“No problem. I had work to do anyway. You made it to the Chinese place before it closed and I still get to watch my TED talk; this is a win. Now, are you done talking for 20 minutes? Because I’ll stab you with this fork if you talk to me while I’m trying to listen to this.”
“You’re so mean to me. Go ahead, start it.”
I do, then I lean back in my office chair and dig in to the Chinese food he brought over. I love doing stuff like this with Henry. It’s my favorite thing about him. I’m not sure he would choose on his own to spend his last waking hours of the day sitting at a desk, watching a TED talk while eating Chinese food with a woman who isn’t going to fuck him, but he doesn’t have a problem with it, either. Henry is the greatest.
To be honest, although we now openly refer to ourselves as girlfriend and boyfriend, I never made the decision to cross that threshold.
Henry and I became friends by necessity. I was using him for free legal information. He knew and didn’t care. We would meet up for strictly professional (except that I wasn’t paying him) dinners or appetizers so I could ask him about various legal matters related to my business. As we spent that time together, though, I realized he was interesting. I liked his perspective on more than just legal matters. Once, I had him read a scene from a book I was editing that wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until I gave it to him. He read through it, asked me a few questions about the hero, read over it one more time, then said simply, “He’d never do this. Doesn’t make any sense. Cut the scene.”
I didn’t fall in love, but I did fall in like. Henry called to me like a kindred spirit, and I’ve never come across any of those before. I’ve never been a person who made many friends at all, but for whatever reason, Henry was interested in being mine.
Well, not for whatever reason. I realized pretty early on that he wanted to snag me. Not because I’m so damn special, but because I didn’t want him to. I am the anti-girlfriend. If he expressed even the slightest romantic interest in me, instead of trying to feed it and hook him, I’d shy away. Even though he gave me his cell number, I didn’t want to talk all day. Even though we very much enjoy hanging out, I would prefer he spend his evening out with friends than bugging me. Even though we flirted shamelessly, I didn’t want to date him. If I caught sight of anything resembling a string, I would run so far and so fast in the other direction, it wouldn’t even be funny.
But he has endured this—and me—for almost an entire year. Then last month we were going about our routine dinner and he ordered me a drink while I was in the bathroom. The problem with that was, I had already had a drink with Louise prior to going out—her sister sent her some wine she wanted to try.
I’m not sure if I have a predisposition (my dad drinks like a fish) but I do know that I lose control of myself as soon as I get tipsy, let alone drunk. I have a one-drink limit when I go out with a guy, even if only in a friendly capacity. When Henry ordered me a drink, he assumed it was my first. But then it started hitting me a lot harder than one drink should, even for a lightweight like me. Alcohol worked its black magic on my personality, opening me up and melting away my inhibitions. I realized as I sat across the table from this charming, attractive, intelligent man who had been respectfully chasing me for the better part of a year, I was insane not to let him catch me.
I also realized he had blue eyes. It wasn’t like I’d never looked at his eyes before, so I guess I knew that, but I’d never seen them like I was seeing them then. There was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in years.
A Derek look. He used to have this way of looking at me sometimes, and I never knew exactly what he was thinking, but it felt like adoration. It felt like tenderness. It felt like love.
Now, in a sober state of mind, I despise all of those things. I would have kicked off my kitten heels, strapped on some running shoes, and hightailed it out of there so fast, he would have felt a light breeze.
But I wasn’t sober. Stodgy, unbending, self-protective Nicole melted into the background and Nikki came out full-force. When Henry walked me to my car that night, he looked so handsome in the moonlight. He stood there in his sharp blue suit, that light in his familiar blue eyes like he thought I was something special, and Nikki did a really impulsive thing that Nicole would later have to pay for.
She kissed him. Grabbed him right by the lapels, tugged him close, and brushed her lips against his.
To say he looked shocked would be quite the understatement.
Assuming he was only chasing me because I was the girl who couldn’t be caught, he might have backed off after that.
He’d conquered me, after all. But I backed off. I took that role. I made him chase me again—not intentionally, I just didn’t want to deal with the fallout of stupid, drunk, slutty Nikki’s dumbassery. Then he brought me breakfast one morning and cornered me in the kitchen. Drunk or not, I like being cornered. It’s a bit twisted, I guess, but I know who I am, and a man who can dominate me is a man I can look at in a different light. A man I can be impressed with. Henry did all the right things—he cornered me, he was firm and authoritative, and as he looked down into my face, he told me, “Stop being weird.”
“I’m not being weird,” I lied.
Then instead of answering my absurd lie, he grabbed my chin and kissed me again. It was the scariest thing I’d experienced since Derek, and somehow his ability to terrify me opened the door. I kissed him back. My blood rushed through my veins as his big, strong hands moved beneath me and he lifted my ass, putting me on the counter and planting himself between my legs. We were both fully clothed, but it was the sexiest encounter I’d had in what felt like an entire lifetime.
To be perfectly honest, he was the first man since Derek to turn me on. There are a lot of men out there and I’ve been on quite a few dates, but most of them just don’t have it.
In that moment, Henry had it.
He must have sensed that, so he locked my ass down while he knew I wouldn’t object. I respond well to that kind of dominance, so from that day forward, I accepted my role as Henry’s girlfriend.
Had he remained in that lane, he would probably be spending the night by now, but he didn’t. Once he had me locked down, he went back to being too careful, to feeling more like a friend again—just a friend who kisses me from time to time. It hasn’t been much of an issue because one of the reasons we’re so compatible is that we’re both workaholics. I’m never mad when he’s busy, and he always understands why I won’t blow off an evening of work to go out with him and his friends to some bar they’re congregating at.
It’s the perfect relationship. All the perks of a boyfriend, none of the aggravation.
As my TED talk ends, I look over at Henry for his opinion. “What do you think?”
He shrugs. “I’m not a creative type, so none of that really applied to me.”
“Yeah, I had no idea there was an emphasis on creative types. I still related to it. It almost made me want to write another book.”
Now he sits forward, cocking an eyebrow and casting a questioning look my way. “Another book?”
I curse myself in my head, shoving a forkful of rice in my mouth.
“You wrote a book? I have to read it. What’s it called? What’s it about?”