He’s full-on smiling now, as though amused by my incoherent babbling. I bring the water glass to my face so I can hide behind it. My sweater is draped across my desk, and I’m too warm in a thin black T-shirt. He’s a six-three heat lamp.
“Shay,” he says in a low voice. Teasing. He inches closer, reaching forward to take the water glass away from my face and holding it level with my shoulder. “Honestly, I’m flattered.”
Then he taps the cold rim of the glass against my cheek gently, gently. A friendly little pat that sends my heart into overdrive. When he moves it away, I reach toward my face, holding a few fingers against the cold spot there.
His gaze is so intense that I have to close my eyes for a moment. My instinct is to back away, to put more space between us, but when I try, I’m reminded that I’m against the wall. I don’t know where to look. Normally, I’m level with his pectorals, but he’s hunched, the curve of his shoulders soft in this semi-light. Close enough to reach out and touch—if I wanted to. I watch the rise and fall of his chest. That’s safe. Safer than eye contact, at least.
I’ve never had that problem before.
“I’m glad, because I’m really wishing the floor would open up and suck me into the Hellmouth right now.”
“Buffy fan?”
“Oh yeah. I grew up with it. You?”
He at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Watched it on Netflix.”
Of course he did. He’s twenty-four, young enough to never have seen it live and sliced up by commercials. “By ‘grew up with it,’ I meant, you know, I was still very young during the early seasons, and I didn’t understand most of what was going on . . .” I break off with a groan, though I’m relieved the conversation has turned away from sex. “God, don’t make me feel like a grandma.”
A laugh from deep in his throat turns my legs to jelly. That rumble—I feel it in the last possible place I want to feel it.
It is deeply concerning.
That’s what catches me off guard, more than anything else tonight. I don’t want to think about doing anything with Dominic besides cohosting a show about our fake relationship. I don’t want to think about the way that rough laugh would sound pressed against my ear while other parts of him pressed against other parts of me.
And I really don’t want to imagine him holding that cold glass to my bare skin again.
I swallow hard, forcing away these delusions. Sober Shay would not be fantasizing about Dominic Yun when he’s right in front of her. My imagination is too creative, and my yearlong drought can’t be helping.
Dominic passes the glass back to me and straightens to his full height. Oh. It’s only then that I realize how easy it would have been for him to trap my hands over my head and push me against the wall, tell me with his mouth on my neck how journalism will save the world.
Of course, he doesn’t do any of this, opting instead to take a step back. Then two. At three steps, the temperature in the room dips. At four, I can breathe again.
“For what it’s worth,” he says when he’s halfway to the door, “I think it would have been good, too.”
9
My mother turns, glancing at her reflection in the three-way mirror.
“You look gorgeous,” I tell her from the cream leather couch. It’s been true of the past five dresses she’s tried on, confirming my theory: Leanna Goldstein is incapable of looking bad, even in twelve yards of chartreuse taffeta. Meanwhile, I have my dog made me sleep in the creepy guest room again circles under my eyes and darkened break room corners on the brain.
“It’s not a mistake, not doing white, is it?” She sweeps her auburn hair off her neck, exposing the dress’s plunging back. “I want to go nontraditional, but I don’t want anything too mature.”
She and my dad went nontraditional too, eloping in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. The photos are breathtaking, the two of them pinned against teal mountains and Douglas firs. “All my friends said they spent so much money on food and never got to eat any of it,” she’d say when I used to ask why my parents didn’t have a wedding. Then she’d laugh her musical laugh. “And I couldn’t imagine anything more tragic.”
When she and I walked inside the bridal boutique, the saleswoman gushed over how exciting it is to shop for your daughter’s wedding. My mother had to correct her, and the saleswoman apologized profusely.
It isn’t the fact that we’re here for my mother and not for me that makes it feel strange, though. It’s that it’s her second time, and now she wants to have the wedding.
“More and more brides are opting for nontraditional gowns these days,” chirps the saleswoman, standing by with a pincushion and measuring tape. “I didn’t think that green would work with your hair, but you look stunning.”
Still, my mother frowns. “Something about it isn’t feeling quite right. Do you have anything that’s a little less”—she holds up the many layers of fluffy skirts—“well, a little less dress?”
“Absolutely. I’ll be right back with some shorter styles.” The saleswoman disappears, and I tip back the rest of my champagne.
I’m trying my best to focus, but my mind is back at the station. Thursday morning, Dominic strode in like nothing had happened between us, with the exception of one of those half smiles he shot my way when he picked up his Koosh ball to toss up and down. And . . . nothing had happened between us, right? That moment in the break room may have felt charged to me, but maybe he looms over women all the time, his pheromones and broad shoulders messing with their brains. It wasn’t like he pushed me up against the wall because he needed to have his way with me and couldn’t waste any time. I backed myself into the wall, and then he simply stood in front of me. Completely different.
We were drunk and exhausted and talking about sex. My mind ran wild with it, showing off the “overactive imagination” my elementary school teachers wrote about on my report cards. It doesn’t mean I’m attracted to him.