Page 42 of On the Line

Jameson

Well, like thirty seconds from now. I just pulled up in front of your house.

I walk through the kitchen into the living room so I can peek out the window, and sure enough, his Maserati SUV is on the street in front of my house.

Lauren

That’s awfully bold, just showing up at my house. What would you have done if I was asleep and didn’t answer your text?

I watch as he gets out of the car, restaurant bag in hand, and heads up the steps to my front walkway. He glances at his phone, probably reading my text, and one corner of his lip turns up in a half smile that would probably have had twenty-five-year-old me swooning.

I meet him at the front door, and when I open it, he says, “Not answering was never an option.”

I roll my eyes at how presumptuous he continues to be and gesture him inside. When I close the door and turn to face him, his breath hitches. That’s when I realize that I’m standing there in nothing but his jersey and fuzzy cable-knit socks pulled up to my knees.

“Nice pajamas.” He winks.

“I just hadn’t finished getting undressed yet.”

“I have so many thoughts about that,” he says, giving me a lift of one of his eyebrows like he’s letting me know he isn’t going to share them.

He takes off his shoes and coat, and I lead him back to the kitchen. I don’t have countertops yet, but Jules did lay a big piece of butcher block across the island so I’d have a temporary counter there. He sets the bag on top and lifts out a huge box from the most famous pastry shop in the North End.

I’m about to ask him how he managed to get there after the game and then over here so quickly, when he glances around at my kitchen, which, like the rest of the first floor, has no furniture of any kind, and asks, “Where should we eat this?”

“How about the sunroom?”

He grabs the box of dessert and I bring some forks and napkins, and when we walk in, he looks around in surprise. Last time he was in here, it was floor-to-ceiling boxes. Now, the glow of the streetlights in the front of the house and the light above the garage door in the back both reflect off the snow, illuminating the room in beautiful, glowing light.

“This is a great room.”

“Especially full of toddler furniture and toys.” I laugh, a little uncomfortable that the only place I can offer him to sit is on one of the two adult-size beanbags that rest on the floor nearest the wall. There’s no way he’d fit at the kid-size art table where my girls eat most of their meals while the rest of the house is under construction.

We make small talk about the room and how comfortable these beanbags are while we take turns passing the box of tiramisu back and forth so we can each have bites, and all the while my anxiety grows. I know Jameson didn’t stop by in the middle of the night because he needed help eating my favorite dessert, or because he wanted to chat about my house.

I look down at the box in my hand, and while normally I could scarf down this entire piece—easily four servings—by myself, I find that my stomach is in knots after only a few bites.

“Jameson,” I say, resting the box on my knees and looking over at him. His eyes are focused on the bare expanse of my thigh between the hem of his jersey and where the box sits, but he glances up at me quickly. He doesn’t look embarrassed that I caught him looking. “What are you really doing here?”

He shrugs both shoulders and says, “I told you we’d talk later.”

“No reasonable person would suspect you meant latertonight.”

He doesn’t reply, just studies my face, then focuses on my lips. “You have ...” he points to his own lips and instinctively I lick mine.

“Did I get it?”

“No.” His eyes are so dark as he reaches toward me that I can’t tell the iris from the pupil. “May I?”

I nod and he swipes his thumb near the corner of my upper lip and then brings his thumb to his own lips and sucks the mascarpone cream filling off. I swear my body combusts as if he’d licked it off me himself.

“Hey, that was mine!” I say, trying to deflect any attention from the way my body is responding to this.

“Mine now. But if you leave cream on your lips like that again, I’ll definitely fight you for it.”

Holy shit. My core clenches at his suggestion, and I literally have to cross my legs to relieve some of the pressure there. When I do, his jersey rides up higher on my thigh. He eyes my exposed thigh, and then, with his voice so low it’s practically a growl, he says, “And I don’t think that’s a fight you’d win.”

“You might be surprised how hard I fight when I really want something.” Am I talking about the cream filling for the dessert? I don’t even know anymore.

---