Mr. Wrong Number(62)

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“COLIN, STOP COOKING and sit down.”

I turned away from the stove, and Olivia looked at me from her spot on the stool, eyebrows furrowed while she chewed a mouthful of pancakes. Her face had always been expressive. Even as a kid, I’d been able to tell by the chin raise when she was lying, by the crinkled eyebrows when she was confused and her mind was whirling a mile a minute, and by the eye roll if she was irritated.

Nothing about that had changed, but all of a sudden I found it charming. Her crinkled eyebrows as she waited for me to sit down so she could talk to me “about all of this” was kind of adorable.

“I’m not done.” I flipped over my spinach egg-white omelet with the spatula and said, “Gimme two more minutes and then you can talk.”

After the insane night together, I’d found myself wide-awake at five a.m. I lay there under hot-pink, threadbare sheets—they were horrible—for a solid twenty minutes before finally deciding to get up and make her breakfast. I knew she wouldn’t appreciate a romantic gesture like breakfast in bed, but if I made her a pile of pancakes in the kitchen when she woke up, surely she’d appreciate that.

I had to sneak to my place for the food (Jack wasn’t home, thank God) and then back up again a second time for pans and cooking utensils, but I’d managed to finish before she woke up.

The minute she’d walked into the kitchen, she’d blinked her wide eyes and said, “Listen, Colin, we need to talk about all of this. This is really sweet, but last night was a terrible idea and—”

“Are you kidding me right now?” I’d given her the head shake like she was ridiculous, and said, “I was starving because some sex fiend made me work up an appetite all night long. This is just food. Don’t read anything romantic into it, Miss Big Head.”

She’d done her whole fast-blink thing before I shoved a stack of pancakes into her hand, and said, “Eat first. Then talk.”

I don’t know how it’d happened, but just like that I had an entirely different viewpoint on “all of this.” We seemed like a terrible match, Olivia and I, but I’d woken up that morning thinking, Why not just go for the ride and enjoy it while it lasted? I’d been having one hell of a good time, and being with her was fun, so where was the problem in seeing where it could lead?

Maybe it was the relief of having Jack be okay with it. Knowing he was okay with us possibly dating made it seem like an actual possibility. And when I pictured it—us together—I didn’t hate how it looked.

I slid the omelet onto one of the two plates Livvie owned and carried it over to the island. Pulled up the other stool and said, “Okay. Now talk.”





Olivia


I looked across the island at Colin, and my mind went blank.

He was good at that, making me lose focus. I still had no idea how we’d ended up spending another night together. One minute I’d been saying it was a terrible idea, and the next I’d been waking up to the smell of his cologne on my pillow after a night of screamingly good sex.

“I think you’re overthinking this.” He set down his glass after taking a drink and said, “Haven’t you ever had a fun fling? A relationship that you know probably won’t lead to something concrete, but it’s a damned good time while it lasts?”

“No.” The thought of him having a fun fling with anyone made me insanely jealous, which pissed me off. I crossed my arms and said, “Are you talking, like, friends with benefits?”

“God, no. Your brother would actually kill me.” He cut off another piece of egg. “Friends with benefits is just platonic friendship with secret sex every once in a while that no one knows about.”

“And your fun fling thing is different how, exactly?” I was impressed by how cool and unaffected I sounded, when in reality I was freaking out and needed some space to work through all of this. Because I still couldn’t quite comprehend the idea that Colin wanted to have anything with me other than sex.

“For starters, it’s not a secret.” He slid his fork between his teeth, and my stomach dipped as I remembered his teeth scraping over the tattoo on my back. He chewed and swallowed before continuing. “It’s just like a regular relationship—I take you out, give you multiples, beg you to send pics—only we’re both in agreement that once it isn’t fun anymore, we walk away with no hard feelings.”

My throat was dry as I swallowed. How in the hell would that ever work? It’s not like we’d both find it “not fun anymore” at the same exact time, shake hands, and happily walk away. This was a recipe for an Olivia disaster.

But even as I knew that, the thought of more with Colin—going out to dinner and holding his hand and getting flirty sexts from him—was so damned intriguing that I was tempted. “That sounds preposterously simple, Colin.”

He tilted his head. “Scared, Livvie?”

“Of what?”

He just raised an eyebrow.

“Now who has the big head?”

I was torn between giggling hysterically and crying a little as I watched him put in his AirPods, fiddle with his running watch, and then leave the apartment like it was normal and he’d be returning later.

Had we really just decided to do the thing?