“You know my name, Pixie,” I say as I make my way to her creative space. “Let’s use it.”
“Ha!” She peers back from the freezer. “That I do. Not a fan of nicknames, and yet, you’ve so freely given me one.
“I’ll stop if it bothers you.”
“No way, Hanky. You can call me an-y-thing you want,” she drawls out.
I just smile to myself as I watch her. Because as much as I hate the nickname, I’m liking that she’s calling me something different. Just for her. Even if it’s ridiculous.
She drops ice cubes into two glasses and smiles at what she’s doing. I wonder how she can be so easily content. After the chaos she’s been through. If she’s really as strong as she portrays. I can handle intense situations, and disengage myself from feeling where necessary, but going through something like losing family so tragically, I know for a fact, it would cripple me.
She knows I’m studying her again. She stands tall as she glances back at me over her shoulder. Everything about her interests me. She moves with so much confidence. It comes easily to her. I’m learning that it’s just how she is. I'm drinking in my fill. Quenching a thirst while enough alcohol flows through my bloodstream, tipping the needle of what’s considered platonic, towing the line, and plain old breaking the rules. And the way I can’t seem to stop looking at the way her waist curves and leads to a round ass perched on top of her thick, full thighs, it’s cutting dangerously across those lines.
“Put something on. It’s too quiet in here.”
I look at the record player she’s set up next to two prominent speakers and four crates filled with records. She walks into the living space with the two ice-filled glasses balanced in one hand and a bottle of Titos in the other.
“I’m not drinking vodka, G.”
“Too much of a panty pucker for ya?”
She laughs.
“Geez, you don’t have to be so growly about it, Hanky. Let me see what else I have.” She huffs and struts back into the kitchen.
I stop my perusal of music and watch the sway of her hips. A melodic movement like a swinging metronome. I’m never this dumbstruck over a woman’s body. I need to knock it off, so instead I find a record I haven’t heard in a while. The lead singer from Kings of Leon echoes throughout the room with his falsetto and rhythm guitar. He croons away on speakers placed throughout the space, suggestively saying that he could use somebody. And my eyes connect with hers as soon as he repeats it. We’re both thinking the same thing.Great suggestion.
As she says, “Nice choice,” my breath catches. It’s not the first time, hell, it’s happened often, but it’s the first time that I can keep her eyes locked onto mine. Challenge her not to look away. The sexiest thing in the world has to be eye contact with the right person. It’s the first time that Iwanther to be the woman from the bar, but even more so, I want to be the man who was in the bar that night. I was a blank slate then, flailing, but I was less pissed off at the world. Which is funny because when I stepped foot in that bar, I was angry at the path my life was on. Now I look at her, and I think, how stupid of me. That path led me right to her.
She looks away, focusing on finding me a drink in the refrigerator. “I have a stray Corona, but no limes.”
“How about a Cognac?”
She freezes and doesn’t look up. I hear her say softly, maybe intended only for herself, “Not so predictable anymore, apparently.”
I walk toward the kitchen, and my approach has her moving away, as she says, “Nope.” Cracking the Corona open, she slides it across the countertop. The silence in the room is waiting to be broken. I don’t mind quiet. I can usually find out a lot about a person or understand a situation better when there's a bout of silence.
Her cheeks are flushed as she takes a sip of her vodka. She sighs and then must make up her mind about something, because she follows it up with a breathy, “Okay.” She moves past me and back into the living room.
Silence can make a person realize the full depth of the situation they're in, and right now, we’re alone together. And while I shouldn’t be here, there is also nowhere else I want to be. A baser instinct that I’m following. Or maybe it’s just my cock, urging the rest of me to stop ignoring the sex appeal that’s pouring off this woman and to do something about it. I also haven’t forgotten that she’s not wearing anything under that short black skirt either.
I take a long pull of the beer. “I’m not going to cause you any trouble,” I tell her.
She doesn’t say anything to that, or react at all. Instead, she continues her path to the oversized green armchair, kicks off her sandals, and sits as she pours another shot of vodka into her ice-filled glass. Instead of taking a sip, she sucks on a lemon wedge and plunks it into her drink. The entire room smells like lemons mixed with something sweet. My eyes fixate on her mouth. Her tongue peeks out and meets the glass a fraction of a second before it reaches her lips.
She keeps her eyes on me as I lean my back against the counter, across the room from where she sits, her legs casually draped over one arm of the chair. She looks too comfortable, while I’m standing here stiff as a board, trying to figure out if I’ve just walked into a situation I’m not strong enough to move away from.
I take another long pull of my beer, to which she smirks. Suddenly, I’m uncomfortable in this silence. I can usually school my emotions, but the uneasiness of being alone with her now, and the obvious attraction that I have to her, has to be coming off of me in waves.
“What if I want a little trouble, flyboy?”
I sniff out a laugh to myself. This has to be some kind of test.
I look around the room for a red light. Some kind of signal that I’m being recorded, because this shit right here has to be psychological warfare at its finest. When the woman you’ve obsessed over isn’t just alive, but is sitting in front of you, begging for trouble, and you’re not allowed to do a damn thing about it.
She sits up, takes one more sip from her glass, and puts it down on the oversized coffee table in front of her. Smiling at me, she drags her fingers over the top of each thigh. My eyes dart from her legs to her face and back again. Watching those pretty hands with long, decorated nails moving much too sensually along her bare skin.
“So you’ve become the kind of man to just stand there and tell me what you’re not going to do,” she says playfully.