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“I noticed you too,” I said. “At Gemma’s twenty-fifth. You wore a yellow dress and danced to Abba with my dad. I thought about you for a month. I told myself it was weird because you were Gemma’s friend.”
Tess put her wine down very carefully.
“Ben,” she said. “That’s not fair.”
“Why not?”
“Because now this isn’t a booking anymore.” She looked at the envelope on the counter, still sealed. “This is something else.”
I kissed her. Or she kissed me. It was hard to tell, afterwards. It was soft and then not soft at all, her hands in my hair, my hand on the warm curve of her waist, years of barbecue glances landing all at once. She pulled me down onto the sofa and climbed into my lap and kissed me like she’d been saving it up.
“I’m not charging you,” she breathed against my mouth. “Just so you know. Not for this.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. If you try and give me that envelope I’ll hit you with it.”
I slid my hands up her thighs under the black dress. She moaned softly and rocked against me.
Then my phone buzzed on the coffee table. And again. And again.
GEMMA, said the screen. Then a message preview: “Are you up?? Need to tell you something about Tess.”
Tess saw it. We both froze.
→ I turn the phone face down and tell Tess it’s just us tonight