Shit. Shit.
I can’t stay here. Or see this. Or hear it. The shush of cotton slipping over her skin, the snap of a bra being smoothed out. On a pained, frustrated growl, I feel my way toward the door, then storm out, slamming it behind me.
“There you are!” Nick’s right on me in the hallway. “So, did you straighten things out with her?”
“What?” I walk past him, but Nick chases me down.
“With Kate. The one who keeps looking like she wants to castrate me every time I smile at Bianca.”
I laugh emptily. Like anything could ever be that simple with her. “Yeah, Nick. I just told her you’re a nice guy and she said, ‘Swell, Christopher. He has my blessing.’？”
He smiles. “She did?”
“No, dipshit. She bit my head off like she always does.”
He wilts. “Now what?”
I jut my chin toward Bianca, who offers Nick a sweet, coy smile. “Now you talk to her anyway. You don’t need Kate’s blessing.”
“I need my nuts intact.”
“Your nuts will live. Kate will probably warn Bianca you’re like me and try to dissuade her, but you can’t do anything about that. Focus on what you can do—prove her wrong.”
Nick smiles at Bianca and sighs. “She’s perfect.”
I roll my eyes. “You’ve talked across a board game for thirty minutes.”
“It’s a soulmate connection,” he says defensively. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”
For some odd reason, that stings. I know it’s unfair to expect Nick to understand my motives for my one-and-done policy, when I haven’t told him the real reason I refuse to date or have a relationship, but it still leaves a hollow ache in my chest, to hear what he thinks of me.
“What have you done,” he prods, “that Kate’s so against her cousin talking to an acquaintance of yours?”
“So we’re acquaintances now, are we?”
“You gotta fix this for me,” he begs. “I’m a man possessed—‘I burn, I pine, I perish’！”
I stare at him. “You have to stop reading so much poetry.”
“It’s not poetry, it’s—”
“Shamelessly overromanticizing half an hour spent with a woman you can’t possibly already have feelings for?”
“I know you don’t understand, but, please”—he steps closer, looking desperate, making my resolve crumble—“please just try to smooth things over? Bianca’s a grown woman who can make her own choices. I know that . . .” He glances over his shoulder, to where Kate, now dressed in a snug dark green T-shirt, is hiss-whispering something at Bianca, who glances our way, looking wary. “I just need a little help.”
“I’m not so sure you do.”
Bianca walks our way and stops beside Nick, smiling up at him. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says. “Do you think . . .” She clears her throat and takes a step closer. “Do you think maybe we could talk a bit? Out on the balcony?”
Nick smiles. “I’d love nothing more.”
I feel Kate’s stare before our eyes meet from across the table where she stands. I’m trying so hard not to remember what she looked like with her shirt off—long back, smooth skin, wisps of auburn kissing her shoulders—to revisit that filthy fantasy that tore through my mind.
Resentment knots my gut. I don’t want one more thing about Kate stitched into my memory, tugging at my thoughts when she’s gone again.
Forcing my gaze away from her, I rejoin the crowd, which has abandoned Sequence for snacks and another round of Margo’s cocktails in the kitchen.
Soon enough, I’m introduced to Sarah, who seems to have showed up while Kate and I were torturing each other with our wardrobe changes. A coworker of Jamie’s, she’s not a pediatrician like him but a general physician with whom he volunteers at local shelters in the city, providing medical care for folks in need.
She’s smart and pretty, a bright-eyed fast talker with gorgeous, full curves and a confident smile. Any other night, I’d know exactly where we were headed—straight to bed, until my body was spent, my mind finally quiet, and she was blissed-out with orgasms, too exhausted for more. Then I’d get dressed while she slept and write the same note I always do—brief, sincere, and very intentionally without any contact information.
But not now.
Now, as we make small talk, I have to force myself to focus on what Sarah’s said. I have to count seconds until it’s been five minutes before I let myself glance around, only to see no sign of Kate in the small crowd of people. I make myself pay attention to the woman in front of me. I don’t wonder where Kate’s gone or second-guess if I’ve done the best thing in walking away from her.