ahead. Just around the corner is Sweet Dreams. “We can get coffee.”
“Sweet Dreams is closed.”
“Damn it.”
“Theo, there is nowhere to sober up.” She glances around, her expression brightening when she faces me. As if something suddenly hit her. “Wait a minute! I know where we can go. Stella’s apartment.”
“Uh, will Stella be there?”
“No, she lives in her nonna’s house now. No one lives in the apartment above Sweet Dreams, though most of the furniture is still there. I hear her brothers use the apartment sometimes, so it’s pretty much fully stocked.” She makes a gimme motion with her hand. “Hand over the phone so I can text her.”
I reluctantly hand it over. She starts typing, and I watch her, momentarily entranced. Damn it, she’s beautiful. Why didn’t I kiss her again?
“Okay, yes.” She’s nodding and typing at the same time. I can hear the whoosh of a text being sent and received, again and again. “Stella said we can crash out at her apartment.”
“You have a key?”
“She hides one. I know where it’s at. Come on.” Kelsey grabs my hand and we start walking toward the very street I was just staring at.
Within minutes we’re at Sweet Dreams. Stella’s old apartment sits above the bakery/café, and we go around the back of the building, heading up the narrow stairway that leads to the apartment. There’s a tiny black mailbox hanging on the wall beside the door, and Kelsey reaches behind it, withdrawing a key dangling from a little chain.
“Ta da,” she announces, waving the key in front of my face.
“That doesn’t seem very safe,” I say, watching as she sticks the key into the deadbolt and unlocks it. “Leaving the key behind the mailbox.”
“No one has found it so far,” she sing-songs, wagging her butt back and forth as she turns the handle and opens the door. “Come in.”
I follow her into the apartment, blinking against the bright overhead light when she turns it on. The apartment is tiny. Sparsely furnished. There’s a couch, end table and a small coffee table in the living room, along with a flatscreen TV hanging on the wall. Kelsey goes to the lamp sitting on the end table and switches it on.
“Turn off that light.” She points at the fixture on the ceiling and I do as she says, grateful the harsh light is gone. “How about we watch a movie?”
“Or we could go to bed,” I suggest.
Her eyes flare for the briefest moment. Like she believes I’m suggesting we go…have sex. And that she’s…interested.
Say what?
“I didn’t mean, like, go to bed and get naked.” I chuckle nervously, banishing the image of a naked Kelsey from my brain. “I meant, uh, that we should go to sleep. You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch. Or isn’t there another bedroom?”
“Theodore.”
I meet her gaze, feeling like an idiot. A feeling I’ve never experienced with Kelsey before. “Yeah?”
“It’s like…nine o’clock on a Friday night. We’re not going to sleep yet.” She plops onto the couch and pats the empty space right next to her. “We’re going to watch a movie.”
Keeping my gaze on her, I shrug out of my suit jacket and drape it over the back of the couch. Loosen my tie, then yank it off. Undo the buttons at my wrists and roll up my sleeves. Kelsey turns on the TV, then proceeds to log into her Netflix account, but I can tell she’s also watching me.
Huh.
“Come on. Help me pick something out.” She sounds impatient and I go to her, settling beside her but not too close.
Close enough to feel her warmth. To smell her perfume. When she turns to look at me, her hair brushes against my arm and I want to groan.
What the hell are we doing? What the hell am I thinking?
“I’m sorry about our argument earlier. And how I stormed off,” she says, her voice small. “I became—irrationally angry.”
“I’m sorry too. I was a jealous asshole,” I say, meaning every word.
She slowly shakes her head. “I don’t know what you have to be jealous about. I wasn’t even paying attention to that guy.”
I refuse to get into it. Is this what it would be like, becoming involved with Kelsey? Would I be jealous of every guy who looked at her with undisguised interest? Would I become a possessive asshole ready to fight every jerk who dared look her way?
Nah. I’m just—wary. On the defensive, thanks to Jessica cheating on me. With my cousin.
I need to stop thinking