Dating You / Hating You
Page 56

These are the things that take up brain space that should be used to come up with snappy comebacks when Brad calls me kiddo or sport and insists that being a team player means I pass someone else my commission.
“I’ll give you the Ravenswood zin then,” he says, rapping his knuckles against the bar. “Not much to choose from, but that one is pretty decent.”
Woody leaves to go grab a bottle, and I lean more heavily against the bar, wondering for a beat if I could just lay my head down here and take a little nap.
Oh, wine makes me sleepy.
And amorous, apparently, because tonight Carter is looking pretty—
“How’s it going over here?”
Straightening, I look over my shoulder as the man himself approaches and pulls out the barstool next to me.
It’s a struggle to keep my tipsy attention focused on his face and not stare at the smooth, exposed collarbone. “I’m wiped. And tipsy. I just want to head to bed.”
“Me too.” Glancing to the doors he’s just come in through, he adds, “But I fear they’re just getting started.”
I find myself leaning into him, laughing into the shoulder of his jacket. God, he smells good. “Crazy kids. I guess we can’t just disappear. Being the hosts and all.”
He laughs. “How the fuck did we manage to get this gig?”
“No idea.”
He looks down, running the tip of his index finger back and forth over a pattern in the wood bar top. “Brad is still treating you like his assistant.”
“I know.” I bite my lip, looking to the side.
“Evie,” he says, “I’m so sorry. I contributed by ignoring it. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
His words make my windpipe feel tight, make my thoughts turn defensive.
Everything’s fine.
You’re just new to this, Carter.
I’ve dealt with Brad for years, I know his game.
Cut the shit, Evie.
Letting out a tiny steam whistle of vulnerability, I admit, “It always makes me mad, but now it’s making me anxious. I have this strange itch in the back of my brain, this persistent worry that he’s really trying to push me out.”
He nods. “I see it. I see it, and I don’t know what to do.”
My chest, it aches. “I hate feeling helpless.”
I didn’t expect this to be our crescendo moment. In the movies, these admissions either soften someone up or harden them further, but they rarely come out as quietly as I’ve said it and still make a huge impact.
But somehow, this one does.
Carter leans down and slides his hand along my jaw, and then bends, kissing me in a way I’ve been dreaming about almost nonstop since that night in my apartment. It’s different from the frantic kisses in the mixing room, rough and hurried. Those felt like secret, semiviolent betrayals of our better instincts.
But this. This is a stream of tiny tastes and pecks, little pieces of dialogue. They go from I’m sorry to what are we doing to how do we do this deeper and all night and I don’t even notice when Woody has to place my drink on the bar because Carter has my back pressed to it.
I do notice when Carter pulls away to hand him a twenty.
My hand comes up, pressing to my mouth as if holding the sensation there. “You don’t have to pay for my wine.”
“I’m invested in getting this tab settled so we can leave.”
“I thought we couldn’t leave our party.”
“Fuck this party.”
The giggle that escapes me is high, and girlish, and very excited at the prospect of us leaving, together.
“What did you say?” I ask, mock scandalized.
“You heard me.”
Drunken roars reach us from outside, and are followed by the unmistakable splashing of water.
“Skinny-dipping!” Kylie yells, and in the background rises a chorus of male cheers.
Carter is still looking at my mouth. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
His smile droops. “I have two full-size beds in my room.”
My eyes shine, my smile goes wide. “Well, that’s just fine. Because I have a king.”
• • •
We trip through the doorway, laughing and breathless over having raced into the gift shop for condoms and throwing way too much money at the bewildered teenager working the night shift. I feel like I’m full of tiny bubbles or brilliant stars: inside, everything is alive.
Somehow, despite how many months it’s been and all the games we’ve played between us, awkwardness never descends. It’s us alone, smiling into kisses, pulling off clothes with the comfort of a couple long together and the excitement of two virgins. I swear his body is unreal and I can’t stop touching it, memorizing it like my hands are scanning it into some memory database. I give my brain permission to overwrite anything it wants—take away my ability to ride a bike or crochet; the planes and dips of Carter’s abdomen are way more important.
“Is this too fast?” he asks, barely pausing as he flings my bra behind him somewhere.
I laugh. “Hell no.”
He leads us both farther into the room and then I’m lying down, the sheets cool along the back of my body and Carter pressed along the front.
He kisses a path down my neck. “Can we be friends now?”
The feel of his lips against my skin makes it hard to form words, but I swallow and do my best to focus. “Is that what you want?” I ask, a question that might be taken more seriously if his belt weren’t hanging open, the metal buckle clinking in the space between us. “Friends?”
“Yes,” he says, teeth scraping along my collarbone. “And no.” He pulls back to look at me. “Does that make sense?”
“I think so.” I finish unbuttoning his pants and push the fabric down his hips, smiling when the cold air leaves a trail of goose bumps across his skin. He kicks them the rest of the way off and then it’s naked legs against naked legs, bare torso against bare torso.
He says something else, but the shape of his words is lost against my shoulder and then my breast as he moves lower. I arch my back when he takes my nipple into his mouth, and the sound I make surprises me.
Fuck. Why did we waste so much time?
I have the brief thought that we need to be quiet, that eventually Rose will be only two doors down or someone we know might be in the room right next door, but I can’t even hear the shrieks of the skinny-dippers anymore, and the lake is right there.
We’re in a fortress.
Carter’s mouth is everywhere: he worships my breasts, sucking each nipple in turn while rolling the other between his fingers. His eyes are wild as he looks up my body, holding my gaze as he moves lower and lower still, pulling off my panties and finally settling between my legs. He leans forward, tentative at first and then greedy like I’m the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. I feel his breath and his sounds and he presses each into my skin and I want him to push them deeper so that I feel them vibrating up my spine, radiating out along my ribs. I feel empty; I might actually say this out loud because his fingers come alongside his kisses and then deep into me.
The world outside seems to stop. The idea of a retreat going on out there feels almost comically surreal. Everything collapses down to the insistent press of his tongue. Heat curls like ribbons around my spine and I pull his hair, arch my body into his touch, and try to tell him that I’m close, so so close.
“Carter,” I gasp, grabbing at him again and oh God I’m coming . . . coming . . . so loud and fuck, I no longer understand why we ever left this place. No job is worth losing this.