A Guy Walks Into My Bar - Lauren Blakely Page 0,101
attention, and I sit up, peering more closely at the report. “That’s excellent news.”
“Clean bill of health, babe.”
I stretch my arm to my bedside table, reach into a drawer, and show him mine, pressing it to the screen. “Same here.”
His blue eyes darken, glimmering with desire and dirty deeds. “Can we go bare when I see you again?”
The prospect of doing that for the first time is insanely arousing. “Yes.”
“I never have before. Not with anyone.”
“Nor have I,” I say.
The conversation quickly turns fantastically filthy as I tell him how good it’s going to feel, and he shows me how much he likes it when I talk like that.
Soon, the season starts in earnest, and his team wins the first game. I call him briefly from the bar to congratulate him.
“Great game,” I say when he answers.
“If you were here, you’d go out with us to celebrate, right?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“You don’t want to hang out with my teammates?”
I laugh. “No offense to your teammates, but it’s you I want to see.”
“That is the perfect answer,” Fitz says, then he kisses the screen.
When he’s home, he calls me again. The time difference works for us, since it’s three in the morning for me and I’m getting into bed.
He asks about my night at the bar, and I tell him about all of the customers and how the jukebox has gone over. We do what we do—we talk.
“I have three days off,” he says, so much hope in his voice. “Starting next Monday. Ten days from now.”
I know what he’s going to say next. I know he is forging full speed ahead. But I want to be the one to offer, rather than to be asked.
“I’ll come see you,” I say.
His grin is wider than it’s ever been, his eyes brighter. “You will?”
“I will. I want to. More than anything.”
“I’m getting you a ticket right now,” Fitz says, walking through his apartment, presumably on the hunt for his laptop. “You cool with that? With me getting it? You better be, because I have a fuck-ton of miles, and I am spending them on you. Just say yes.”
I remember that word. Surrender.
Is this what surrender is? Saying yes even when you worry you’ll succumb to the mistakes of the past?
Maybe it is.
Maybe I don’t know.
Maybe the past no longer matters.
All I know is it feels good to say yes to him. It always has. “I already said yes. It’s kind of all I can say to you.”
He punches the air. “I can’t wait. I’m going to build a time machine so it can be next week.”
“Don’t be silly. All you need to do is learn how to apparate. That’s a much more useful skill.”
Fitz groans in happiness. “Do you know when I started to fall in love with you?”
I laugh. “No, I don’t.”
“When I learned you liked Harry Potter too. And now, do you know what that ‘apparate’ comment means?”
“What does it mean?”
“That I’m in love with you even more,” he says.
When he says that, a warm, hazy feeling spreads over my body once again.
This is happiness, and I want it.
And I’m starting to see how it’s possible to have it.
But I shouldn’t make assumptions.
Pretty soon, though, I’m going to need to figure out how to take that step. I have a question to ask him, and I have to pose it carefully because any future happiness hangs on his answer.
THE NEXT DAY
Also known as the day I make my plans.
43
Dean
The river is a comforting constant in London, and that’s where I go with my dad on Saturday before I go into work.
We walk alongside the water, Dad reminiscing, me making plans.
“I used to bring you here when you were young,” he says.
“So, like a few years ago,” I tease.
“You’re still mostly young.”
“I’ll be thirty-two soon. So old. Does that mean I should start doing that whole it’s my twenty-ninth birthday for the fourth year in a row thing?”
He chuckles lightly, then sighs contentedly. “And you always loved it, coming to the river,” he says, sliding back into nostalgia. “We were here every weekend when you were six, seven, eight.”
“I did?” I ask, eager to hear more. I remember this, but not from his point of view.
“You just wanted to be near it. Of course, you had so much energy. You were always moving around. I had to run you like a dog along the water.”