Ted is nothing if not predictable. He took me to the Ethiopian restaurant I told him I’d been wanting to try （excellent）; he raised topics of conversation I know enough about to feel comfortable, but not so familiar that I got bored within a few minutes; and now, now that he’s walked me to my door, he’s going to lean in and kiss me, just like I could have anticipated when he picked me up exactly three hours ago.
It is, predictably, a good kiss. A solid kiss. It could probably lead into good sex if I decided to invite him inside for a drink. Solid sex. Long-time-no-have sex. We’re talking years, here. Helena would pop the champagne and remind me to dust off the cobwebs.
And yet.
I have no intention to ask him to come in. It’s truly been ages, but this thing with Ted is just . . . no.
He’s a nice guy, but this is not going to work, for a variety of reasons. That, I tell myself, have nothing to do with how long Liam stared at me earlier today, before Ted pulled up our driveway. Or with the way he instantly averted his gaze when I caught him. Or with the hoarse quality of his voice when he took in my dress and said, “I . . . You look beautiful.”
He sounded like he wanted to say something else. A little wistful. Almost apologetic. It made me regret spending thirty minutes putting on makeup to go out with someone else, some poor guy I don’t even want to impress for the simple reason that he isn’t . . .
Yeah.
“I . . .” I take a deep breath and take a step back from Ted, whose only fault is . . . not being another guy. I cannot picture him watching The Bachelor with me, which is apparently a deal breaker. The more you know, huh? “I’m gonna go inside now. But thanks for everything. I had a lovely evening.”
If Ted is disappointed, I can’t tell. To his credit, he hesitates only briefly. Then he smiles and retreats to his car without any I’ll call you or See you next time that we both know would be nothing more than lies of politeness. I silently thank the EPA gods for transferring him to another team last week, and make my way inside.
I’m surprised to find Liam in the living room, sitting on the couch with a beer in one hand, a stack of papers in another, ridiculously cute reading glasses perched on his nose. Or maybe I’m not. It’s Saturday night, after all. We usually spend our Saturday nights on that very couch, watching TV, talking about everything and nothing. It makes sense that he’s here, even though I was gone.
For the life of me, I can’t remember a better activity than staying at home in my pj’s and hanging out with my roommate.
“What are you reading?”
Liam glances up at me, takes in my short-but-not-too-short dress, my loose hair, my red lips, then immediately looks back to his papers. “Just a guideline document for work.”
“How to achieve your very own oil spill in ten easy steps?”
His lips quirk upward. “I think you only need the one.”
“Listen, we’ve been over this. It’s okay if you don’t want to quit just yet, but the very least you can do is not work on weekends. Come on, Liam. Do it for the environment.”
He sighs, but he takes off his glasses and puts away the papers. I smile and reach forward to grab his beer and take a sip without bothering to ask. Liam studies me in silence, but doesn’t start reading again. When I lift one eyebrow—what?—he caves, and asks: “Isn’t he coming in?”
“Who?”
Liam looks toward the entrance.
“Ah.” Right. Other men exist, too. Hard to remember, sometimes. “No. Ted’s not . . . He went home.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not . . . We’re not . . .” How to put it? “We haven’t . . .”
Liam nods, though he cannot possibly have made sense of what I just mumbled. And then he says nothing. And then things seem to get a bit weird. There is an odd tension in the room. Like we’re both holding back something. I’d rather not search inside myself to figure out what.
“I should go to bed.”
“Okay.” He swallows. “Good night.”
It might be that two fuzzy navels were too many, or maybe I just never really got the hang of high heels. The fact remains that I lose my balance and stumble just as I try to walk past him. His hands, large and solid and warm even through my dress, close around my hips until I’m stable again. I’m standing, and he’s sitting down, and like this I’m several inches taller than him, and . . . It’s new, seeing him from this perspective. He looks younger, almost softer, and my first drunken instinct is to cup his face, trace the line of his nose, run my thumb over his lower lip.
I stop myself, but my slow, misfiring brain doesn’t. It feeds me an odd image: Liam smiling and pulling me down in his lap. Pushing between my knees. His hands skimming up my thighs, under my dress, tickling my skin, making me laugh. He reaches my lower back and his grip tightens, long fingers sliding under the elastic of my panties, cupping my ass to press me to . . . Oh. He is hard. Big. Insistent. He arranges me exactly how he wants me and I exhale just as he groans in my ear, “Careful, Mara.”
Wait. What?
I blink out of whatever the hell that was, just as Liam lets go of me. He says, “Careful, Mara,” and I take a step back before I can humiliate myself with something moronic and utterly embarrassing.
“Thanks.” Our eyes hold for what feels like too long. I clear my throat. “Are you going to bed, too?”
“Not yet.”
“You are not allowed to read more oil spill stuff, Liam.”
“Then maybe I’ll just play a bit.”
“Without Calvin?” I cock my head. “Didn’t you say Calvin would come over?”
“He was supposed to.”
“You know what?” I run a hand through my hair. It’s a split-second decision. “I’m actually not that sleepy, either. Should I play with you?”
He laughs. “Really?”
“Yes. What?” I take off my shoes, grab a blanket—the one he put on me that first night, the one that’s been in this room ever since—and let myself fall on the couch, right next to him. A little too close, maybe, but Liam doesn’t complain. “I have a Ph.D. I can pretend to kill bad guys using a . . . joystick?”
“Controller.” He shakes his head, but he looks . . . happy, I think. “Have you ever played a video game?”
“Nope. Full disclosure, they look awful and I’m not sure why an obviously smart person with a bunch of Ivy League degrees that cost more than my internal organs could ever be so much into this pew-pew crap, but I run a Bachelor blog, so I have no leg to stand on.” I shrug. “So, what happened to Calvin?”
“Couldn’t make it.”
“Playing with someone else?”
“A date.”
I hum. “Maybe you should have joined him. Was Emma busy?”
He gives me a look that I cannot quite decipher. As though there’s something catastrophically wrong about what I said. “I told you, Emma doesn’t want to date me any more than I want to date her.”
I doubt it. Who wouldn’t? Also, how freaked out would you be if I told you that the other night I dreamt of you and Emma, sitting side by side in the kitchen, and I was sad? But only for a little. Because after a while it wasn’t you and Emma. It was you and me and you were standing between my legs and you put your hands on my inner thighs and you pushed them open, wider, to make room for yourself and— “You could date someone else, then,” I blurt out. To put a halt to what’s going on in my head.