Just go.
Instead he sits beside me, searching my face with his gray-blue eyes. “Gwen…” He tilts his head. “I’m sorry.” With no warning, his arm wraps around my back. He pulls me gently to him, so my shoulder and right side come up against his warm chest.
“It’s okay.” I try to stay still, so I won’t touch him more than I have to, and keep my eyes trained on the Ziplock bags. I cut my eyes toward him, so he believes me when I say, “Forgiven.”
I wait for him to move his heavy arm. He doesn’t. I might not be angry with him, but I’m still embarrassed. I debate wriggling out of his grasp and going into my house, but I’m supposed to be his friend, so I just sit there, wondering what made me think I should put myself out there. What made me even think he wanted that.
Friends? We’re neighbors. The only reason we know each other is that I kicked him in the head.
As if he hears my thoughts, his hand flattens on my back and he says, “You’re a good friend, Gwenna. Better than I am.”
I let a long breath out. I tip my head back, looking at the sky through bare limbs and crinkling leaves.
He shifts his weight a little, moving closer to me, so I’m almost underneath his arm. I still feel the weight of his hand just under my bra strap on the left side of my back.
My throat aches. I just…can’t look at him. I keep my head tipped back.
A moment later, his voice rumbles near my ear. “See something up there?”
“Stars.” The word is smaller, tighter than intended. It seems, for better or for worse, all I want now is to go inside. I don’t understand this weird pseudo-friendship we have, and now I’m not so sure I want to.
“You like the stars?” he asks.
I like his sexy, raspy voice—damn it all. I exhale slowly, so he can’t feel it. “Who doesn’t?”
There’s a beat of silence, in which crackling leaves chase each other across my brownish grass. Then he moves his arm off me and steps down off the porch. He holds a hand out. “C’mon.”
“Huh?”
He reaches down and wraps his hands around my waist, under my arms. “C’mon, Gwenna.” He lifts me up. “You ever get called Gwen?” He sets me on my feet, then seems to re-evaluate and throws me over his shoulder. The motion is surprisingly controlled and gentle.
After a second of shock at our little plot twist, I shriek and mock-beat his back. “Where are you taking me, you freaking Sasquatch?”
He laughs. “Sasquatch?”
“When I saw you, when I kicked you, I thought you were Sasquatch.”
I can feel his laughter in the movement of his shoulders. “That’s some funny shit.”
“Yeah, you’re like…part giant.”
His arm around my back tightens. “To answer you,” he says as we get into his yard, “it’s somewhere good. You’ll see.”
I think I know where he might be taking me when we start up the stairs to the third floor of his house, but I don’t know for sure until he sets me in the second floor hall outside the bedroom doors and reaches for a notch there in the ceiling. He tugs it lightly, pulling a big square of ceiling downward just a little. With his left hand, he pushes me gently back.
He turns to me and smiles, dimpled and panty-melting. “Do you trust me?”
I arch a brow. “Should I?”
He looks stricken.
“Yes.” I roll my eyes. “Why wouldn’t I? Although I will say,” I tell him as he pulls the stairs all the way down, “if you chop me into little pieces, I will haunt your shit so hard…”
He gives a low laugh. “Well, I don’t need that.”
I smile sweetly. “Then you better treat me like a BFF.”
He gives me a funny little look—a kind of long pre-smile in which he somehow, indescribably, just looks like he could smile. And then he does.