Another game is underway—a pizzeria is batting against a shoe store chain. I pull Charlotte close to me. “But this,” I say, pointing to the ground, “this is where I was a huge dumbass.”
She grins. “Why’s that?”
“Because right here, earlier today…” I take a breath, letting it fuel me to finally share my whole heart. “This is where the woman I love went to bat for me.” She gasps when I use the L word. “I should have told you then that I love you. I should have said everything to you.” Inching closer, I press my forehead to hers. “I should have told you I’m madly in love with you, and I want you to be mine. When you told me it wasn’t real, I was devastated—”
“Spencer, I didn’t mean it. I said it to try to fix things.”
“I know that now. I was foolish then. But it was all for the best. Because feeling like I lost you made me realize I’d do whatever it takes to have you. Because you’re the one. You’ve been in front of me all along, and in some ways I feel like I fell in love with you quickly, in only one week. But in other ways, I know I’ve been falling in love with you over time, over the years. It just took faking it for me to realize that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. But more than that—you’re the only woman I want to love.” I brush the backs of my fingers against her cheek. Her eyes are lit with joy. I recognize the emotion because I feel it with her. “And I know that, because I want to eat the green gummy bears for you so you never have to taste them, and I want to sit through the torture of Fiddler on the Roof with you, and drink virgin margaritas some nights, and non-bad beer other nights, and put you in bed if you’re tired and have a headache, and make love to you all night long if you don’t.”
Her lips part, and she sighs contentedly. She grabs at my collar, pulling me even closer. “I don’t have a headache tonight. And I want to do that all night long, too. I want to do that because I broke the same rule. I’m so in love with you that I’d kiss you with morning breath, and I’ll even scrape pesto mayo off your sandwiches for you if anyone serves it to you by mistake,” she says, locking her gaze to mine.
“I hope that never happens.” My tone is intensely serious. “Because I don’t want you to have to go anywhere near pesto mayo or bad breath. But if it does, I want us to deal with both horrors together.”
“Me, too,” she says, then kisses me—a deep, passionate kiss that seals all these lessons I learned.
When she breaks the kiss, she raises a suggestive eyebrow. “Leftover cold sesame noodles at your house instead of dinner out?”
“You’re on,” I say, since I know what she wants, and I want the same thing.
“Oh, wait. There’s one more thing I want you to know,” she says, running her hand down the buttons on my shirt, a prelude to what we’ll both be doing soon.
“What is it?”
“Remember when I thought I couldn’t pull this off?”
“I remember.”
“I was able to because being with you rarely felt lying. It was easy to pretend to be yours.”
“Why?” I ask, gripping her hips.
“It didn’t feel fake. It always felt like it was becoming real.”
“It is real,” I say, locking eyes with her. I am rooted to this moment—it is the new hub of Charlotte and me, and I want to see and feel and taste all of it. But I also want to taste her. Right about now. “Know what else is real?”
“What else?” she asks playfully, her tone telling me she knows where my thoughts are headed.
“How much I want you this second. It’s very real. It’s, like, ten inches of real,” I say, leaning into her so she can feel how much I crave her.
She arches an eyebrow. “Ten? I would have guessed twelve.”
“Starts at ten. Finishes at twelve,” I joke as I clasp her hand and return to the town car with her. Once inside, I ask the driver to close the partition. After the tinted window clicks into place, we are cocooned.
“I’ll take the ten now, please.”
“Ah, so you do want an appetizer before the Chinese dinner in,” I say, running my hand down her spine and over her rear, squeezing her ass.
“No, Spencer. I want dessert first.”
I lift her on top of me. “Appetizer. Dessert. The main course. Let’s have it all,” I say, raising the fabric of her skirt, and she works open my zipper.
In seconds, I tug her panties to the side, roll on a condom, and lower her onto my shaft. We moan at the same time, then we kiss and we fuck for the next few blocks. Then we kiss hard and fuck harder as the car whips downtown, my hands tugging on her hair, her fingernails clawing my shoulders, our lips smashing together as we consume each other hungrily.
We fuck as if it’s been weeks since we were together, when it’s only been hours. But I’ll take this…this need for another person, especially since tonight is as good as it’s always been. But it’s worlds better, too, because it’s not ending. There’s no expiration date in sight, no ground rules, and no pretending.
The night turns into a marathon of sex and sesame noodles, of food and orgasms, of laughter and more of the L-word than I ever expected to utter.
We test out the strength of my coffee table and it passes; though my knees get bruised, I don’t care. A little later, Charlotte suggests a shower just for fun, and since I’m a fan of fun showers, I say yes. When she kneels on the tiles, she treats me to the best shower I’ve ever had in my life, and does something so intense with her tongue that I’ve got to remember to ask her if she can tie a knot in a cherry with it, too.