Page 53 of The Accidental Dating Experiment

I freeze. She remembers. I swallow, a little uncomfortably, but it’s a good discomfort, like after a workout. “You like that?”

“I always have.”

That’s not helping my fight. I don’t open my eyes, not sure I can handle looking at her right now. I’d probably melt. “I always use it,” I mutter.

She’s quiet again, then she asks, “Ever since…?”

Here we are again. Revisiting the past, like she dared to do last night. I open my eyes and look into hers, giving her the truth. “Always.”

She gasps, then says, “I like it.”

My heart thunders, annoyingly. I want to spend the day here like this, wrapped up in her. But there’s work to do, and walls to paint, and a tee time with my father late in the afternoon. “Good,” I say. That’s all I can manage, or else I will say too much.

I sit up, extricating myself from her. “Forget about the tea. Let me go get you a coffee.”

“Okay,” she says, but there’s a crease in her brow. She’s concerned.

“What’s wrong?”

She inhales deep, like she needs to fortify herself. “Are we still doing the experiment?”

My throat burns hotter than it did when I ate that chili pepper to spite my father. Jealousy thrashes through me, stomping in my chest like an ogre. But I swallow it down and say yes.

I can’t stand in the way of her goals. I can get her coffee, though, so I do that.

19

TINY POUNDY PART

Juliet

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and damn straight, I grab a fuchsia feather boa and a pair of pink heart-shaped glasses from Eleanor’s closet of wonders.

I put them on before I leave for the hardware store. With the feathers tickling my neck, I hop into Monroe’s car, leaving him behind to start all the painting stuff. There’s just that roller pan issue. After I turn the car on, I plug in my phone and blast the speakers off, rocking out to my girl Taylor as I cruise along, singing at the top of my lungs and then some.

My toxic trait is that I think I sound amazing, and I just can’t stop.

Or maybe I’m crooning because I got some this morning. By the time I arrive at the shop on the outskirts of Darling Springs, I’m fueled by caffeine, morning sex, and music. The sex didn’t end on the chaise. I’m a giver, so I gave him an O, too, when he returned with my coffee. Translation: I let him bang me on the poker table, and the flush I felt was definitely of the royal variety.

When I reach Josiah’s, I park but don’t get out right away. I take a beat to look around his car. I’m a little curious. Maybe I’ll discover something new about Monroe. The interior is so clean, though, that there are hardly any signs of him in it. There isn’t an air freshener hanging from the mirror. He wouldn’t need it since he keeps the vehicle pristine. There aren’t wrappers from energy bars eaten hastily on the way to meetings he’s running late to. He doesn’t run late. There isn’t a sweatshirt on the back seat in case he gets cold. He doesn’t get cold.

My heart sinks a little. He really is impervious to everything. My throat tightens, and my high vanishes.

I’d been hoping to find some little detail. A candy wrapper, or a packet of ibuprofen. Something to tell me that sometimes, he’s vulnerable. A sign that would tell me he might be open to romance even in spite of the fact that if it went up in smoke, it could torpedo the podcast we’ve both put so much into building. And we’re both planning to put so much more into it when we sell this gift of a house and reinvest it.

But nope. He’s still strong, sturdy, unflappable, and unknowable Monroe.

I can’t even be annoyed about his inaccessibility since he’s been honest with me every step of the way. He was truthful eight years ago. He never led me on. He always had said it could only be a brief summer fling. He didn’t ask me to wait for him after residency.

I would have said yes if he’d asked. Instead, I sucked down all my silly feelings, and said breezily it’s no big deal.

He was honest with me this morning too. He’s not interested in big love. My throat tightens once more, then my eyes sting with the threat of tears. I hunt around for a tissue. Would it kill him to have a tissue in the car? I slide open the console in case there’s one.

But there’s just…a photo.

My gut twists with guilt. I’m not even snooping, but this feels like real snooping as I stare at a sepia-tinted photo of a tree from years ago.

Maybe even decades.