I wondered if this thought had any effect on her, or was she just happy that her boyfriend was going to be home?
Probably that last one.
I sat looking out over the lot, a sucking sense of loss pulling on my heart.
She was like a unicorn. A mythical creature. An honest, no-drama woman who didn’t bullshit and drank beer and cussed and didn’t care about what people thought of her. She was a unicorn, tucked in the body of an attractive woman with a great ass.
And I couldn’t have her. So I should just stop thinking about it.
We finished eating and got back in the car. I didn’t want to take her home. Or rather I did, but not to drop her off.
I considered asking her to go do something else, just to make it last, but it couldn’t be anything that felt like a date. She wouldn’t agree to that. But I didn’t know Los Angeles. I had no idea what was open. And there was only so far I could take this without it verging on inappropriate for a woman with a boyfriend and healthy boundaries. So I reluctantly prepared to take her home.
This was it. The last time I’d have her alone. The final moments.
I’d had all I was going to get.
I turned the key in the ignition and the engine didn’t turn over. My eyes flitted to hers and I tried it again. The cranking turned into a click.
“Shit,” I said, rejoicing internally at the idea of being stranded with her in a dodgy parking lot in the middle of the night.
“Do we need a jump?” she asked, peering at me with her pretty brown eyes.
“Probably,” I grumbled, doing my best not to seem pleased at this development. I got out and flagged down the guys in the Honda still eating in their car. One unsuccessful jump start later and I was calling a tow truck.
“I’m going to give Brandon so much shit for this. Sloan should not be driving this thing,” I said, getting back into the driver’s seat to wait. That part was true, but for the sake of extending our night, I couldn’t be happier that Sloan drove a piece of crap. I had to slam the door three times to get it to shut, and I was more than happy to do it.
“She’s sentimental. This was her first car. Sloan can never bear to part with anything.” She lowered her seat all the way back until she was lying down, and she turned on her side to face me, her arm tucked under her head. “She still has the ticket stubs from the first movie we went to, like, twelve years ago.”
The way she was lying showed off the curve in her hips. I could almost picture her like that next to me in bed. Her lipstick was gone, but the stain was still on her lips, making them look pink and supple. I wanted to put a thumb to her mouth, see if it felt as soft as it looked.
She looked out of place in this shitty car with torn, faded fabric on the seat under her, duct tape on the glove box. Like an elegant leading lady right out of a black-and-white movie, dropped into a scene that didn’t make any sense.
I tore my gaze away, afraid she’d notice me staring.
“Lie down with me,” she said. “We have what? A forty-five-minute wait? Might as well be comfortable.”
I lowered my seat and stared up through the sunroof at the Los Angeles version of stars—the planes lining up to land at LAX.
We sat in silence for a minute, and I thought of that scene in Pulp Fiction, when—
“You know what this feels like?” she asked. “That scene in Pulp Fiction, when—”
“Comfortable silences. When Mia Wallace says, ‘That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.’”
She made a finger gun at me. “Disco.”
We smiled and held each other’s gaze for a moment. A long, lingering moment. And then, just for a second—a split second—her eyes dropped to my lips.
That’s all it took.
In that moment, I knew. She’d thought about kissing me just then.
This isn’t one-sided.
It was the first hint I’d seen that she was interested. That she thought of me as more than just a friend.
Encouraged, my heart launched into rapid fire as I started debating my options.