The Ex Talk(27)

I fling my hands up to cover it. “Ughhhhhh, I’m gonna get some water. This happens every time. The downside of not being six two.”

“Six three.”

“Jesus.”

I make my way toward the break room, surprised when he follows me. Inside, I turn on one of the four light switches.

When I can’t reach the water glasses on the top shelf, he easily grabs one and hands it to me, showing off one of his particularly enviable six-three superpowers. I mutter a thank-you as I hold it under the refrigerator tap.

“We still haven’t figured out why we broke up,” he says, leaning against the counter opposite the fridge.

“Maybe we should keep it simple. Working together and dating got to be too much for us?”

“That’s not very exciting,” he says. It’s fitting that we can’t agree. “Maybe you were intimidated by my raw sexual energy.”

I nearly choke on a sip of water—that’s how unexpected this is, coming from him.

But hey, I can play this game, too, especially with alcohol loosening my lips. “Or you were never able to get me to orgasm.”

“I’ve never had that problem before,” he says without missing a beat.

With just the two of us in this darkened space, I’m aware of how small the break room actually is. He shouldn’t have followed me in here. I could have climbed onto the counter and grabbed a glass myself because short people are nothing if not skilled counter climbers.

But then he wouldn’t be standing there in one of his Top Ten Most Infuriating Leans, eyeing me from beneath a truly impeccable pair of lashes.

The alcohol takes over. “So . . . we had a good sex life, then?”

One corner of his mouth kicks upward. “Maybe we weren’t having sex.”

Something horrific happens then: I let out this completely nonhuman sound, a mix between a snort and a laugh and a gulp. I shrink back until my shoulder blades hit the wall.

“What, you thought sleeping with me was a given?” he says. “Is my fictional self really that quick to put out?”

“Oh my god, no no no,” I say. “I was just—if we were dating for three months, then we probably—I mean, maybe we didn’t, but—”

He’s full-on smiling now, as though amused by my incoherent babbling. I bring the water glass to my face so I can hide behind it. My sweater is draped across my desk, and I’m too warm in a thin black T-shirt. He’s a six-three heat lamp.

“Shay,” he says in a low voice. Teasing. He inches closer, reaching forward to take the water glass away from my face and holding it level with my shoulder. “Honestly, I’m flattered.”

Then he taps the cold rim of the glass against my cheek gently, gently. A friendly little pat that sends my heart into overdrive. When he moves it away, I reach toward my face, holding a few fingers against the cold spot there.

His gaze is so intense that I have to close my eyes for a moment. My instinct is to back away, to put more space between us, but when I try, I’m reminded that I’m against the wall. I don’t know where to look. Normally, I’m level with his pectorals, but he’s hunched, the curve of his shoulders soft in this semi-light. Close enough to reach out and touch—if I wanted to. I watch the rise and fall of his chest. That’s safe. Safer than eye contact, at least.

I’ve never had that problem before.

“I’m glad, because I’m really wishing the floor would open up and suck me into the Hellmouth right now.”

“Buffy fan?”

“Oh yeah. I grew up with it. You?”

He at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Watched it on Netflix.”

Of course he did. He’s twenty-four, young enough to never have seen it live and sliced up by commercials. “By ‘grew up with it,’ I meant, you know, I was still very young during the early seasons, and I didn’t understand most of what was going on . . .” I break off with a groan, though I’m relieved the conversation has turned away from sex. “God, don’t make me feel like a grandma.”

A laugh from deep in his throat turns my legs to jelly. That rumble—I feel it in the last possible place I want to feel it.

It is deeply concerning.

That’s what catches me off guard, more than anything else tonight. I don’t want to think about doing anything with Dominic besides cohosting a show about our fake relationship. I don’t want to think about the way that rough laugh would sound pressed against my ear while other parts of him pressed against other parts of me.

And I really don’t want to imagine him holding that cold glass to my bare skin again.

I swallow hard, forcing away these delusions. Sober Shay would not be fantasizing about Dominic Yun when he’s right in front of her. My imagination is too creative, and my yearlong drought can’t be helping.

Dominic passes the glass back to me and straightens to his full height. Oh. It’s only then that I realize how easy it would have been for him to trap my hands over my head and push me against the wall, tell me with his mouth on my neck how journalism will save the world.

Of course, he doesn’t do any of this, opting instead to take a step back. Then two. At three steps, the temperature in the room dips. At four, I can breathe again.

“For what it’s worth,” he says when he’s halfway to the door, “I think it would have been good, too.”