What’s the alternative? Packing up his two hundred dollars’ worth of half-prepped produce, his cutting board, and Le Creuset and leaving the apartment in a huff?
He’s fucking trapped in this sweltering apartment.
“Something wrong?” Ari asks.
“No.” He rubs his forehead. Anchor. “She’s running late.”
Ari raises her eyebrows and nods slowly. “This is exactly the scenario I never have to deal with.” She turns away from him and opens the freezer, grabbing an ice cube tray. “If you weren’t so preoccupied with locking down a relationship you could just shrug it off and do something else with your evening instead of spiraling about it.”
“I’m not spiraling,” he insists, even as he feels his pulse quicken.
Ari grabs each end of the tray and violently twists until the cubes detach from their molds. “Sure, you’re not.”
Quit talking to her. Let it go. Don’t let her bait you. Anchor.
“How would you understand anything about a real relationship when you’re obviously incapable of forming a connection with someone other than the briefest possible sexual encounter?” he utters in one unbroken, comma-less string of words.
Ari narrows her eyes—almost pleased to have set him off.
“I’m not ‘incapable’ of anything,” she says, dropping the ice in her water glass. “I’m honest with people about what I expect. They can’t hurt me and I can’t disappoint them. We both get what we want.”
“If what you want is to fuck someone you don’t care about, roll over, put your clothes on, and see yourself out, you’re set for life.”
“Usually, we pretend to watch a movie first, but what difference does it make if I put my clothes back on ten minutes later or eight hours later?” She tilts her head back and takes four enormous gulps of water, as if the effort of the argument requires rehydration. The glass lands on the counter with a thunk. “We could have the hottest, most inconsequential hypothetical sex of your life and then—”
“We could?”
“Hypothetically.” She huffs out an exhale. “I’d quietly collect my panties and steal away into the night without waking you up.”
“Assuming you can locate them.” He notices a spot of mustard on the side of her mouth. It gives him a zing of schadenfreude.
“I always send a thank you text the next day.” She pauses. “Unless you went down on me for three minutes with zero enthusiasm but also expected a messy blow job thirty seconds later.”
It’s not often that Josh is rendered speechless. Which is to say that his train of thought shifts to the length of Ari’s shorts. Their intense little sparring contest. Handing her his knife.
There’s something there—a frisson of excitement. Somewhere in between extorting him for charity and her description of their hypothetical one-night stand, Josh must have decided—begrudgingly—that she’s pretty. Even if she does have pink hair that’s starting to wash out. She’s obnoxious and wrong about everything, but this is the most invigorating encounter he’s had with anyone in—well, his social life hasn’t been very robust lately.
“You’re missing out on the exciting part.” He sets down his knife. “Don’t you ever have those conversations with people, when you’re lying in bed after the first time you…” He trails off, like it’s risky to use certain words in front of her. “And you’re both vulnerable and nervous and hopeful because this could be a night you’ll reminisce about years later? They tell you things you couldn’t have known about them? The walls come down, and you start to understand who they really are?”
Ari squints at him, as if she’s trying to see a color that doesn’t exist yet.
“Have you spent ten minutes on a dating app?” Her voice is distinctive—maybe a hint of a rasp from shouting at strangers all day. “I don’t want to see who these people really are.”
Josh exhales a breath that clears nothing. He angles the cutting board over a salad bowl, watching the chunks of heirloom tomato slide slowly into the bowl.
Ari leans forward over the corner of the counter in a way that’s both confrontational and an unexpected turn-on. “You just happen to be the only man on Earth who’s not interested in completely meaningless, consequence-free sex?”
He isn’t totally sure whether that’s an accusation or an invitation.
“There’s no such thing,” Josh says finally. “You’re leaving before the other person has a chance to point out the consequences.” Ari raises an eyebrow, turns, and walks back into the living room. “At the very least, you’re missing out on morning sex,” he says, following her. “And still-awake-at-three-a.m. sex. And learning what someone’s brunch order is—”