I laughed, my ego loving her compliments, but I needed to change the subject or I’d end up being the type of asshole who didn’t stop trying to have sex with her until she finally gave in. I wanted to be better than that.
“No more talk about my lips. Or your lips. Or any kind of lips,” I said sternly.
She giggled, her shoulders shaking against my chest. “Now all I want to do is talk about them.”
I cleared my throat, trying to calm myself down from the thought of her mouth and what it could do to my body, and came up with a safe question that wouldn’t turn me on. At least, I hoped it wouldn’t. With my luck, Jules would tell me she had an identical twin sister, and then my willpower and my plan to behave would be shot to hell.
Going for a conversational tone, I said, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
She giggled against my chest again. “Nice subject change, but I’ll play along. One older sister. I think I was an oops, although my parents will never admit it. But who has two kids seventeen years apart? No one does, that’s who. At least, not on purpose.”
“Your sister is seventeen years older than you?” I couldn’t believe it. That seemed crazy to me.
“Yes!” She looked up at me again, then moved her hand on top of my chest before propping her chin on it. “And my parents are like, ‘We planned for you, Jules.’ Bullshit. Liars!” she said with a laugh.
“Do they all live near you?”
“My sister took a job in London about a year ago. I don’t think she’s ever coming back. And my parents keep taking ‘extended vacations’ there,” she said, using air quotes around the words. “One day they’re going to send me an e-mail saying they’re staying forever.”
“Could you blame them?” I asked with a smile.
“Not really. I’m sort of in love with London.”
I nodded in agreement. “I understand that feeling.”
“You’ve been?”
“Once, after college. But I’ve never gotten over it and I’ve always wanted to go back.”
She smiled like she could once again completely relate to my words. “What about you?”
“What about me, what?” I asked, not sure what she was inquiring about exactly.
“Siblings?” she reminded me with a smirk. “Do you have any?”
“I have one older brother, and a younger brother and sister,” I said as thoughts of my siblings made me smile to myself. We had grown up close, but now we only saw one another during the holidays.
“So many,” she said, her tone almost awestruck.
“We’re Irish,” I said as if that was reason enough. Which to be fair, it was.
“No wonder you love this city so much. It’s like Irish Central.”
I’d never thought about that before, but Jules might have been on to something. I loved Boston in general because it was a really great city, proud and filled with hardworking people, but she was right. The Irish ruled this town.
“I do love it. Is this your first time to the East Coast?”
She shook her head. “It’s my first time in Boston, but not the East Coast. I’ve been to New York a handful of times. I wanted to go to school there so bad when I was younger.”
“Why didn’t you?” Strange; Jules didn’t seem the type to let anything stand in her way.
“I didn’t get in,” she said, her expression revealing her regret and sadness.
“That sucks. I’m sorry. New York’s a great city.”
“I know. I love it there; I always wanted to live there. Not forever, but for a few years, you know? Just to experience something different from what I was used to.”
I nodded. I did know. It was why I’d moved out of Jersey. Granted, I didn’t go very far, in the grand scheme of things, but Boston was completely different from my hometown. The people weren’t the same, the city wasn’t the same, nothing was the same except that they existed in the same general area of the map.