“Because he adores you, duh. I’m guessing since there was no fight, that you and Jack were making out? I love this song,” she warbles. “Tell me more.”
“Crystal. Are you high on burnt plastic? Me kissing Jack is not a good thing. It’s the opposite of a good thing. It’s a terrible thing. We are friends. You don’t run around tonguing your friends.”
“Oh, you French-kissed him. This is serious.” She’s so gleeful that I can hear actual clapping sounds from her end. “I didn’t think you’d actually graduate to exchanging spit the first time. I figured once the two of you made contact, you’d hyperventilate and run away.”
I don’t answer because that is exactly what happened and it’s humiliating—both that it happened and that she accurately predicted it. Five minutes of lip-locked bliss with Jack and I lost my mind.
“Daphne, please tell me you aren’t hiding in the bathroom because you made out with Jack.”
I rub the toe of my satin-shod foot against the bathroom floor.
“Talk to me.”
“You just said not to tell you that I’m in the bathroom hiding because I kissed Jack.”
She sighs so heavily I swear I feel a gust of wind through the cell phone. “How can you be thirty?” she asks.
“I reached puberty late.”
“You and Jack belong together and not merely as friends for life, which is wonderful, but as a couple. As a headboard-banging, table-clearing, libido-raising couple.”
A small, unhappy laugh escapes. “I wish. If Jack and I were meant to be together, it would’ve happened when we hit puberty or figured out what the birds and the bees were. We were destined to be friends, but, now…” I pause because there are actual tears building in the back of my throat and the last thing I want to do is start crying. “Now I’m worried we won’t even be that.”
“One kiss isn’t going to be the end of the world. It might feel like it, but it’s not. You’ll have a period of uncomfortableness and then you’ll both forget about it and everything will be back to normal. Which sucks, in my opinion, but if that’s what the two of you want, you’ll work through it.”
If that’s what the two of you want…
Crystal’s words echo inside my head. The sensation of his tongue sliding against mine is one that will feed me for a decade and that’s the biggest problem.
I lean my head against the tiled wall of the bathroom stall. “I don’t want to forget about it.”
“Oh?” Crystal sounds hopeful. “Well, then there’s only one solution.”
“To drown myself in the toilet?”
“I hadn’t considered that one. Make it two. You can either drown yourself in a toilet or you can pull up your big girl panties, go outside and tell Jack the truth. That you don’t want to forget the kiss because you’ve been in love with him ever since you realized what it was to love someone.”
There’s a third option that neither of us acknowledge out loud. That’s the path where I let this one kiss torment me while I watch Jack move on to the next single woman in town. I come to a decision and get to my feet. “I’m sorry, Crystal,” I say softly, “I’m going after him.”
“Fucking finally,” she says and hangs up.
I stare at my phone, gathering the courage to leave the bathroom when a sharp knock on the door startles me.
“You in there?” a familiar male voice asks.
I jolt upright, dropping the phone on the floor.
“Jack?” I slap a hand over my chest.
“Yup.”
“It’s the women’s bathroom!”
“Oh, is that right? I must’ve misread the door sign.”
“You’re a detective.”
“Who you said wasn’t good at detecting things.”
“When did I say—oh.” I remember now.
“Yeah, oh. It occurred to me while I waited for you to come out of hibernation from your twenty-minute bathroom break.”
It’s been that long? I reach down to retrieve my phone. I tuck it away, straighten my shoulders and open the door.
“You okay?” he says. He reaches toward me, to tuck the hair away from my face. My reflexes kick in and I flinch back.
He drops his hand to his side and averts his face for a second, but not before I see something like pain flash across his face. He turns back to me with a set jaw.
“I’m not sorry,” we chorus.
“What?” I say.
Jack’s eyes narrow. “You first.”
My mouth grows dry as the desert. I lick my lips. Jack growls and my insides liquify. He is so sexy, particularly standing here in the women’s bathroom, with one forearm braced against the upper part of the metal stall. His opposite hand is at his waist, pushing back the suit coat and displaying that fine, slim waist. His proportions are unfair. I pull my lower lip between my teeth as I think of how nice it would be to pull up his shirt and display his body in all its nude glory.