My Favorite Hal-Night Stand - Christina Lauren Page 0,40
can’t really know how she views it. As something fun we did, or as a mistake we made but managed to smooth over without incident. But since it’s Millie, it occurs to me that she could be full of horrified regret, and I might never know it, because she’s shoved it so far below the surface.
On instinct, I scratch at her surface a little, digging: “Get any new messages today?”
Millie tilts her head from side to side. “I got one from my guy last night. I haven’t replied yet.”
My guy. The reference makes my stomach shrink about two sizes, my heart balloon about three until it is this envious, thundering beast in my chest. How weird is it that it didn’t occur to me until we were standing right here that if Millie meets someone, I won’t have free, unlimited access to her anymore? Without entirely realizing it, I’ve become the most important man in her life . . . and I like it.
“You’re all pinched,” she says, “like some new lab tech messed up the hematoxylin stain.” She grins at me. “That’s the easy one, right? See how I pay attention?”
I give her a proud smile, but my mind is turning this around, distracted. How honest should I be here? Millie isn’t the most touchy-feely friend, but we’ve also never been here: no longer just friends, but never going to be more, either. “It just occurred to me that one or both of us could be in a relationship at some point soon.”
She lets out her trademark husky laugh. “That just occurred to you?”
“Yeah. I know what I said the other night, but I don’t think it felt real yet.”
“If we were just doing this for the gala, you and I would still be going together. You were right. But Obama wouldn’t want that. Obama would want us to have sex lives, Reid.” I laugh, and she continues, “At some point, if we kept going the way we were going, we’d all be seventy and doing crosswords together in Chris’s backyard.”
“I mean, that doesn’t sound completely terrible,” I say.
“Come on,” she says, shrugging and then taking a sip of her wine. “We both like sex.” The whole lower half of my body explodes into heat when she says this. “I’m not entirely optimistic, but it might be nice to have someone that I’m close to, and who wants sex with me on a regular basis. And kids, maybe. Someday. And, like, a shared life of adventure.”
“You know,” I tell her, “if there was a way to translate that kind of openness and sincerity to your profile, you might get more legitimate interest and fewer dick pics.”
“Why you gotta be a hater?”
“Why you gotta be such a secret?”
She twists her mouth a little at this, narrowing her eyes at me. “Hitting me where it hurts.”
So she knows she’s bottled up. Interesting. “Seriously, Mills,” I say. “You keep everything so close to your chest. Are you secretly a spy?”
She absorbs this with a smile. “You got me.”
“Okay, no more jokes.” And suddenly sincere curiosity burns through me and out: “Why? Why don’t you tell me more?”
She opens her mouth to say something, and for a beat it feels like a revelation is going to pour down over me. Something about how it felt to lose her mother so young, or how she wishes her relationship with Elly were different. Something bare-wire honest about me, or her, or—fuck—even Dustin. But she presses her lips together again and just smiles at me.
“There,” I say, pointing at her, “right there. What were you going to say?”
Alex steps in, swiping my beer from my hand. “She was going to say that Benedict Cumberbatch looks like an uncircumcised penis.”
“I thought you were getting beers?” Ed looks forlornly at me, and then Alex, and then the fridge.
“Shit. I forgot.”
Ed frowns like I’ve genuinely let him down.
“Ed,” I say, “there are two six-packs in there. Just grab one.”
He peeks around the corner like a guilty teenager, as if he’s making sure that my parents aren’t going to catch him stealing alcohol, and then does an open-grab-slam maneuver so fast that the condiment bottles rattle in the fridge door when it rockets shut.
“Is Chris still out with your dad?” Alex asks.
“Yeah.” I grab a new beer for myself. “I swear he won’t leave Mom for the younger woman down the road; he’ll leave her for Chris.”
“I don’t think Chris is into dudes,” Ed tells me, helpfully.