seen you naked plenty of times.”
“When we were kids,” I retort.
“And I’m sure your breasts haven’t grown since then.”
My mouth falls. “Oh, you are…” I find a pillow on the nearby chair and start assaulting him with it. I get two good hits in before he swoops his arms around my waist and pulls me on his lap.
“Lo,” I warn. He’s been teasing me all day, making it harder than normal to withstand him.