Page 64 of Forget Me

The appliance beeped, startling me.

“Or,” he said with a wicked smirk, “we can let the anticipation build.”

“What? Why?”

“What I want to do to you will take stamina. And stamina requires fuel.”

“But—” I rocked on the seat, chasing the throb between my legs. “Do we have to wait?”

He scraped the chopped onions and peppers into the pot, then turned to face me. “You remember what I told you that night?”

The memory came into focus like turning the dial on the AM/FM radio in my dad’s ancient Volvo. It brought with it a stab of remembered disappointment.

“That night, I wanted you to stay at my apartment. With me. I propositioned you, and you said no.” Humiliation had sliced through me. I’d thought we’d had a connection, and then he turned me down. Did he not find me attractive? He probably hadn’t, when I had tequila breath and—

“Mimi. Do you remember what I said?”

“You mean when you refused to fuck me?”

He grabbed a silicone spatula out of a canister on the counter and stirred the sizzling vegetables. “I think I said it more politely than that.”

I excavated my memory. Below the hurt feelings, the crushing rejection. He’d smiled with half his mouth and brushed a curl out of my eye.Mimi, when we sleep together, I want you to remember every moment. Every orgasm. I never want you to forget what I feel like inside you.

I shivered. “Um, remind me?”

He quirked those lips again. He saw through my ruse. But, like always, he did what I asked. “I said I’d remember my first time with you for the rest of my life, and I wanted you to remember it, too.”

The pulse between my legs sent up a chant: Ma-teo, Ma-teo, Ma-teo. We didn’t even have to go all the way into the bedroom. We could bang it out on the couch.

“Still, I wasn’t too happy with you. To be completely honest, I was hurt.”

“I’m sorry about that. But I couldn’t. Not when you were so…”

“Wasted?” My cheeks heated. I’d forgotten it all. His kindness. Our connection. And I’d been a bitch to him the next day when he showed up to check on me.

“That’s why you gave me this.” I tugged the ring out of the neckline of my blouse and held it out flat on my palm. “To remember. I could’ve lost it.”

He smiled. “But you didn’t. You don’t lose things, Mimi. Besides, I needed an excuse to come see you the next day.” His smile dimmed. “Though you’d forgotten.”

“I remembered. I remembered a handsome guy whose kindness swept me off my feet. I just didn’t remember he was you.”

I turned the ring in my fingers, caressing the scratches that dulled its shine. Then I reached behind my neck and released the clasp. I unthreaded the ring from the chain and set it on the island between us.

He stirred the pot. “You don’t want to keep it a little longer?”

“Keep it? Isn’t it your father’s?”

“It was.”

I didn’t like the way he frowned at the pot, so I asked, “Was your father a Casanova, too?”

That earned me a smile as he slipped the ring on his finger. “Shameless. But it meant nothing. He wore the ring long after my mother stopped loving him. We Rivera men are like that. Loyal.”

“And flirty.”

“With everyone but you. It didn’t work on you.”

“You didn’t have trouble flirting with me at the bar that night.”

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