Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78108 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78108 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
I’m strangely glad she never sent me a photo. Not that I’d wish a headache on her. But there’s no picture that would compare to how it feels to see her here, like this, in the flesh.
I could stare all night, but I shake off the clutching feeling in my chest, filling a cup of water from the sink and offering her some Tylenol. She swallows them, then hands me the cup. I set it down on the vanity.
She gestures to the bubbly tub. “Hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of opening the gift.”
“It was for you,” I say, and I can’t take my eyes off her.
“I had a feeling.”
“I’m glad you opened it.”
“Me too. I feel a tiny bit better.” She nibbles on the corner of her lips, giving me an apologetic look. “But not integrity-ruining better.”
I roll my eyes. “Woman, there is no integrity being ruined tonight. I want you to feel better. I want you to feel good again.”
She looks at me, her gaze holding mine. “I do now.”
I close the toilet seat, sit down on it, and hang out with her as she relaxes in the hot water. When she’s done, I get her a big, fluffy towel, and wrap her in it, pressing a chaste kiss to her neck. “Let’s get you back in bed.”
A few minutes later, she’s in her jammies and settling into bed. “I put the sandwiches in the fridge. I’ll have mine for breakfast,” she says.
“Sandwiches for breakfast sound good.”
“It’s a date then.”
I can’t wait for it. I dart out to the kitchen, heat up the eye mask for twenty seconds in the microwave, so it’s warm, then return to the bedroom and hand it to her. “Got you this just now. It should help.”
She takes it and sets it on her eyes as she lies down. “You must be The Slippery Dipper’s best customer tonight.”
I sit on the bed with her. “I think I am.” Then, impulsively, I add, “I thought of you when I was there.”
I can’t see her eyes twinkling, but her playful smile tells me they are as she asks, “Yeah? What did you think about?”
Maybe it’s easier to say this when she can’t look at me. When she can’t disarm me with those bright green eyes. Or maybe she’s already disarming me. I lie next to her. “The day I saw you there,” I admit, my stomach fluttering annoyingly.
“Hmm. I don’t remember that day,” she says, her lips twitching.
“Evil woman.”
“Is that where I ran into you?”
I dip my face, nip her shoulder. “You know you did.”
She wiggles. “Maybe you should remind me.”
I can see it so perfectly. I can feel it too. “You were reaching for a heart-shaped soap. I was grabbing the one next to it. Maybe, possibly, I let my hand slide so it touched yours.”
“And here I thought you were good with your hands.”
“I was. It wasn’t accidental, Juliet.”
A tremble moves through her body. It’s beautiful to see. “Fine, tell me more about this un-accidental touch.”
I close my eyes too. I can’t look at myself in the mirror as I tell this story. “I recognized you. I hadn’t seen you in a few years, but there you were. My good friend’s sister. And none of that mattered. All I thought was, I have to see her again.”
“I’m starting to remember this,” she says, but then tilts her head closer to me, tapping her chin. “Did we see each other? It’s a little fuzzy with this headache.”
I laugh softly. “We saw each other. At the arcade, at the movie theater, the beach. The tent.”
“Ahh. It’s coming back to me now.”
But so’s the ending too. That’s the problem. We’d only spent a week together, but I wanted more. Only, it wasn’t feasible. Hell, it’s not feasible now. We have too much at stake. But more than that, I don’t trust myself to be the man she needs. One failed marriage and a handful of short-term relationships that fizzled, too, are proof that my skills lie elsewhere. If I even tried, I’d probably turn out just like my dad, which means I’d be just as unworthy of her as the other guys she’s met. I won’t do that to her.
I can’t have a future with her, but maybe I can rewrite the past. “I wanted to see you again, Juliet.”
She inhales, exhales, like she needs more breath for this. “Yeah?” There’s hope in her voice. Such a dangerous thing.
“I did,” I say, with regret in mine. “But what could we do? I was moving across the country to New York.”
“And I wasn’t,” she says, wistful.
I could stop this conversation, but maybe we need this—an admission that it ended too soon, before either of us wanted it to. Since we reconnected when I returned to San Francisco, we’ve been friends and co-workers, but we never truly acknowledged that week.