A little twitch of his eyes, a stiffening of his lips, a swallow after he said it made me want to ask for his mouth on my body. A bite. A kiss.
It took me too long to answer. He was reading me like a book, looking into my eyes and seeing the filthy images behind them.
“I won’t ask then,” I said.
He held out his hand, indicating the house on the corner, behind the gate. We walked back up the hill. Again I asked myself what I was doing, and I didn’t have an answer. Then he opened the gate, and I was committed to being in the same room with him.
The house didn’t face the street but the city, and the front yard was a steep slope down into the basin. To the right, the steps up led to the house, and to the left, a little plateau with a set of chairs around a fire pit seemed like a pedestal over the city. It was only five at night, but the sky was already just a few shades lighter than navy, and the air was frigid.
“This is nice,” I said.
He was halfway up the steps, looking down at me. “Yeah. It’s quiet. Do you drink coffee? I have a pot on a timer, but it’s caffeinated. I have decaf instant.”
“Caffeine doesn’t keep me up.”
“Me either.”
We went up the stairs and into the house. It was Mission style with thick walls, a tile roof, and arched windows. The inside was floored in tiles and dark wood.
He dropped his keys on a thick-legged side table and faced me with his glove tucked under his arm. “You look nice.”
His words were flat and noncommittal, but his voice and gaze were laced with sex.
I looked down at myself. Button-down floral shirt. Slacks. Sensible flats. Work clothes. I’d tucked my hair into a clip before I arrived and made sure none of my lunch was still stuck in my teeth, but my appearance wasn’t worth mentioning.
Last night, I touched myself thinking of you.
“What’s a girl got to do to look like crap around here?”
He trotted over to the kitchen, which was open to the living room with a stone bar counter and stools. I sat on a stool. He dropped the glove on the bar and got two mugs from a cabinet. Sitting still, without the wafting winter air from the open door, I smelled the coffee as it gurgled in the machine.
“Be somebody else, I guess.”
His hand on the cup, the other on the pot. Would I ever compare another man’s hands favorably to his, with his powerful wrists and long fingers? Every digit was articulated and active. Not an ounce of fat on them. No roundedness. No tapering at the tips. No softness at all.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, looking at the bottles of vitamins behind the glass cabinet doors. The juicer. The calendar on the fridge. Anything but the way his jaw squared when he smiled.
He held up a cup. “How do you take this?”
“Black is fine.”
He took his black as well and came around the counter to drop the cups in front of us and sit next to me. I wrapped my hands around my mug and sipped. The coffee was thick and strong. He had his glove. Pin or no pin, that was our connection right there on the kitchen counter. There was no reason for us to talk anymore.
“How will it be without the pin?” I asked.
“Who do you want to answer? Mr. Reasonable or Mr. Real?”
“I know what Mr. Reasonable would say.”
“Mr. Real is panicking.”
“Why?”
“This whole game is built on luck. If you have a run of bad luck and you can’t get out of it, you’re fucked. Well, I’m having a run of really shitty luck, and all the things I do to give me good luck are falling apart. Pin included. My fucking avocado tree. Jack Youder going up for free agency. I’m sunk.”
“Will you not do that thing anymore? Where you twist around and throw to Youder behind your back like this…” I twisted my arm around, my shoulders followed, and I looked over my shoulder in a cheap imitation of a move he made mid-air.
He laughed as if I’d embarrassed him. “Yeah. That’s the thing. Doing stuff like that, I’m an injury waiting to happen.” He waved his finger at me. “One injury. That’s all it takes. One.”
He put his foot on the low rung of my stool. It didn’t put his body any closer, but I was aware of his encroachment into my space. The inches between us shrank, and what I saw was nothing compared to the scent of him fresh after a run. Not gross or sweaty, he smelled like cool air outdoors.
“I’ve realized something about you,” I said.
“What’s that?” He put the glove down next to me. He was closer with each move. Now the coffee cup, putting it where he had to reach in my direction.
“You’re very risk-averse.”
“Off the field, maybe.”
“This deadline for us?”
“Yes?” He leaned toward me.
How did he get so close I could see every hair on his jaw? Every lash? The brown fleck in his left eye?
“It’s risk management.” My voice barely worked.
“And? What about you?”
What about me? With the safe job. Living with my father. Driving a Nissan. “I’m not a big risk-taker.”
“And that’s why you don’t like the deadline.”