Asking Beat to speak privately had taken all her courage.
The meeting had been ending. The premise of The Parents’ Trap was preposterous. Invasive. Ridiculous. Obviously Beat had been caught off guard by the nitty-gritty details and had no intention of entertaining the idea any further.
Curiosity continued to weigh heavily in her gut, though. And Melody found she couldn’t get back on the train to Brooklyn without satisfying it.
Needing a moment to gather up another supply of courage, Melody sipped her coffee, watching Beat watch her. A gust of wind blew through her stomach and disorganized everything at the way he regarded her mouth closely, sitting very still while she brought the cup to her lips, as if he wanted to make sure he’d positioned the cup perfectly to meet them. When it did, because of course he’d judged it correctly, a muscle slid high in his throat and never seemed to come down.
He could still make a person feel like they were the only one in the room. It was his superpower, wasn’t it? It drew people to him. It wouldn’t hurt to remember that.
It also wouldn’t hurt to ignore the way his sculpted lips suctioned the spout of his coffee cup lid. Or the sheen of moisture he licked away when he set the drink back down. But it took her a moment to find her voice because it was lost somewhere among the pandemonium of her hormones, which hadn’t been this noisy since the last time they’d been together. That wasn’t to say Melody hadn’t been with men sexually. She’d experienced pleasure with men. But the bond, the trust she needed to feel truly fulfilled, it never materialized. She was only ever one solitary figure copulating with another solitary figure. There was never a sense of partnership or belonging. What would touching Beat be like? Being touched by him?
You’re never going to find out.
He almost definitely had a girlfriend. She was shocked he didn’t have a gold band on his finger, this wildly handsome, successful thirty-year-old who happened to be kind. Kind! Who was kind anymore? Such an outdated and underrated quality—and Beat Dawkins had it.
“Mel,” he said now, shrugging off his jacket and twisting to hang it on the back of his chair, a tidy region of obliques shifting beneath his white dress shirt. “I’m so embarrassed that I brought you all the way out here for nothing.” Nothing? She would have driven to the opposite coast just for the coffee date. “Please believe me, I wasn’t aware of the twist.”
“No, of course you weren’t.”
Her confidence relaxed his shoulders, but the strain around his eyes, the tension she’d noticed immediately upon walking into the meeting, remained. He wasn’t a carefree sixteen-year-old anymore.
“I hope you didn’t have to take a day off work . . . ?” Beat prompted.
“No. I have a project at home that I’m working on, but I’ll make up for lost time tonight.”
“What kind of project? I read in an article a while back that you work in rare books.” A frown marred his forehead. “I just realized that most of what I know about you comes from articles.”
“Same.” Or your Instagram captions. Which were usually just a location and date. No pithy one-liners or inspirational quotes, as if she needed more reasons to like him. “I’m restoring a Judy Blume book—Superfudge. An original printing from 1980. It’s weathered a few spills and the binding is weak, but it’s a beautiful specimen.” She couldn’t keep a dreamy sigh from escaping. “I’ve sort of made young adult literature my specialty.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I lived inside of those books growing up. I want to take care of them, the way they took care of me.”
His expression remained thoughtful, maybe even a little troubled until he coughed into a fist, seeming to mold his mouth into a smile. “Do you work with a magnifying glass attached to your head?”
“I work mostly from home. Sometimes that’s all I wear.”
Beat choked on his sip of coffee, and flames climbed Melody’s cheeks.
Does this window open so I can leap through it? “Another drawback of working from home is a glaring lack of social skills.”
He laughed, one of his hands traveling across the table to squeeze her wrist. “You just caught me off guard.” A moment passed. Then very, very briefly, his thumb slipped beneath the cuff of her blouse and swept smoothly over her pulse, lingering for a heavy second before he abruptly pulled away.
Beat cleared his throat hard, shifting in his chair.
Melody couldn’t move at all. That itty-bitty touch had turned her thighs to jelly. If she tried to cross her legs, she would slowly topple sideways like an underbaked cake.
Did Beat touch everyone like that? Was it a perk of his undivided attention?
“Um.” Don’t be awkward. She hunted for something to say. “I’m not totally without a social calendar. I’m on a bocce team.”
He leaned forward, amused. “Are you?”
“Yes. We are the opposite of undefeated. We’re defeated. But being on the team forces me to take off the magnifying glass hat and talk to actual people, instead of books.” She dried her sweating palms on the tweed material of her skirt, hoping he couldn’t see. “Actually, that’s where I met Danielle. She was lying in wait for me outside of the bar after a match.”
His smile faded. “I’m sorry. About all this.” He started to pick up his coffee, but hesitated. “Are the bocce games at night?”
“Yes.”
“Do you walk home alone? At night?”
“Yes. I do. It’s perfectly safe.” She paused to think. “I do have coworkers who live in the same direction. I could probably wait and walk home with them. But I just want to . . .”
“What?”
“Get out,” she murmured. “I just have to get out of there. Get away. You know?”
She expected him to be confused by her admission or change the subject. But she should have known not to underestimate him, because he only looked . . . relieved. “Yeah, I do know, Mel. Toward the end of the night, everyone’s filters are off and people start asking uncomfortable questions. Or they ask me if I’ll FaceTime my mother.”
“Or they take selfies without asking,” she breathed.
“Endless selfies.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Even my friends that I’ve known for years—and I love them. I do. But this feeling never goes away of . . . wondering if they’re just in it for the clout. I keep my guard up.”
She got the sense he was underselling that last statement. Was Beat very guarded now? He hadn’t come across that way at sixteen, but a lot of time had passed.
“Yeah. It’s exhausting,” she said, finally.
They looked at each other across the table. For the first time in a long time, Melody was devoid of the tension that came from being out in public. Just being outdoors. This was safe. She was with someone who navigated the same waters. Mostly. Hers had been a little more treacherous. At least, she thought so. Who knew what his experience was like?
No one knew but Beat.
“So, just to be clear . . .” He looked down at his coffee cup, then back up at her, his gaze a touch sharper than before. “No boyfriend to walk you home, Melody?”