A far and insignificant memory compared to being guided through a restaurant by a possessive palm on the small of my back. Wrapped like a present with a bow cinching me together at the waist of my velvet green mini dress, complete with high heels, black sheer stockings, golden bangles, tiered hoop earrings, and lips red like pomegranate.
The air tasted expensive, an aroma of charred meats and spices carrying us through the dimly lit and festive dining room. Dark, wooden booths were decorated tastefully in fir branches and brambles. Pinecones and needles weaved in and out of floor-to-ceiling pillars, and the chandeliers hung low enough their light just brushed the tables.
Mateo and Natalia sat and I felt a tug on my waist, Frankie’s fingers digging into the soft skin above my hip enough to have me falling back against his chest. His chin dipped to rest on my shoulder briefly, lips grazing the shell of my ear.
“You look unreal, you know that?”
I released too shaky a breath to play off, and his smile widened against my skin. Every touch had been charged since our fleeting hello as Natalia and I had filed into the backseat of Mateo’s car when they picked us up. While we drove, he reached an arm back to clasp his warm fingers around my ankle.
I felt a massive, anticipatory weight on my body—but instead of hurting me, it amplified everything to an acute degree. Every emotion felt unapologetic, graceful touches became godless, an innocent look ignited something hotter, like wick to flame. Something had changed in the two days since I’d last seen Frankie. Whether that be the way we viewed our arrangement, or the way he viewed his future after visiting his family—the urgency between us was heralding.
My stomach felt empty, yet entirely occupied throughout dinner. Wings flapped in the cavity of my body so incessantly the pasta in front of me had nowhere to go. I had never been so anxious around a man in my life. It was first-date-level imbalance. The type of nuclear nervousness that would accompany sitting down across from a handsome stranger for the first time knowing nothing about them but the surface.
I knew Frankie.
He’d literally had his fingers inside me. I’d taken the man down the back of my throat like it was an Olympic sport in broad daylight on the coastal highway. Aside from those intimate instances, we’d confided in each other things that made us much more than strangers, but it was as if the last two weeks were a blur.
“Eat,” Frankie murmured, leaning over and filling my empty glass with a crimson blend of wine.
He looked straight out of a magazine. I was convinced dress pants had never fit a pair of legs and the curve of a man’s ass so perfectly, and positive I’d never looked so hard before. His consistently casual T-shirt and shorts, while attractive in their own right, were nothing in comparison to him in Oxfords and a blazer.
I quickly brought the wine to my mouth and took a generous sip of sweet, woodsy liquid, leaving a faint ring of color on the polished glass. The dry sting of cabernet danced on my tongue as I poked it out to traverse my bottom lip—only pausing when I realized eager brown eyes followed every chaste movement.
Heat colored my already flushed cheeks. Frankie was regarding me like I was his next meal—urging me to eat, watching me indulge. Such a primordial instinct, and so innocent in the quiet room. He and I knew it wasn’t, though. There was tension buzzing between us.
“How was the drive home, Frankie?” Nat asked across the table. I was finally distracted enough to focus on the carbonara in front of me and picked aimlessly at a clump of green peas.
The men had cleared their steaks and draped their arms lazily over our chairs while we continued at a more savoring pace. Frankie’s fingertips grazed across my shoulder, and then blatantly gathered the hair at the side of my neck I’d let fall like a curtain in front of my face and tucked it behind my ear.
The part of me that was very desperate, and embarrassingly wet, clenched.
A piece of chicken suspended on a fork between Natalia’s mouth and her plate dropped back into the risotto as her expression turned from intrigued to utterly disbelieving. Watching in real time as the line blurred somewhere vital in Frankie and I’s arrangement. He was a very hands-on friend.
“You know when you’re kind of in a fog while driving,” Frankie said, “and you start daydreaming, and all of a sudden you can’t even hear what’s playing on the radio anymore? It’s like a mindless autopilot because your brain is just somewhere else entirely? One second you’re in the car, and the next you’re home and you don’t even remember how you got there?”
My nerves lit up like fireworks, a surge of energy pilling the skin hiding beneath my dress in goosebumps. I slid my hand from my lap to rest secretly just above Frankie’s knee, his quad flexing on impact and then relaxing under my palm.
“Maria’s boyfriend was that bad, huh?” Mateo laughed.
I felt his eyes on my profile, but remained purposely aloof.
“Funny,” Frankie answered, “I didn’t think about that once.”
My nylon-covered toes dug into the carpet in the living room, finally free from the much too ambitious and half a size too small pair of stilettos I’d thieved out of Natalia’s closet. I had never been the best at sensible fashion, and the fanciest restaurant in Pine Ridge was the Applebee’s on Main, so there’s to say the red bottoms didn’t exist in any universe of mine.
Embers crackled to life across the room as Frankie, bent over on his knees, fiddled with the mechanics at the base of their fireplace. His jacket was tossed over the armchair, the top button of his dress shirt flicked open, and then the second…and another under that one. A flirty display of his chest tickled my already reprimandable adoration.
I only realized I’d been staring when my eyes unfocused and the room turned into a watercolor painting of blue-black darkness. Muffled voices from the kitchen rose over the telling sound of cabinets closing and glasses clinking, the Christmas tree buzzed faintly, the lights burning for two weeks and remaining twinkling against all fire safety and hazard warnings.
Back in Colorado my parents would just be sitting down for dinner, Dad and Amy having brought the kids to church an hour before, Mom and Josh standing over the stove together cooking. The already unending energy of my siblings at dangerous levels, as if the day itself was a drug and the Santa tracker on the iPad in the corner was a new high every hour.
I did a perfunctory web search on my phone out of curiosity as Frankie plunked down beside me, pinning me unwittingly into the corner of the couch.
“Santa Claus is in Iceland,” I informed him.
“We better get to bed soon then,” he joked, the amber reflection of the fireplace turning his brown eyes caramel, melting me just the same.
I thoughtlessly lifted my fingers to brush the wild hair off his temples and run my nails softly across his scalp. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pulling my thigh to rest on his lap, connecting us eagerly and intentionally.
My mind raced with the things Mateo had told me the night before. I hadn’t had a moment alone with Frankie yet, and while our bodies sparred for things we’d yet to address, I wanted to be more to him than a warm bed. “Are you really okay?” I asked. “Yesterday…”
“I’m perfect right now,” he insisted casually. “Magic’s back.”