I roll my eyes. “Of course there’s a condition.”
“I’d be a shit businessman if I hadn’t perfected the art of a strong negotiation, Kate.” He grins, rubbing my hand against his cheek. His stubble tickles, and it makes me fight a smile as he stares down at me. “I’ll be abstinent for a month, if you promise that, even if you leave between now and then, when our time’s up . . .” He brushes my knuckles against his lips, staring at me. “You’ll come back.”
The way Christopher looks at me makes me realize, maybe I’m not the only one with fears. For the first time I consider how it might have felt to want me the way I’ve wanted him, never knowing where I was going or when I’d be back.
My heart kicks against my ribs. “Of course I’d come back. I promise.”
A sigh leaves him, slow and relieved. “Then you have yourself a bargain, Katerina.”
He reaches past me and turns the key in the lock, gently pushing open my door. I smile up at him, a rush of happiness running through me. He’ll wait for me.
Christopher smiles, too, though it’s tinged with a groan. Bending, he presses a kiss to my forehead, hard and warm, breathing in. “Stop looking at me like that.”
A flush of heat crawls up my chest to my throat, spilling into my cheeks. “Like what?”
“You know what.” He presses a gentle kiss to the corner of my mouth, teasing and sweet all at once. “Keep your phone on you, Katerina. I’ll be counting on it.”
“What does that—”
I’m nudged across the threshold, the door shut behind me, before I can ask what he meant. Not even a minute goes by as I slowly tug off my jacket and hang it up, before my phone buzzes in my messenger bag.
Digging around, I finally find it.
A calendar invite for tomorrow night, 6 to 8 p.m., lights up my screen:
Event: Dinner with Christopher
Location: Kate’s apartment
My phone buzzes again, this time with an email notification. I bite my lip, fighting a smile when I see who it’s from, before I tap to read it:
Dear Ms. Wilmot,
Thank you for your prompt delivery of the team’s headshots. I can’t say they’re everything I’d hoped for—they far exceed it. A direct transfer to your account paying the balance you were owed for services rendered has been completed.
And now, please consider this a formal termination of our professional relationship.
(I don’t date people I work with.)
Yours,
Christopher Petruchio
? THIRTY ?
Christopher
“You’re sure?” Kate asks. “You trust me not to mess it up?”
She’s got a streak of flour on her cheek. A long tendril of hair has slipped out of the knot piled high on her head. Stepping up behind her, I lift that rogue strand away from her face and tuck it back into the hair tie. It takes the kind of self-denial I’ve never asked of myself before the past two weeks, touching her without coming on to her, wanting her so badly, my skin practically vibrates when I’m near her, yet never acting on it.
I brush the flour from her cheek and somehow manage not to kiss it. “I’m sure.”
Kate bites the inside of her cheek as she examines the sheet of pasta dough ready to be draped across the ravioli filling and pasta sheet beneath it, idly twirling the mini cutter wheel in her hand. “I don’t know.”
“Hey now,” I tell her. “You wrestled an alligator into submission. No getting timid in the home stretch of making ravioli.”
One of those pretty blushes turns her cheeks pink. “It was an adolescent alligator.”
“Adolescent or not, you still wrestled an alligator.” Stirring the sauce simmering on the stove, I glance her way. “Don’t shortchange yourself.”
She peers up at me, a smile setting dimples in her cheeks, and like a fool, my heart skips a beat that I did that. I made her smile.
But then her smile dims. “I just don’t want to mess it up.”
I pause mid-stir, then set down the spoon. “What are you talking about?”
Kate turns toward the ravioli. Slowly, I close the space between us and clasp her elbow, turning her back toward me. “Katydid. Talk to me.”
She shrugs, flicking the spokes of the pasta cutter wheel. “I get anxious about expectations. So anxious, I sort of . . . freeze.”
Stepping closer, I rub my hand along her arm. “What expectations?”
“All of this.” She points around the apartment. “For the food to be good, for everyone to want to be here and have fun. Jules is the hostess expert, not me. I forget things when it’s time to set up and plan for company, then I get overwhelmed and cranky when there’s a lot of people.”
“Which is why we’re working together. You and I are making ravioli and sauce. Jamie and Bea are handling the salad and veggie dishes. Bianca and Nick are picking up fresh bread. Toni and Hamza are bringing dessert, and Sula and Margo are going to bring way too much wine. It’ll be great, because it’s all of us getting together for some food and games, and whenever it gets to be too much, you can slip away and take the time you need while Bea and I hold down the fort. In the grand scheme of things, if you cut the ravioli a little crooked, it’s not going to change a thing.”
“Yeah.” She nods, starting to pull away. “You’re right.”
“Hold on. I need this recorded for posterity. You said I’m right.”
Kate rolls her eyes but doesn’t laugh; my joke hasn’t lightened her up like I’d hoped. She’s still uneasy.
“Show me one more time,” she says, gesturing with the cutter wheel toward the pasta sheet.
“Kate—”
“Please.” She sinks her fingers into my shirt and tugs me toward her. “I wasn’t paying attention earlier. I missed how you start.”
I stare down at her, bringing my hand to her cheek, cupping it gently. “What’s this really about?”
She bites her lip. “I don’t know. I feel . . . antsy and nervous. I haven’t done this ever, spent this much time home, this much time with other people I care about, and I think it’s dredging up old insecurities, that I’m going to do something that makes me wear out my welcome. One moment, I’m telling myself everything has to be perfect so it won’t happen, the next I’m dying to give in to the itch in my legs to rip open that door and run before it inevitably does.”
My heart aches in my chest. “Kate, honey. Whoever made you feel like you wore out your welcome simply because of who you were, they’re assholes and you’re better off without them.”
She blinks up at me, her eyes wet, like she’s on the verge of tears. “It isn’t one person or one moment, though, it’s . . . having a brain like mine in a world that isn’t very welcoming or understanding of it. The things that I like about myself when I’m on my own, living and doing my work my own way, they’re not things that are seen as strengths or skills or advantages. They’re tolerated at best, criticized at worst. And sure, my family’s always been supportive and accepting, but they’re the minority. So I’ve just learned to push people away and do my own thing. But that’s not very easy when I stick around and start to care about people and they can hurt me or disappoint me when they start to see the real me, all my quirks and executive-functioning lapses. When I care about that, I feel so helpless.”
I stare down at her, my thumb drifting along her jaw in a slow back-and-forth motion. “I know a little about that.”
She frowns, confused. “You do?”
“I didn’t run halfway across the world to hide from what’s scared me about relationships, Kate, but I’ve been hiding just like you. The way I’ve lived, the boundaries I’ve drawn, they’re how I’ve protected myself from that feeling of helplessness, too.”
Brow furrowed, she searches my face. “You say it like . . . like that’s in the past.”
“I want it to be,” I tell her, my hand sinking into her hair at the nape of her neck, massaging gently. “I’m trying. I want to be braver. Because I’ve seen what protecting myself cost me, and I never want it to cost me that again.”