“Oh.” I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. All the wind was knocked out of me and I quickly jumped out of his bed and started getting dressed, only to realize that I didn’t have any clothes up there with me in the first place. “Oh, I see. Wow. I didn’t know that’s what you meant, but I guess if that’s what you want.”
“Stephanie, wait,” he said. “Are you mad?”
I grabbed the sheet off his bed and wrapped it around my body. “I hope you don’t mind that I borrow this,” I said, ignoring his question. “But I’m not about to do the walk of shamenakedthrough my own house!”
“Let me give you my robe,” he said. He walked to the bathroom again and it was at this moment that I realized he had put his jeans back on, and he had product in his hair. When he returned with the robe, I took it and scowled at him.
“And where exactly are you going, might I ask?” I put the robe on in a huff.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re getting ready to go out!”
“I—well, if you must know, yes, I was going to go out and see a friend.”
“What friend?”
“A friend I met at the wine store.”
I stared him down and from the guilt I could read behind his eyes, I understood there was more to the story that he wasn’t telling me. “A woman!” I said, scoffing. “You’re going to go see another woman? Right after we had sex?”
“I wouldn’t say it was right after,” he said. “We had sex a couple of hours ago. Besides, I’m not going to sleep with her. I just wanted to go grab a drink.” He folded his arms and sighed. “What is going on right now? Why are you getting so upset?”
“How could I not be upset? You’re rushing off to go meet up with another girl!”
“So?”
“So? So! Why would you think that was okay?”
He took a step back. “Hang on, I’m confused. Before I answer that, how about you tell me why it wouldn’t be okay.”
I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s start with the obvious one—you and I are starting something here. I realize we haven’t made anything official, and it’s not like I expected you to stop dating other people, but—”
“Woah, woah, back up. Did you just use the word dating?”
I paused. Opened my mouth, then closed it again. Slowly, it was all beginning to dawn on me. Gina was right. Matt and I were most certainly not on the same page, and we most certainly did not want the same thing.
“No,” I said. “No I didn’t say that. In fact, how about you just forget I said anything. You’re right, there’s no reason why I should be mad about any of this.”
“Stephanie—”
“No.” I put my hands up. “No, I get it. This isn’t what you signed up for. You wanted a no strings attached hook-up, you wanted a girl who you could fool around with before going to take another girl out for drinks. I get it. You’re a rich playboy and these are the kinds of relationships you have with women. You told me that, I should’ve listened.”
“I didn’t know you wanted more!” he said. “At lunch the other day, you didn’t say you wanted anything more than sex.”
“I thought I did,” I said. “And I thought you were reciprocating, but I can see now I was very much mistaken.” I lowered my voice and sighed. “I think I’m just going to go downstairs now, and we can pretend like none of this happened.”
“That’s not what I want,” he said. “I want to keep spending time with you.”
I laughed. “Right. In bed. Naked.”
“Well—yeah. Why not?”
“It’s just… it’s not what I want, okay? I’m going to go now.” I turned around and reached for the door.
“Hang on,” he said.
I held my breath, a part of me hoping that he was going to ask me to stay. That he was going to say he had feelings for me too, feelings that weren’t just sexual. But instead, he just exhaled and said, “Are you still going to stay on as Will’s nanny?”