A guilty look flashed across her beautiful face. “Damn, I probably should too. It’s been… too long.”
I nodded. “Remember when we were teenagers and time couldn’t go fast enough? We were always in a hurry for everything to rush by.”
She laughed again and I resolved to make her repeat that sound many more times. “Ugh, you’re not kidding. Don’t get me wrong, my teens were pretty stressful, and I never want to do that again, but I wouldn’t mind getting that sense of having so much time back.”
“It would be nice. I’m in a good spot right now, but once the season ramps up, I know it’ll get pretty insane.”
She smirked. “I wish I had an off season. Even when there’s a lull in filming, it feels like I’m always doing something massively important to progress the company.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“Honestly, it is.” She finally let go of my hand only to rest her chin on her palm. I pulled my arm back to myself, my fingers still warm where she had been so casually touching me.
I could feel my body craving more of her touch, wanting to feel her hold onto me, grip me, use me as an anchor while I turned her world inside out. But I also just wanted to bury my face in her hair and drift off to sleep together, all wound up in each other’s bodies. I wanted to hold her, to have her sit in my lap and lean her back against my chest as we watched a movie together.
The domestic fantasy didn’t surprise me. It appealed to all of my protective, providing instincts. Desires that I’d had ever since my shoulders had broadened and my voice had deepened. I was just surprised and how viscerally my body reacted to the image.
Huh.
If Amber could hear or see my thoughts, I was sure they would send her running for the trees. It was clear that she was on a very set path at the moment, and that path just involved her and her company. I respected that, as I’d thought to myself many, many times, but the longer we spent together, the more I couldn’t help but wish that she could just carve out a little space for me to fill.
That probably wasn’t healthy.
But before I could really internally debate that further, the waitress returned with our drinks and the appetizer, apologizing for the wait. I hadn’t even noticed that time had really gone by. When I was with Amber, there really was just her and only her. She quieted all of the background noise and stress. She centered me.
“Alright, are you ready for me to take your order?”
I looked to Amber and she nodded with a ravenous look in the eyes. Goodness knew that we had worked up quite the appetite with all our work. The thought of filling her belly with food that she was hungry for made my entire body thrum with interest, and I looked down at the menu to distract myself.
We both placed our orders and then fell into conversation again once the waitress was gone, almost as if she had never interrupted in the first place. The words bounced back and forth easily, banter flying and more than a little bit of flirting back and forth. It was nice, if there ever was an understatement, and the minutes floated by unnoticed.
Our food came, delicious and steaming, but my attention was hardly on it. No, instead my eyes were caught up on Amber’s mouth, her lips growing a bit puffy from the hot sauce in her burrito. The crinkles in the corner of her eyes whenever she laughed at something or said something mischievous. The way her cheeks flushed when she retold an exciting story, the furrow of her brows when she was listening intently to me.
Before I knew it, our plates were emptied, collected and our check had been sitting on the table for nearly half an hour. As much as I didn’t want to, I knew that we both needed to get home and get some rest. We’d had a wild week and a little bit of recovery was in order. Goodness knew my shoulders and neck were aching from wielding double axes all day.
But as I looked the woman over, I realized that I didn’t want her to go. I wanted her to stay with me forever, all contented and happy and provided for.
…it wasn’t just a crush, was it?
I’d been in pretty weak denial about it, Amber having fallen to the background of my thoughts after our three years apart. But now that she was right in front of me, living and breathing and looking so beautiful, I knew that my feelings were so much more than just the teenage unrequited feelings I’d been harboring for years.
But she was never going to feel anything like that for me. I needed to make a decision. Was I alright with that? Was I alright with just sex and friendship? Or did I want more?