CHAPTER14
LARISA
“Okay, we’ve made coffee, we’ve got your color swatches out to sort through, and I’ve told you all about Trevor’s latest deal,” Brit said. “Now it’s time to stop avoiding the giant neon elephant in the room and tell me about your trip. How was it? Was he amazing? Are you in love?”
I laughed, keeping my eyes fixed on the green and gray swatches spread out on my dining-room table instead of looking up at my friend. “It was fine. Fun. What do you think of that one?”
“Oh, no. No. No. No. You’ve got to give me more than that.” She shook her head at the swatch I’d pointed at. “That color shouldn’t even exist. It’s terrible, but you already knew that and you’re not going to distract me that easily. Get rid of it and we can look over the others while you give me all the details, starting with the minute you got out of the car and ending with you driving away.”
I finally lifted my head, not to look at her but to stare absently out my window at my incredible view of the ugly old brown building right next to mine. Simply stunning. Especially after a weekend of views like the one I just had.
It had only been a few days since I’d been home, but the weekend already felt like it had only been a dream. Or like it had happened a million years ago and to somebody else. A soft sigh tore out of me as I shrugged and finally turned to meet her impatient gaze.
“Like I said, it was fine. It was a lot more fun than I was expecting, and if I’m being totally honest, I could’ve stayed there with him for at least another week, but you only paid him for the weekend.”
“If you’d have let me know that you wanted to stay, I could’ve found out if there was a way to pay for the week,” she joked right back, rolling her eyes. “Besides, I didn’t pay him. I donated money to a charity he was willing to step up on that stage for. That being said, if you had such a good time that you wanted to spend another week with him, you really need to stop being so damn vague on the details.”
“There’s just not so much to tell,” I said. “The place was amazing and we didn’t want to venture too far away from it or to be so busy that we didn’t enjoy it, so we stayed in on Friday, went out on the lake on Saturday and to dinner on Saturday night, kissed, and then—”
“Kissed?” she squeaked with wide, surprised eyes, but then she did a little dancing jig in her chair. “I knew it. I knew you liked him as soon as I saw the way you were looking at him. How was it? Did it blow your mind?” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper even though we were alone. “Did you sleep with him?”
“No.” I scoffed, but I’d gotten a lot closer to doing it than my tone suggested. In fact, if he hadn’t stopped, I didn’t think I would’ve.
Staring into her bright, excited blues, I remembered who I was talking to. This was Brit, my best friend, the woman I used to live with, and the girl who had dished every last detail of her relationship with Trevor to me before they’d gotten married. If there was anyone I could be completely honest with, it was her.
“Okay, fine. It was probably the best kiss of my life and I’ll never forget it. It wasn’t just mind blowing, it was that kind of kiss where you forget your own name and never want to learn it again. The kind that makes your toes curl and makes you feel like your soul is being fused to his.”
She nodded knowingly. “I totally get that, but those kinds of kisses never end as just a kiss. Or they shouldn’t, anyway. In my experience, they’re the kind that can change your life if you let them. Let you know that you’ve found your soulmate. Are you seriously telling me you didn’t feel that and you didn’t want to take it further?”
“I hadn’t thought about it as finding my soulmate,” I said flippantly but not really feeling that way at all. “I’ve just been thinking about it as a great kiss. Sure, I’ll probably never be able to kiss again without being disappointed, but it was still just a kiss.”
“Just the one?”
“Yeah, just the one.” Much to my regret. “It might’ve turned into more, but he hit the brakes as soon as it started heading in that direction. At first, I thought he was stopping just to check in with me, but then we just kind of sat there staring at each other, and I realized it was over. He wasn’t planning on doing it again.”
“What did you do?”
I shrugged. “I got up and went to bed. I didn’t really want to, but he tried to kiss me on Friday night and things ended badly, so when he stopped, I did the same thing he had done and respected his decision. It wasn’t like I could drop to my knees and beg him to make sweet, sweet love to me.”
“I bet he would’ve if you’d asked.”
She laughed and dodged the color swatch I chucked at her head. “I wasn’t going to ask. Did I neglect to mention that I kissed him and he put a stop to it?”
“Probably only because things ended badly when he tried to kiss you twenty-four hours earlier,” she reasoned. “You didn’t talk to him about it? Before you went to bed, I mean. You didn’t think to mention to him that you wanted to kiss him again, or maybe do more?”
“No, I didn’t.” I sighed. My gaze drifted back to the window as I replayed the events of the weekend on fast-forward in my head. “Everything we talked about told me that he would’ve done it if I’d asked him to, but I didn’t want him to feel like he had to because I wanted it. I wanted him to want it, too.”
“He’s a guy,” she said as if that should make something obvious. When I just kept staring at her blankly, she rolled her eyes at me. “It’s pretty obvious when they want it. Unless he’s got a little problem down there, his anatomy should’ve given you the answer you needed. They were literally built for us not to have to wonder. If you ask me, that was God’s real gift to women.”
I laughed. “Has it ever occurred to you that it’s also a physiological reaction? I was sitting on his lap, grinding against it. Since he definitely doesn’t have anything down there that is either little or a problem, obviously that part of him would’ve made it seem like he wanted it. He still stopped, remember? Which means that somewhere deep down inside, he didn’t want it.”
“I still think you should’ve talked to him,” she said. “If you turned him down on Friday, he might’ve thought you’d just acted on a whim and that you didn’t really want it. You really didn’t kiss again on Sunday? Not even before you left?”
“Nope. Sunday was a little weird, actually. We were more distant with each other than we had been for the rest of the weekend.”
“What did you do?” she asked. “Maybe there just wasn’t an opportunity for it to happen again.”
“We were planning on going out on the boat again, which I really wanted to do, but I got the feeling he didn’t particularly want to be there alone with me anymore. So when he suggested that we go out for breakfast and explore the town a little, I said yes. Once we were done there, we went back to the house, packed, tidied up, and that was that.”