The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient #3)(28)
I’m pretty sure she’s fallen asleep when she murmurs, “I don’t have energy for our third try tonight.”
“I didn’t come here to have sex with you,” I say firmly. What kind of dick does she think I am?
She turns her face to the side and looks up at me. “So today doesn’t count?”
“No.”
A faint smile touches her mouth. “Thank you. For coming.”
“I was worried.”
Sighing, she shuts her eyes. “I had therapy today.”
“Did it help?” I ask, hoping she’ll elaborate.
Her chest expands with a long, deep breath and falls. “I don’t know. It’s complicated and …” Her forehead wrinkles slightly. “It’s hard to talk when I’m so tired. Just saying the words …” She lifts her hand, and it falls limply to her lap, making the point for her.
“You can tell me later. If you want.”
She nods, and I hold her tighter as the sky turns to night, shrouding her living room in darkness. It’s not exactly comfortable. I’m still wearing my motorcycle jacket, and while the synthetic fabric is great if you wipe out during a ride, it’s definitely not lounging attire. But I like the way she’s resting on me. It satisfies needs that I wasn’t aware I had. I soak up the moment until my muscles go stiff from inaction. When I can’t take it anymore and stretch out one of my arms, her head slides a fraction down my chest.
She’s fallen asleep.
I’d bet my Ducati that she doesn’t fall asleep with just anybody. But she did with me. That means something.
FOURTEEN
Anna
THE FIRST THING I SEE WHEN I OPEN MY EYES IS QUAN—HE’S on his side, facing me, deep asleep. The sight is so unexpected that my heart starts racing, and I look around in a panic, trying to make sense of things. This is my bed, my room. I didn’t draw the blinds shut last night, and everything is tinted gray and hushed, the way it is right before dawn. I don’t usually wake up at this time. Only when I’m traveling or accidentally go to sleep super early.
Memories of yesterday flit though my mind. My regular (failed) practice, seeing Jennifer, the news, the book, crying in public, Quan worrying about me …
I vaguely remember him moving me from the couch last night and then—I slap a hand over my mouth. I asked him to stay. That’s why he’s here, sleeping on top of my covers and looking cold. I sit up and carefully fold my blankets over him.
For a while, I sit there, scared to move for fear of waking him. What do women do when they have strangers in their beds? As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I frown. Stranger doesn’t feel like quite the right word for Quan. But he’s not my one-night stand—not yet. He’s definitely not my lover. Acquaintance seems too distant. He’s talked to me a reasonable amount, listened to me, laughed with me, seen me at my worst, held me while I cried. And he stayed because I asked him to.
I think … he might be my friend.
That’s an uncomfortable realization and too much for me to handle this early in the morning, so I grab my phone from where it’s charging on my nightstand—Quan must have done that for me—and sneak away from him.
As I brush my teeth as quietly as possible, I scroll through the hundred-plus text messages on my phone. Most of them are from Rose and Suzie. They were discussing the new twelve-year-old violin prodigy who’s recently hit the classical music scene. For a while after I accidentally went Internet famous, I was the one everyone was talking about. But it’s not me anymore.
My time has passed.
I never yearned to be spotlighted in that way, but I suppose I do feel a sense of loss now. It’s nice to be wanted. And sad to be discarded. But I know that’s the nature of shiny new things. I need to move forward with my life like all the other people who are no longer shiny and new and find meaning where I can.
After catching up on Rose and Suzie’s group chat, I see I missed a text from my sister, Priscilla. It says only How are you? She checks up on me about once a month. If she didn’t, we’d never talk because I get too enmeshed in my day-to-day grind.
I type in my response (it’s always the same) with my left hand: Fine, and you?
She’s on the East Coast, so the chances of her being up are pretty high. I’m not surprised when my phone starts vibrating with an incoming call.
I hurry to rinse my mouth and find a place in my apartment where I can talk. Nowhere seems suitable, so I pull on my ugly bathrobe and step onto my rarely used balcony. It’s freezing out here, especially because I’m barefoot and there’s condensation on the ground, and I hold the folds of my robe shut with a hand.
After taking a quick second to collect myself, I answer, “Hi, Priscilla je.” I have to add the je for “older sister.” When I was little, I called her just “Priscilla” once and she made me kneel in the bathroom with my arms crossed for two hours. She’s older than me by fifteen years, so she got to do things like that. Because my parents were always busy working, she was also the one who came to pick me up from the principal’s office when I started sobbing uncontrollably and refused to get on the school bus to go home on the first day of kindergarten. If I went trick-or-treating, she took me. If I had a birthday party, she organized it.