Page 40 of Unromance

“No,” she lied, meeting his gaze sternly. They stared each other down for a long moment before Sawyer broke. “Fine, I did, but it’s not my fault that all succulents look fake, so, whatever. I’m getting you a present,” she pivoted, praying a change of subject would cause her face to stop burning.

“You in that dress and those tights is gift enough.”

Well, that didn’t help. The flush in her cheeks spread to her chest, her core. Gathering herself, she put on her best come-hither look, allowing one leg to slide out of the dress’s slit. “Oh yeah?”

He fixed her with a stern look, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed thickly. “Don’t be a tease. At least, any more than you usually are, by just, y’know”—he gestured in her general direction—“existing.”

Her heartbeat was akin to a gallop in her ears. She really needed him to stop talking like this. Of course, she knew he was attractedto her on some level. They’d slept together. But they weren’tintoeach other. She needed to divert this conversation into calmer waters. Friendly ones. Cool-as-a-cucumber waters. Sawyer could be cool, even if her neglected vagina was anything but.

She hummed thoughtfully. “I mean,” she said skeptically. “We did sleep together the night we met, so I don’t know if that makes me a very good tease.”

He laughed, effectively breaking the tension. “Agree to disagree.”

The tension snapped right back into place. She tore her gaze away from his, her chest feeling tight.

Glancing at the time on her microwave, she crossed over to the fridge to grab the fancy cheese she’d panic bought yesterday. She’d googled “housewarming gifts for someone who probably already has everything and you’re hella broke.” Surprisingly, there was an article for that. Unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been an article for her first search: “what to bring to your one-night stand’s family’s house for Christmas dinner.” Given the last minute–ness, neither search had been particularly fruitful. So, after checking with Mason that his entire family wasn’t tragically lactose intolerant, she went with her default: cheese. As far as Sawyer was concerned, it wasn’t a party unless there was cheese.

She gestured with the wooden cheese wheel box toward the door. “Shall we?”

Silence fell between them as she locked up, the silence stretching as she followed him to his car. Something was different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. They were no strangers to flirty comments, but today it felt charged. Before, they’d laugh it off, remind each other of the rules, but now… it refused to be stifled.

She ran back the events at IKEA, the afternoon at the skating rink, relived all their conversations, but she couldn’t pinpointanything out of place. They’d always teased each other, maybe with a bit more innuendo than necessary, but, like, they’d fucked each other’s brains out a month ago. Of course they made sex jokes. It was fine. It was chillllll. They werefriends. Friends could make innuendos, right? She was reading too much into it. She blamed it on all the masturbating she hadn’t been doing lately. It was making her tense.

She silently made a pact with her vagina to take care of business later tonight if it could just cool it for a few hours.

The forty-five-minute drive passed in a blur. Despite talking the entire time, Sawyer couldn’t remember a single thing they talked about, only coming to when Mason began parallel parking along a side street with houses that cost more than all of Sawyer’s advances combined.

“What does your sister do?” she crowed, gawking at the houses and trying to suss out which one was Margot’s.

Mason didn’t answer right away, his eyes on the rearview. Sawyer melted a few inches lower in her seat when he placed his hand on the back of her headrest, smoothly sliding into the only available parking spot by turning the wheel in expert increments with the heel of his palm. She was too horny to be in public if she was getting off on parallel parking.

“She’s an econometrician,” Mason answered as he shifted the car into park.

Sawyer considered any job title that had more syllables than she had fingers on one hand to mean one thing: money. “Nice job, Luis,” she murmured appreciatively.

Mason grinned. “Don’t count him out. I made sure to connecthim with my costars when he opened his gym, so he was doing just fine long before he and Margot got together.”

“Well, shit, connect me!” she said without thinking.

Something unreadable flashed across his face for the second time that evening, and she flinched internally. People probably badgered him for connections all the time. This—them—had never been about that. Sure, her career was floundering, and in a roundabout way, he was helping, but she couldn’t live with herself if she took a handout. She would save her career by herself or not at all.

Mason opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

He closed his mouth, hesitating a moment before nodding resolutely and getting out of the car.

She waited until the door shut behind him before letting out a long-suffering sigh. Why were things so weird with them tonight? She hastily composed herself before stepping out of the car.

Mason was unloading immaculately wrapped presents from the trunk—a smaller pile than she’d anticipated, given his aforementioned large family.

“Fess up,” she teased. “You ate all those fudge boxes from the Christkindlmarket.”

Mason laughed, patting his toned stomach affectionately. “This is the body fudge built, no doubt. But no. The extended family celebrates on Christmas Eve, so it’s just immediate family and a few friends today. I gave the kiddos their gifts last night.”

“Favorite uncle status secured?” she asked.

“It was never in question,” he said confidently as they walked up the freshly shoveled sidewalk to a beautiful brick town house with a little Christmas tree in the yard. Glancing up and down the block, she noticed that every house had a small decorated tree in their yard.

From the porch, she could see a second tree beyond the window. This was the kind of rich people shit she could get behind.Two trees.

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