After Hours (InterMix)(95)

I shivered, suddenly naked again. And in public. “Since when do you waste your time trying to interpret emotional-chick nonsense?”

“See? It’s making you all squirrely. But I’m just saying, if that freaked you out, don’t worry. I’m not looking to threaten to your precious feminist autonomy.”

Wait, what? “You’re thinking too hard about this, Kel.”

“Fine. Just didn’t want to wreck what we got, if that kind of talk weirds you out. I like this arrangement we’ve got going. I don’t want to scare it away, either. Forget I even uttered the c-word.”

Oh lovely. At least that settled the uncertainty of whether or not that discussion was imminent. I knew where we stood, now—absolutely no place special, but as a consolation, the sex was off the wall.

I squinted at Kelly. Sometimes I felt I knew him. Other times, like now, it hit home that we’d only met a few weeks ago.

“What?”

“I know like, nothing about you.”

“Sure you do. You know way more than most people.”

I cocked my head.

“You’ve seen me naked,” he pointed out. “Been inside my house. Heard a little about my upbringing, and you know where I’m from. You know I wish I had a dog.”

“Yeah, I guess.” And in truth, I knew something very personal about him, something rough and heinous and intense, but I hadn’t heard it from Kelly, so it shouldn’t count. “But other stuff. Silly stuff.”

“Like?”

Like stuff girls know about their boyfriends. “I dunno. Your middle name?”

“Paul.”

“Are you a Republican?”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Independent.”

“Do you . . . Can you dance?”

“I can waltz.”

I goggled at him and he shrugged. “I went to a Polish Catholic middle school.”

“Oh my God—can you polka?”

“If a wedding demands it and I’ve had enough vodka, sure.”

“Huh.” I propped my chin on my hand. My angst disappeared, so engrossed was I in trying to picture Kelly dancing.

Our food arrived and we chatted as we ate, and I let myself get caught up in the more superficial details of Kelly Robak. His birthday was July twentieth. He hated sushi. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d finished a book, but we’d both read and liked everything by Oliver Sacks, unsurprisingly. If he’d gone to college, he imagined he would’ve studied history.

“What part of history?” I asked, wadding my napkin.

Kelly drained his glass. “American, I guess. The Civil War seems pretty interesting, plus all the industrial stuff. Railroads and shipbuilding. Subway construction.”

If this were my boyfriend, I’d have allowed my wheels to start turning with ideas for birthday presents.

“Better get back,” he said, standing. “It’s a school night, after all.”

I tucked my debit card inside the check presenter and went to use the ladies’ room, but when I got back, I discovered without much surprise that Kelly had paid in cash. He handed me my card.

“Not fair. I wanted to pay. You fixed my car.”

“Tough shit.”

I shook my head, following him to the exit.

As we climbed into his truck he asked, “You heading home tonight, or in the morning?”

I bit my lip, buckling my seatbelt. “I dunno. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stay the night so we can have sex again.”

“You don’t play games, Kelly. I’ll give you that.”

“You’ll give me all kinds of things,” he said, turning onto the street. “Just you wait and I’ll tell you what they are.”

I rolled my eyes, but inside I smiled.

By the time we pulled up to his house, I’d succumbed to a long series of yawns. The beer or the heap of pasta or the twelve-hour shift had done me in.

As Kelly locked the door behind us I said, “Don’t be offended if I fall asleep in the middle of the sex.”

“I’ll wake you up when it’s your turn to come,” Kelly said, but then he yawned, too. “Or we can give it a miss, just this once.”

Which meant what? If there was no sex imminent, did that mean I should head home, or were going to like . . . cuddle?

“You need something to sleep in?” he asked, answering my unspoken question and filling me to the brim with a weird, giddy energy, like I was suddenly made of kittens.