Blurred Lines (Love Unexpectedly 1)

Ben chokes on his beer. “What kind of things are you into, Parks?”

I roll my eyes. “Not that kind of safe word. I mean like if one of us wants out of the arrangement, for any reason, they can just say the word, and we end it, no questions asked, never to be mentioned again. And we go back to how we were.”

“But I thought we just agreed we weren’t going to let it be complicated.”

“We’re not,” I say quickly. “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared. A fail-safe.”

He shrugs. “Fine. What’s the word?”

“Something random,” I say. “Something that we won’t say in regular conversation.”

“Monogamy?” he asks with a cocky grin.

“I was thinking more like…kumquat, or something.”

Ben busts up laughing. “Your safe word is one that contains cum, and a syllable that rhymes with twat?”

I blush. “You think of one, then!”

“How about cello,” he says.

“Like the musical instrument that nobody outside of a high school plays?”

“Exactly,” he says. “You barely know what it is. I definitely don’t know what it is. It’s for sure not going to come up in regular conversation.”

“All right,” I say, considering. “Works for me.”

“Okay, then. So…when do we start?”

His eyes drift over my body, and I laugh. “You are such a guy.”

“That kiss was hot, Parks. It’s not weird that I say that, right?”

“No,” I muse. “Oddly, it’s not. And yes, it was. Hot, I mean.”

Understatement.

“So what are we waiting for? My bed or yours?”

“Oh, that’s another thing,” I say. “You’ve got to keep your sheets clean. That or it’s always going to be my bed.”

“Overthinking it,” he says with a shake of his head. “Trust me, when we get into it, you won’t be caring whether or not the sheets are clean.”

“I’ll care.”

Except I’m not sure that I will. Not if he does other things as well as he kisses.

Ben finishes off his beer and drops the bottle into the recycling bin. Portland is rubbing off on him. When he first moved to Oregon he used to throw away recyclable products like it was no big deal. I’ve trained him well.

He turns to face me. “Okay, obviously your overactive mind needs time to process this, so I’m going to go watch TV and relish my complete control over the remote. You let me know whenever you want to kick this off.”

“Tomorrow night, eight o’clock,” I say, before I lose my nerve.

He pauses in the process of reaching for another beer. “Oh, hell no. We’re scheduling this shit?”

I lift my chin. “That’s how I work. Take it or leave it.”

And then, just to be a little evil, I let my tongue toy with my bottom lip. Slowly. Deliberately.