Next Man Up (Making the Score #2) - Tawdra Kandle Page 0,65
neighbors a thrill.”
I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure she snorted as I made my way out the door to the hall bathroom, which was blessedly unoccupied and easy to use.
When I came back into her room, Zelda was curled in a corner of the couch, staring out the window. It was gray outside; I wondered whether it was going to snow. It had been cold enough over the last few days, that was for sure.
On the low table in front of the sofa were a plate of muffins and two mugs. Zelda pointed at the one nearest me. “I poured you some coffee. Lots of milk and no sugar, right?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Reaching down, I picked up the coffee and blew across the surface out of habit. “I can’t believe you woke up early enough to bake muffins. How did you do that?”
She lifted her shoulder. “I ran downstairs and used the oven in the main kitchen. And I’m always an early riser. It’s part of my farm raising—I just can’t sleep past six.”
I shuddered. “Six. That’s the middle of the night.” Breaking a muffin in half, I took a bite and hummed a little. “This is delicious, Zel. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She turned her attention back to the window, letting the silence between us stretch out. I swallowed the first half of my muffin before I spoke again.
“Zelda, last night—”
She shifted to face me. “Eli, please don’t say anything. Please. If you value our friendship, like I do—let’s just pretend last night didn’t happen. I was stupid and—we just shouldn’t have done that.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “I don’t understand. It wasn’t—you weren’t stupid, Zel. And why shouldn’t we have done it? We’re friends. We know each other. I like you, Zel. I like you a lot. I enjoy being with you, and we—”
“That’s why.” She folded her arms over her chest, her face a study in misery. “I never do this. I’ve never hooked up with someone I knew well or liked. I always stick to people I’ve just met or acquaintances. This is just a bad idea.”
“Why?” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer, but I asked the question anyway.
She drew in a deep breath and fastened her gaze on the table between us. “Because I can’t be who you need me to be, Eli. I’ll fuck it up. I’m not going to promise to be exclusive, because I’m not made that way. Someone else will come along, I’ll want to have sex with him—and then you’ll be hurt. You won’t be able to help it—it’s just how people are.”
Pinching off another bit of the muffin, I put it into my mouth, although it tasted like sawdust now. “I don’t have expectations, Zelda. I didn’t ask for exclusive. I don’t need you to be anything or anyone.”
She leaned forward and raised her eyes to mine, and hers were filled with misery. “You think you don’t, but you will. If this had happened back before we really knew each other, or if I didn’t like you as much as I do, I wouldn’t care. But I do. And nothing you say is going to change that.”
I swallowed the bite I’d taken. “All right. So we’ll do this your way. I understand I don’t have any claim on you. But I’d be lying if I said I wanted to take sex completely off the table.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but I held up my hand. “Just hear me out. Zel, last night was my first sex in almost four years. I’m not exactly expecting girls to start chasing me now any more than they did before. But I’d still like the option to have sex now and then, and it would be a whole hell of a lot less awkward to have it with you than it would be to have to explain everything to someone else.”
“You’re saying I’d be convenient?” For any other woman, that would’ve been an insult, but trust Zelda to look at it as a positive. “So we’d fuck when either one of us needed it?”
“I guess so, yeah.” This wasn’t what I wanted—not by a long shot—but it was something, and at this point, it was the best Zelda could give me.
“All right.” She looked relieved, her face clearing. “But we don’t tell anyone else about this, got it? Not about last night, not about anything else that might or might not happen between us. I