“Cartoons?” Lucas said.
“You have a problem with how I use the remote and what I pick?”
He shook his head. “No, actually. This is what I would have picked.” A beat of silence passed and it felt like it meant more than we picked the same thing to watch.
“I used to watch these when I was a kid. Every Saturday morning. My parents told me I wasn’t allowed, but I kept the volume down and turned it off when they came in the room. I was very stealthy. Or at least I thought I was,” I said as Wile E. Coyote bought yet another anvil from ACME. “You’d think he would stop buying products from ACME. I mean, nearly every one is defective.”
“He should call the Better Business Bureau and report them,” Lucas finally said, rubbing my knee.
I really shouldn’t have let him, because I’d said it was just one night, and it definitely wasn’t night anymore. I should have waited until he was asleep and snuck out.
We finished our pancakes and bacon and coffee and I leaned against his shoulder and he stroked my drying hair.
It felt . . . sweet. And normal. Like this was our life. But it was only temporary. We were vacationing in this space and it was almost time to go back to reality. I knew that, which was why I’d turned my phone off as soon as I’d gotten into the cab with him.
Against my will, and probably against his, we fell asleep together.
~*~*~
The next time I woke up, the sun was hanging low in the sky and the television was still on, but it was playing different cartoons. I moved and that roused Lucas, who blinked his eyes open and smiled when he saw me.
It was almost Sunday night and I’d said it was just going to be one night, but that one night was getting stretched and if I didn’t put my foot down, that one night was never going to end.
Oh, but I didn’t want it to.
I liked him. I really, really liked him.
I’d been kidding myself when I’d thought we could go back to a strictly professional relationship after having sex. Well, maybe we could have after the first time, but now feelings were involved, at least mine were. I didn’t know how he felt about me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask.
“I should go. I have dinner with my parents soon,” I said, peeling myself off his chest. My hair was all over the place because it had dried without the help of a brush or any styling products.
“Okay,” he said, helping me up. I didn’t say anything as I went back to his bedroom and put everything back on but the bustier. I needed another person to get into that thing, and I wasn’t going to ask Lucas, because then that would lead to us starting up again, and I couldn’t. This had to be it.
Why did I feel like I wanted to cry?
I shook my head at myself and folded up the bustier and shoved it in my purse. Then I got dressed the rest of the way and pulled my hair back.
I was not looking forward to going back and getting the third degree from Sloane, but I had to. I had to go.
Lucas wasn’t in the living room when I went back out. Where the hell did he go? I found a note on the counter.
See you tomorrow, Sunshine.
-Lucas Blaine
There were a few other doors in the apartment, and I didn’t know what they were for, and he clearly didn’t want to say good-bye in person, so I took the note and put it in my purse, right next to the bustier.
~*~*~
The apartment was quiet when I got back and another note greeted me, this time from Sloane, saying that she’d gone in to work for a few hours. I sighed and looked around the big empty apartment.
One of the reasons I loved living with Sloane was that I was never alone. Growing up as an only child had been rough; add to that the fact that my parents had a lot of money, and I’d been extremely isolated.
I got dressed in my favorite sweats, the ones I wore when I was sick, put on some music and grabbed one of my favorite books. It was hard to read with Sloane around, because she was always interrupting me, or reading over my shoulder and asking me what the book was about. It kind of killed the enjoyment.
I had only read about fifty pages when my eyes started closing again and I fell asleep with the book on my chest.
~*~*~