Page 25 of Naked

“Get some sleep, girl.”

Marissa was passed out, her head against the window, snoring lightly. “Good night. Thanks for the lift. You sure you can handle her?”

Emily laughed lightly. “Oh yeah. Ash is ready and waiting to take her off my hands.”

That meant Hunter was here. I glanced out the window and my breath caught. He stood on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, eyes locked on me.

“Good night, Emily,” I said without ever breaking eye contact with Hunter. I couldn’t. I was trapped in his gaze. He was a tractor beam pulling me in. I floated from the backseat to his arms.

“I missed you.” He wrapped his arms around me and planted a kiss on the top of my head.

I smelled him and wrapped my fingers in his shirt. “It’s only been a few hours.”

“Too many.” He turned, his arm over my shoulders, and took my rolling bag. “Let’s crash out.”

Part of me was a little disappointed he didn’t want to strip my clothes off and have more of the sex, but the rest of me was so tired. We walked through the white gate, around the pool, and into his ground floor apartment.

I’d spent a lot of time here. Good memories. It all felt like a lifetime ago. Hunter preferred ground floor apartments because “stairs were the devil” and because he enjoyed having some green space. He was an outdoorsy guy (as if a career on a field didn’t give that away) and liked having the pool just a few steps from his door. He hadn’t reached arbitration yet, but he got a handsome signing bonus when he was drafted, and since he was a permanent member of the starting lineup, he’d purchased this modest apartment a year and a half ago.

The foyer had white tile and a dark wood table and matching mirror. Just beyond that was a small space with two chairs on a wood floor. This space was divided from the rest of the living room by a large couch. Sliding glass doors lined the left wall from the couch to the far wall. They opened up onto Hunter’s small patio and yard. Opposite the couch were two large dark wood built-in bookcases, a stone fireplace that never got used, and a massive TV above it. To the right was the kitchen and beyond that the master bedroom. A guest bedroom/workout room was to the right of the front door.

Absolutely nothing had changed. Hunter still had piles of books on the sofa table and three different kinds of game controllers on the coffee table. I smelled pizza.

“Maria’s?”

Hunter waved me toward the kitchen. “Of course. Your favorite. Hungry?”

He pulled my luggage past the kitchen and set it against the wall in front of his bedroom. My insides did a flip. I was going to sleep in Hunter’s bedroom. With Hunter. I felt the circle of my decisions closing. This was a big deal.

I watched as he opened the pizza boxes, revealing our two favorites: veggie and all the meats. It was so normal and yet...nothing about this was normal. Sure we would probably end up putting on a movie, but there was a very good chance we would watch that movie mostly unclothed, and there would be touching, and falling asleep together.

This was anything but normal.

But the moment was painted with echoes of our past, making it both familiar and nerve-wracking. He handed me a plate. “You’re thinking.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

Our time on the other coast was travel heavy and frantic. It left little time for introspection or heartfelt discussions. If anything it lent itself to throwing caution to the wind and diving headfirst into lust. On the plane back I spent a lot of time trying to understand what had happened, who we were becoming, because it was all incredibly wonderful, but also very confusing.

“Our friendship remains unchanged.”

He smiled at that and piled pizza onto his plate. “Yes. I agree.”

And this was where my dissonance really hit. Our new relationship included a very different aspect, the sexual aspect, and intellectually I expected that part of our lives to mirror our platonic friendship.

It did not.

When Hunter kissed me or touched me or said certain things, I became someone else...and so did he. The closest explanation I could come up with was the very math joke he’d used on me days ago, except in opposite. We were black and white, ones and zeroes. Our friendship was one thing and our sexual life was another. There was no overlap between Tilley and the woman who got naked with Hunter. Hunter and the man who got naked with me were essentially two different people in my mind.

I swallowed down my nerves. As hard as it was to come to terms with intellectually, it was even harder to broach the topic out loud. “I...don’t recognize the person I am when we’re...naked.”

He reached out and grabbed my shirt, pulling us much, much closer together. “I recognize you. You’re Tilley...on fire.”

I whimpered. I could partially see his point. Perhaps I was being too over dramatic when I imagined him as two separate beings. Emotions were hard to quantify which was why I leaned on the binary idea so hard. “I suppose you are still Hunter, but baser.”

His eyebrows rose. “Baser?”

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