my already pounding heart to join the somersault party in my stomach. As strange as it was considering my profession, words never really meant anything to me. I was more of an action girl. Maybe it was because of what I did for a living that I knew better than most that people would say whatever they wanted to serve their own purposes.
Half the time Blaine talked, I let what he said go in one ear and out the other. Until I saw him back it up with actions, it was meaningless to me.
But Billy was different. His words were different. His words meant something to me.
“We can start with you telling me why you’ve been avoiding me all week.”
“So we’re not easing into this, then?” I smiled as I stretched my arms in front of me.
“You are so damn adorable.”
There he went again, with those pretty words. My belly fluttered with delight. I took a deep breath, and considered telling him that I had just been busy. But decided that if we were really going to do this, I didn’t want to start it off with anything but honesty and transparency.
“I heard something about you that didn’t sit well with me.”
“You can’t believe everything you hear. People love to talk around here, and half the time they’re doin’ it out their ass.”
“I agree, but I’m pretty sure that this was not one of those times.”
“What did you hear?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I wasn’t being coy, it truly didn’t matter to me. Anything that happened before we met, even if it was minutes before, didn’t matter to me.
“If it doesn’t matter, then why don’t you want to tell me?”
Maybe he should be the lawyer. “Fine. I heard that you hooked up with Daisy the morning of the will reading. It bothered me because we had sex later that night. But, it doesn’t matter—”
“Are you talking about the receptionist?”
“You don’t even know her name?” I felt my eyes widen.
“No. Not really. But we didn’t hook up.”
“You don’t have to lie to me—”
“I’m not lying. I won’t ever lie to you.” The conviction in his statement was palpable.
It made me want to defend why I’d believed the rumor. “Okay, well, I just thought because you disappeared right before the will reading, and Daisy wasn’t at her desk. When Nadia said that she heard you two hooked up in the supply closet—”
“Well, we were in the supply closet.”
“So you did hookup?”
“No. She was about to give me a blowjob and Hank interrupted us.”
“Oh.” I was stunned at his admission. It took me a minute to process what he’d said.
They hadn’t had sex but he was more than happy to receive oral sex from someone whose name he didn’t even know. He could’ve just said that they didn’t have sex and left it at that, but he’d explained the situation in graphic detail, and I appreciated having all the facts.
“Thank you for your honesty. It’s oddly refreshing.”
“Back atcha. A lot of women, and men, I know would have sat on that, and then it would have come out later in a fight.”
He wasn’t wrong. I knew many couples that would fit that bill.
“Now that we got that cleared up, let’s get back to you.” He snuggled closer to me. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Yellow. What’s yours?”
“Green,” he replied. After a pause the corners of his eyes scrunched. “Yellow, huh?”
“Were you expecting me to say pink?” I hated that gender stereotype. I had no idea why the genitalia I was born with was supposed to predispose me to liking a certain color. It was a little irritating that Billy would think that way.
“Or blue, or green, or even black.” He said. “I’ve just never met anyone whose favorite color is yellow.”
“Oh, okay.” I smiled, happy to have been proven wrong. “Actually, it’s not my favorite because of the color itself. It’s my favorite because it was Hal’s favorite.”
“Your stepdad?”
“Yeah.”
“So you two got along?”
I could feel my eyes watering, the way they always did whenever I talked about Hal. “He was the best. He saved me and my mom.”
As we lay in bed I told Billy what an incredible man Hal was. I opened up to him about the struggles in my childhood before Hal came into my life at age eight. He talked about how different his life was before and after he lost his mom at the same age. It was like our lives were in reverse. His life was happy and carefree before the age