I clutch my phone, eyelids at half-mast and free hand reaching for the cold, empty side of the bed. Moving to my side, I tuck my hands under my pillow and shut my eyes.
The room spins.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice sounds far away, muffled. “Ace?”
I’m dreaming, I’m sure.
15
Aidy
Armed with a brown bag of groceries that I lugged all the way from Chelsea, I’m rapping on the door of 942 Lexington Avenue Sunday morning, just before ten.
The bag feels heavier than it did a few blocks ago, if that’s even possible, and I’m quite certain the bottom’s about to fall out. Fortunately, I spot a doorbell just in time.
Pressing the button over and over, I almost feel bad. He’s got to have a horrendous hangover. Then again, he woke me up at two in the morning, so I kind of feel like we’re even.
The door swings open a second later, and Ace stands before me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hair is going every which way and when he lifts his arm to shield the blinding sun from his eyes, his shirt pulls up and reveals a hint of the dark happy trail that runs straight south to the dwindling morning bulge in his pants.
“Good morning,” I say in the cheeriest, Mary Poppins-esque tone I can muster.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“Payback?” I glance down at the groceries in my arms and then up at him. “Plus I felt like you maybe needed to talk?”
Ace scratches his head, squinting.
“You called me . . . last night . . . two a.m. Remember?” I ask.
He doesn’t blink. He just stares ahead at me.
“I don’t think you meant to call me,” I say. “I think you must have pressed a button or something. You sounded really out of it. Like hammered beyond belief.”
Ace blows a hard breath, nostrils flaring as he studies me.
“Do you remember anything you said last night?” I ask.
“No. I don’t even remember talking to you.” He stands back, hand gripping the door, and motions for me to come in. “What’s all this?”
“Figured you’d be hung over, so I brought you some things. Gatorade. Eggs. Bacon. Bread. Orange juice. I don’t know what you eat. Maybe you’re vegan. I have no idea. Didn’t really plan this out too well . . .”
We’re standing in the landing of his townhome. Ace closes the door, watching me still. A set of stairs behind him looks to lead to the main part of his place, but his frozen body language makes me wonder if he wants me up there at all.
But I kind of don’t care because it’s not like I wanted him calling me at two in the morning.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re even Stevens right now.
“Is someone up there or are you going to invite me up?” I ask.
I should’ve considered the possibility that maybe he wasn’t alone. That maybe he’d taken someone home with him the night before. Although if he did, she had to have been passed out cold because she didn’t make a peep as he rambled drunkenly into his phone for the better part of an hour.
“No,” he says, still unmoving. “Nobody’s here.”
My gaze falls to his shoulders, his muscled pecs curving beneath a white V-neck t-shirt. “If you don’t want me here, that’s cool. I can leave all this stuff, and you can do whatever you want with it. Feed it to the neighborhood cats. I don’t care.”
“What did we talk about last night?” His hands hook on his hips, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of his navy sweats.
“Lots of things.”
The bag slips from my grip, nearly sliding down my body and hitting the ground until he catches it. His hands graze my hips as he relieves me, and my arms, now tired and shaking, quietly thank him.
“Come on up.” Ace nods toward the stairs. I kick my shoes off and follow him. When we reach the top, it’s all I can do to keep from gawking.
His place is nice.
Better than nice.
It’s modern and industrial and edgy.
I pull in a lungful of what smells like spice and leather and tobacco and take a good look around. The floors, particularly hard and cold beneath my feet, appear to be some kind of stained concrete, and his kitchen is completely open. The island, which anchors that space, is wrapped in brick and covered with a stainless countertop. His fridge is enormous, easily holding enough to feed a small village, and a rack holding shiny, neatly organized