The rain pounds against the windows, but I swear I can hear my heart galloping.
She runs her fingers through her wet hair. "This is exactly why I lied! This right here. Because you're a jerk sometimes, Tom. You make assumptions. You decide things without asking. You?—"
"What assumptions?"
"The memorabilia! The posters, the bar stools, all of it—you saw them going in, and you just decided I was opening a dive bar to compete with you!"
"YOU told ME you were opening a dive bar."
"Because you already decided! You assumed. You came over here with that look on your face, and I panicked!"
My brain stutters. "What look?"
"The 'this is my block, and I want you out' look!" She paces, soaked and furious, shoes squeaking on the unfinished floor. "Those things were my Nana's. My grandmother, who died and left me everything she had, because I was the only one who visited her every week for ten years. She was a groupie in the sixties and seventies. Followed bands around. Collected memorabilia. Had the best stories I've ever heard."
The air goes out of me. "She left you a vintage Fender and three-hundred-dollar beer signs?"
"She left me her life, Tom. Everything she loved. And I wanted to use it because it meant something to me, but you—" Tate's voice breaks. "You didn't ask. You just assumed."
She's right. I did exactly what she said—saw the stuff, made assumptions, decided she was competition without asking a single question. Decided she was a threat right there and then.
"I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't know! You didn't ask!"
We're yelling now. Both soaked. Both furious. Arms flapping. Fingers raised.
"And this morning—" Tate starts.
"Don't."
"You can't just?—"
"I said don't."
"We need to talk about it!"
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Nothing?" Tate's laugh is sharp, dangerous. "You had your face between my thighs, Tom. That's not nothing!"
Fuck me. The air changes again—shifts from angry to something else, something darker and heavier and inevitable.
Suddenly, Tate is just inches away, breathing hard, pulse jumping in her throat.
My eyes drop to her mouth, almost like I can't help it. Because I want to kiss her again. I want to taste her for the second time.
I don't remember moving, but one minute, we're standing close, and the next, the space between us disappears. My mouth is on hers, and she's kissing me back with the same fury she was yelling with, all teeth and heat and her hands fisted in my wet shirt.
I walk her backward until her back hits the wall beside the window—the shadowed area where the streetlight doesn't reach, where no one can see us unless they're standing right outside looking in.
My hand tunnels through her wet hair. Her leg comes up around my hip without me asking for it.
"Mine," I say against her mouth.
She bites my lip hard enough to sting. "Prove it."
Wet jeans are a nightmare to remove. I get hers open and shove them down along with her underwear. My jeans and boxers follow—belt, button, zipper, down to my thighs, because that's all the patience either of us has.