Page 55 of Only and Forever
“Intensely?” His voice is sandpaper rough.
Desire spills, hot and quick, low in my belly, between my thighs. I roll my shoulders back and try to shake it off. “What else besides biology? You don’t love me. You hardly know me. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t.” The intensity of his gaze pins me in place. “I don’t know. What I do know is it drives me up the goddamn wall.”
“Well”—I raise my mug—“sympathies. You think I appreciate being horny for a high-handed IKEA-furniture-assembling, plant-hoarding, romance-loving, rescue-animal-adopting pushover?”
Viggo laughs, clinking his mug with mine. “I’ll try to keep my pheromonal allure as under wraps as possible. You do the same, huh?”
“You got it,” I tell him. We both take sips of our coffee. “But listen, even if it stays like this, we’ll be okay,” I reassure him, reassure us both. “We’re reasonable people. We have an understanding we’ll respect. We can make it through unscathed. It’s only eight weeks.”
“Psh.” Viggo waves a hand. “Eight weeks is nothing. We’ll be so busy. It’ll fly.”
He shifts on his stool as I do, and our bodies brush—his knee wedged high between my legs, my thighs pressed against his. We both draw in deep breaths.
Both pick up our coffees and sip in silence. Cheeks hot.
I try to ignore the nagging worry that, at least when it comes to this, eight weeks isnotgoing to fly by, at all.
FIFTEEN
Tallulah
Playlist: “Riptide—Ukulele Version,” Acoustic Guitar Revival
Viggo and Imightbe tiptoeing around each other. Just a little bit.
Okay, a lotta bit.
For the past week, I’ve done what I could to minimize unnecessary interactions outside of his helping me learn my way around the bookstore. We’ve decided to divide and conquer. I will ring people up and take food and drink orders. Viggo will fulfill food and drink orders, unless he’s helping patrons on the floor, in which case I’ll step in. I’ve learned what I’ve needed to, his point-of-sale software, the curated coffee drink menu he’s offering, how to warm the baked goods. Otherwise, I’ve kept to myself as much as possible without making it awkward.
I declined the invitation his niece extended, that he extended again, to Bergman Sunday family dinner. I ordered tacos and started a Karin Slaughter reread that is a fucking masterpiece. I didn’t watch the clock, wondering when he’d be back.
Too much.
I ripped off the Band-Aid and gave him my book to read—the draft I have so far, at least. I emailed it to him Sunday night, after I heard him park his car, and I scrambled to the safety of my room, then had a stern talk with myself about acting like a scaredy-cat.
I made him swear not to say a thing about the book until I asked him. My ego is bone-china fragile.
Every morning since then, it’s gone like this: I lounge in bed, stewing about how terrible my book is, how humiliating it is that Viggo is reading what I’ve written of my terrible book. Then I do my morning finger prick to check my blood sugar, scowling out the window about my terrible book as I suck my prick spot. I take my insulin, a delayed extended bolus, entering the carbs I’ll eat at breakfast into my PDM.
I do all this while listening to Viggo lumber around the kitchen. The kettle’sscrapewhen he lifts it off the range, right as it starts to whistle. The softthudof the refrigerator door after he pulls out ingredients to make himself breakfast.
Then, once I hear him traipse down the hall to his room, I sneak out, pour a mug of coffee, grab a breakfast bar from the pantry, then slip back into my room. I sit at my desk, eat the breakfast bar, gulp my coffee, and make myself work on revising the terrible book until lunch.
I’m still fully ignoring the couple’s romantic arc, whose shoddy structure is absolutely screwing up the first third of the book, maybe all of the book. I’ll deal with that later, once Viggo’s read what I’ve written so far and my ego can handle hearing how awful he thinks it is, too.
My alarm goes off at noon sharp, which is when I force myself to (or, more often, sigh with relief that I can) wrap up writing and revising, the afternoon reserved for any help Viggo needs with the store. I check my blood sugar again, this time via my CGM, bolus insulin, then wander into the kitchen to make one of my go-to meals whose carbs I know by heart and can enter into my PDM.
Usually, while I’m meal making, Viggo joins me.
Like he does today.
The door leading from the store to the house shuts, and I glance up. My stomach twists as I allow myself a moment to drink him in.
Viggo’s a little sweaty, hair curled up and damp at the nape ofhis neck, beneath the usual beat-up blue ball cap. He plucks at the fabric of another romance-lover T-shirt, fanning himself. This one bears a raised fist clutching a fanned-out handful of romance novels. Above it reads,Read romance. Fight the patriarchy.
A smile tugs at my mouth. I duck my head, focused on assembling my chicken salad sandwich.