Yet another truce. How many times were we going to have to go through this? Cross a boundary somewhere and then scramble to pretend like it didn’t happen and still treat each other like the acquaintances we still technically were.
It was getting a little bit exhausting not to mention kind of boring even. I looked around the room. It was really cold and the little study was smaller than the living room. Being in the larger living room would make me feel better about the close proximity to him. Not to mention the fireplace because my ass was freezing.
“How about we move to the living room? It’s kind of cold in here.” He got up and gathered the game boxes.
“Are you only this feeling that now?” he asked.
“Look, I overheard you on the phone talking about how much you hated it here and decided I needed to give you space,” I said, only half-joking. He got it though and laughed.
“You’re cold but it’s my fault?”
“Precisely.”
We stopped by the den and grabbed a couple of other game choices and then we went to the living room. My skin tingled as we got settled around the coffee table, I felt like I was thawing out. Staying away from him was definitely not worth risking hypothermia. Since we were tenuously friends again, I wouldn’t be making those kinds of concessions for him.
“Okay, what game am I going to be beating you at?” I said cheerfully.
“You’re confident for somebody who was so grumpy just a few minutes ago.”
He was right about that, I wasn't going to argue with him, but I also wasn't going to tell him that he was right. We started with a game of cards, poker which he was good at, but so was I.
The room was warm, the usual tension between us had dissipated, and we were actually having fun for what might have been the first time on this trip. I couldn't believe it. The only thing that could have possibly made it better was some delicious hot cocoa just to top it all off since an immediate change in the weather and our snowed-in status was off the table.
“That's it, I win.” I put my cards down letting him see. The look of shock on his face was absolutely perfect. I knew he was not used to not getting what he wanted. I could imagine the people in his life kissing his ass and letting him win at poker games just so he wouldn't get mad at them. Good thing I wasn't a person in his life. A little humility for a man who had everything felt like it was deserved.
“Let's go again.”
“You're such a sore loser, oh my God.”
“No, I'm not, I let you win.”
“Well, then that's your problem. You lost it when you could have won. If you threw the game then why are you mad at me?”
He started frowning. “You didn't play fair.”
“Oh my God, you're still not done complaining?” I got up, wondering if I could whip up some of that hot chocolate that I was thinking about. He got up too.
“You don't want to play again? That's okay. I'll let you have it.” I looked him up and down in disbelief. Sure, we had had sex a couple of times. I had had his dick and other body parts around very intimate parts of my own body, but we still didn't know each other that well. I thought he was the kind of New York playboy that I detested; predictable in his lifestyle and tastes.
Made a lot of money, slept with a lot of models, generally annoying to be around, and not much substance for all the showiness. Did good things like tipped waiters one hundred percent on checks but also threw his weight and money around to get what he wanted and essentially intimidated people into liking him. Upon closer inspection, it seemed like he actually had a personality under there. Weird.
“Well, you want me to beat your ass again so bad, so maybe I will.”
“I'd like to see you try,” he said. Somewhere in the moments since we had stood up, we had gotten quite close to each other. Very close to each other. I was close enough to notice that he had a little brown mole on his neck and that his eyelashes were particularly thick. Granted, I had been much closer than I was now but then thinking about it, just made me want to go ahead and close the distance.
If he did something, I knew I wasn't going to stop him.
I coughed and broke eye contact first. I knew that it wasn't, but the room felt oppressively hot all of a sudden. I needed some sort of distance from him so I scrambled to make an excuse.
“It looks like we're going to lose light eventually so I think I'm going to get started on dinner.” He said something as I fled to the kitchen, breathing hard like I had been running. I spun around in a moment of horror because I thought that he had followed me, but he hadn’t.
That seems like a perfect tactic, just run away whenever things got a little bit heated. The way things were looking, that was probably the only way that I would be able to keep my cool around him.
It was embarrassing how much I wanted him. I was actually a little bit ashamed because that feeling went against everything that I had promised myself.
I knew that it wasn't just the sex, but it couldn't be. I couldn't allow it to ever be more than just the sex because I knew what happened whenever I did that. I swore that I would never do it again. How did I manage to get stuck with the one guy in years who seemed like he would make me go back on my word?
He made me weak. It was so easy to break when he was around and it was only after when I faced the consequences that I felt bad about it. Nothing worked. The only thing that would work, which was distance just wasn’t feasible. The other thing which was totally breaking and allowing my attraction for him to consume me was not an option we were entertaining.