“Am I allowed to do this?” he says, leaning in, mouth hovering just over mine.
My stomach does a somersault as I look up at him. “You’re asking?” I breathe, brain scrambled by his proximity.
“I’m not sure what the rules are,” he says, and pulls aside my shirt so he can bend and taste my collarbone. “Whether this is something I can do out there.” He motions back over his shoulder, but I know he means outside his bedroom, out in the real world. “Because I can think of only two things that would make me happier.”
“Two things? What are they?”
“One is falling asleep together in your bed, and the other is what we did this morning.”
Oh. He crowds into my space a little more and the words hang heavy and meaningful between us. I squeeze my thighs together, hoping to take the edge off the little ache I feel just thinking about what we did this morning, but it doesn’t help.
I know what he means but I want to keep him talking, keep him close to me. “You mean like if Fred is aroun—” I start to say, but he’s already shaking his head.
“I don’t mean Fred, I mean what do you want? Am I allowed to tell you you look pretty tonight? Am I allowed to kiss you hello? I really want to.”
I want him to, too, and so I nod with a shaky breath, thankful he’s pressed up against me or I’d probably be on the ground at his feet: a London puddle.
Luke smiles and brushes the end of his nose against mine. “Hi, Logan,” he says.
“Hi.”
His mouth is so close that I can taste his breath. He leans in, closing the space between us. It’s absolutely not a kiss that’s suitable for my place of business, all soft lips and slick tongue and warm hands moving everywhere. I wonder if I could pull him into the bathroom, lean against the wall, and ask him to fuck me all over again.
I’m about to ask when a door slams nearby and Luke pulls away, panting. “Holy shit.”
I can hear the phone ringing at the bar, the sound of customers talking, and calls from a football game playing on one of the overhead screens. I don’t care about any of it.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “You need to get back, and I’m going into the men’s room to rub one out.”
I laugh. “Okay,” I say. “But you’re staying?”
He nods, kissing me once more, a tiny, soft peck. “I’m staying.”
It starts to pick up again and Fred stays at the bar to help. Luke’s been back and forth between his group and up here with me, but when someone shouts his name, he points in their direction. “Think I’ll hang out and watch the game since you’re busy. What time are you off tonight?”
I fill up a shaker with ice and look up at him. “Same as always. We close at one.”
“Do you want to come back over? Shorter drive for you . . .”
“In need of another nap?”
He leans an elbow on the bar and looks up at me with wide, brown eyes. “With you? Always,” he says. “What time will you actually be able to cut out of here?”
Goose bumps rise along my skin at the idea of another morning waking up in his bed. “It might be later,” I say. “It depends on the cleanup.”
“Just let me know.” He looks around the bar and leans in a little closer. “I’d like to hear you make those sounds again,” he says, and my arm freezes, the bottle I’m pouring held in midair. “If I leave, you can text me when you head over. I’ll still be up. Okay?”
My brain has basically deserted me and I nod, watching as he smiles and then walks away.
The group Luke is with has grown, practically doubling in size and volume. Fred has handled them for the most part, leaving me to cover the bar and run the register. Luke is standing next to Dylan, hassling him over how he’s going to shoot the seven ball into a corner pocket, when I see a girl slide into the space next to him.
Old habits are hard to break, and I can’t seem to look away, watching every move he makes and comparing it to what I think it means. Old habits are obviously hard for him to break, too, because more than once I see him looking down at his phone, or pulling it out of his pocket to read a text.
It pokes at a bruise inside my chest, some thing that’s still there, lurking under the surface.
I’ve been in sort of a spiral, pretending not to watch Luke, pretending not to care how often he still looks at his damn phone, imagining what’s going on inside it and wondering if it’s even possible for that girl to get any closer without actually sitting on his lap, when Fred tosses a towel on the bar in front of me.