Accidentally Amy(43)

“Oh.” She stared back at him, her heart beating in her forehead. “Is that right?”
“It is.”
“Mmm, interesting,” she managed, feeling so flustered she didn’t even know how to string words together.
“My turn.” Blake leaned forward a little, the light from the table’s candle reflecting in his dark eyes. “Have you ever been in love?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Never. Not even close.”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for a story, which made her shrug and say, “I’ve never even gone out with someone more than twice since high school, so I’m - as Halsey would say - bad at love.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Halsey,” she replied, taking a bite out of her roll.
“Is that a friend of yours?”
“Ohmigod, she’s like a huge rock star,” Izzy said, trying to politely talk with roll in her mouth. “You’ve seriously never heard of Halsey?”
“Does she sing anything I’d know?”
“Um, Bad at Love, for starters.”
That made him smirk as he watched her chew. “Which is your theme song. Full circle right here, ladies and gentleman.”
She rolled her eyes.
He said, “Why don’t you date?”
If she hadn’t been Question Game’s creator, that might've felt intrusive. She shrugged and said, “I’m not big on talking to people I don’t know.”
“But you never shut up.”
“Because I know you.”
“Online dating?”
“I’ve tried the apps but I’ve never done more than scroll.” She felt like a loser, like it was obvious she was a total loner, so it was time for the next question. “Kids and marriage - in or out?” she asked.
“Holy shit, are you trying to tie me to the altar and baby me up?”
“I don’t think that expression is right,” she said, laughing. Which made Blake laugh, too, and that was the end of the question portion of the date. They fell into themselves after that, leaning on the sarcastic banter that was their natural language of choice.
It wasn’t until their plates were cleared and they were enjoying a post-dinner glass of wine that things changed. Blake was talking about one of the new machines at the gym, and Izzy said, “Y’know, I haven’t gone back there since the day I saw you in the elevator.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t have heavy enough weights for me, I guess.”
That earned her a cocked eyebrow. “Really.”
She knew she shouldn’t overshare, but the wine and relaxed dinner had loosened her tongue. She ran a finger over the rim of her glass and said, “Because if I go all the time, my routine visits will gradually dim the memory of that first time. And I don’t want to ever forget that chemistry-filled elevator ride.”
His smile disappeared and he looked serious.
“I mean, I know it’s a no big deal thing now - you’re Blake and I’m Izzy. We’re friends or whatever. But at the time, it was like this great cosmic coincidence, that I would run into Mr. Chest from Starbucks, and I always want to remember the magic of all that crackling potential.”
He didn’t say anything. At all. He just watched her.
“Obviously I’m buzzed,” she teased, rolling her eyes and lifting the glass to her lips. “I shall shut up now.”
“Don’t,” he said. “I think about it every single time I step into that elevator. It’s our elevator.”
“You do?” she asked, unable to be cool. “It is? Seriously?”
“Hell, yes,” he said, his jaw flexing. “I rotate between the memory of what it was, and the fantasy of what it could’ve been.”
“You fantasize about the elevator?” Izzy leaned forward on her elbows. “Ohmigod, I do, too. All the time.”
His eyes dipped down to her mouth as he said, “About you hitting the stop button?”
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip. “That’s where it starts.”
“Tell me where it finishes, Shay,” he said, quietly and calmly. No one around them would ever guess that he was asking her to share a sexual fantasy. No one who’d ever known her would guess that she would.
“With my hands on the wall,” she said, stuck somewhere between embarrassment and total arousal. “And with you behind me, most of the time.”
He raised his eyebrows like he was amused, but his jaw was rigid. “Most of the time.”
“It varies, y’know?”
“Yeah, I fucking do know,” he said, and Izzy's stomach dipped.
“So tell me, Chest,” she said, intimidated and totally turned on by his hot eyes. “Where it finishes for you.”
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting – Blake wasn’t the kind of guy to back down from a challenge so of course he'd answer – but it wasn’t, “Your back against the elevator wall, your legs wrapped around my waist, and my name on your tongue.”
“Ah,” she managed, unsure of how to behave as her body spontaneously combusted. “I, um, I think I like yours better.”
“Do you want more wine?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yes, please.”


    Blake
Blake pulled into the parking garage as Izzy rambled about the song on the radio. The entire drive to his place had been off, with Izzy babbling as if silence would kill her while thoughts of sexual fantasies pinged through his head.