“Did you have sex?” she whispered.
“No. And why are you whispering? There’s no one in here. Muriel is already gone for the day.”
“There was another truck in the parking lot.” She set her feet up on the edge of my desk. “New volunteer?”
A frown pulled at my lips before I could stop it. “Sort of. I’ll explain after you tell your story.”
Her feet dropped off the desk, and her head briefly disappeared as she rooted around in her giant bag, resurfacing with a piece of licorice in her mouth—a sure sign that she was spiraling.
“Oh boy,” I muttered.
She yanked off a piece with a violent snap of her teeth. “‘Oh boy’ is right. I amshook, Remi. We go back to my place after dinner, because I’m not stupid enough to go to his place, right? Like, what if he’s a serial killer?”
“I’m guessing the choice of venue wouldn’t matter too much if that was the case.”
Ness blinked. “Right.”
“Continue,” I prodded, flipping through some adoption applications that had come in over the weekend. “Clearly, you didn’t die.”
“Almost,” she said glumly.
My hands paused and I glanced up. “Explain.”
Ness leaned in. “He wouldn’t sleep with me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know!” she wailed. “We had this amazing dinner, and the sexual tension was off the fucking charts. He had his hand over my thigh—you know what I mean. AllI’m staking my claimand shit. Justparked there. Little movements of his fingers ... But he never strayed too far, and I was ready to climb into his lap in the middle of the entrée.”
“Goodness,” I mused. “That’s a powerful hand he must have.”
“I wouldn’t know, because he wouldn’tuse it on me.” She pouted. “We kissed and it was so hot, and he had his hands up the back of my shirt, and I thought we’d mosey on back to the bedroom and make a night of it, but ...” Her voice trailed off. “Then he pulled back and said he couldn’t wait to go out with me again.”
“And we’re mad about this?”
“Yes!” she cried. “I damn near begged him to stay. It was pathetic.”
I smiled. “What did he say?”
Her head flopped back and she laid her forearm over her eyes. “That he changed his mind and didn’t want this to just be one night or some casual fling, and he wanted to take his time because it felt ... big. Felt important.”
She whispered this last part, and my smile grew.
“Aww, he’s got a crush on you, Ness.”
“Fuck off,” she said without any heat behind it. “I’ve got a crush on him, too, but can’t we have mutual crushing and also bang the bejeezus out of each other?”
“In theory, yes.”
She sat up, her cotton-candy pink waves falling forward over her shoulder as she pinned me with a look. “Notyourtheory, Miss Eight-Date Rule.”
“The eight-date rule was born from abject misery and lessons about modern dating that I did not feel particularly keen on learning.”
“That it sucks,” she said knowingly.
“Big-time.”
“Good thing I can come here and distract myself from this shit.” She tapped her temple.