Mouth still at my ear, he said in The Voice, “I’m bein’ patient, babe, but pretty soon you’re gonna have to let me in.”
No way in hell. He was already in as far as he was going to get, literally and figuratively.
“Don’t call me babe,” I said to take the post-sex conversation away from me letting him in.
I meant it this time in a way I didn’t mean it before. I didn’t want him to call me “babe” and Jules “babe”. It made it less special. In fact, it made it not special at all.
His head came up and he looked down at me. His eyes searched my face and then he dropped to his side, taking me with him.
When we were face-to-face and he had my leg wrapped around his hip, he asked, “What’s this now?”
“Nothing, just don’t call me babe. I don’t like it,” I lied. I had really loved it before, if I was honest with myself. Now, I hated it.
His fingers sifted through the hair at the side of my head and he kept his hand at the back and twisted my hair in his fist.
“You mean it,” he said.
“Yeah,” I told him.
“I’m not even close, am I?” he asked, what I thought bizarrely.
“Close to what?”
“To gettin’ through to you.”
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stop right there.
Or, wait. Maybe, not.
“No, Luke. You’re not. I tried to tell you but you won’t listen to me,” I pressed closer to him and lied through my goddamn teeth. “You’re never going to get close. Trust me, it’s not gonna happen.”
“It’ll happen.”
“It won’t.”
“Yeah, it will.” He sounded sure of himself.
Holy cramoly!
Why me? What did I do?
I dipped my chin and tried to pull away but his arms got tight. I struggled a bit just in case he wasn’t in the mood to overpower me. I found, as ever, he was very much in the mood to overpower me.
Tom Petty (obviously Luke had Greatest Hits on random) started singing “Learning to Fly”. I gave up the struggle and listened to Tom.
After a few minutes, I said to Luke’s throat, “You want some ice cream?” I tilted my head back to look at him.
He tipped his chin down to look at me and said, “Yeah.”
He let me go and put on his sweatpants. I put on my underwear and his zip up sweatshirt.
We ate ice cream out of the tub, two spoons, Luke holding the tub, me dipping in while we sat on his kitchen counter.
And I realized on the third spoonful of peanut butter cup ice cream that I was sitting on the counter top in my pretend happy place.