Page 74 of Well, Actually
“Really.”
“I’ll remind you of that later when you’re panting into my mouth and telling me how good I feel.”
Rylie’s grunt is somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “Never mind, you’ve jogged my memory. Get in the car.”
Strapped in and excited like pioneers headed west, we begin our drive uptown. While our trip is only around eight miles, the instant gridlock makes our ETA no less than eighty-two minutes. With legs carelessly propped on the dash andRylie’s warm palm on my thigh, I start to wonder if traffic might actually be a beautiful gift we take for granted.
“Music?” Rylie asks, thumbing through his phone with his free hand as we enter the fifth minute of standstill traffic.
“No. Let’s sit in silence and ruminate on our most embarrassing moments.”
He gives my thigh a squeeze that’s supposed to be a warning, but only sends a delicious shiver through my body. I pluck his phone from his hands and hit shuffle, leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek. I nearly headbutt him when “Monster Mash” starts blaring from the speakers as we finally start to move. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye for the first thirty seconds of the song, waiting for any signal that he realizes this is not a normal tune to have favorited.
“Is this your lovemaking playlist?” I ask casually.
Rylie’s face wrinkles in disgust as he looks at me, then back to the road. “Eva, be serious for once, please.” There’s a thoughtful pause as he switches lanes. “Everyone knows this is a peak raunchy foreplay song. It’s the perfect opener for my ‘Down and Dirty Fucking’ playlist.”
I really shouldn’t encourage him, but I let out a booming laugh. Rylie’s lips twitch but he keeps his expression serious. “Obviously, I keep ‘This Is Halloween’ on my lovemaking playlist.”
I reach over, raking my hand through the waves of his hair, then give his earlobe a gentle tug. This man is a ghoul and I like him so much my chest hurts.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say when a reasonable amount of normal songs have played and we’re bumper to bumper again.
“Is it going to subtly destroy my self-confidence?” Rylie asks, flashing me a winning smile.
“Okay, so now’snotthe time to ask how you feel about the nickname Short King? Got it.”
“I’m six foot!”
“Sure you are, sweetie.”
Rylie pokes a spot beneath my ribs, making me yelp. “What’s your question, demon spawn?”
“What led to the Rylie Cooper renaissance?”
“Thewhat?” For the first time since I’ve met him, he looks genuinely horrified. And this is coming from the man wearing a mustard-yellow crewneck featuring Tweety Bird smoking a cigarette sayingI GOT OUT OF BED, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
“Your whole, I don’t know”—I gesture at him—“fuckboy reformation. I know in therapy you talked about hitting rock bottom, but I guess… I guess I was wondering what that was. Or what made you start to climb up from it?”
Rylie’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, a muscle in his cheek twitching. He stays quiet for so long—a frown notched between his eyebrows—that it seems like he’s going to ignore my question entirely. Sudden panic blooms through me as I wonder if I made him mad, pushed him too far with my prying. I just want to know him so badly, so deeply. I want to collect every piece of him from over the years like I can put them in a box of keepsakes and memorize all the details.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… We don’t—”
Rylie silences me by cupping the back of my neck, gently massaging the taut muscles. His smile is strained but genuine as he looks at me. “Don’t apologize, Kitten. You didn’tupset me. It’s just a hard question to come up with a succinct answer to.”
I nod, leaning into his touch, wanting to melt at the sweet relief of his voice. This is all so new to me, this mutual vulnerability. It’s like learning a foreign language, and sometimes it feels too mortifying to attempt a sentence. I’m worried I’ll be tripping over the vocabulary and grammar for years. But something in Rylie’s relentless patience gives me the confidence to keep trying.
“I guess it was about a year after I graduated,” Rylie says, and I turn down the music so I don’t miss a word. “Honestly, I wasn’t a star student before I lost my sister, but my grades tanked senior year. They gave me a pity degree for sure.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I grumble, feeling oddly defensive of him. “You’re very smart.”
Rylie’s grin is so radiant, it steals the breath from my chest. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” Rylie’s quiet for a few more moments, glancing at the directions on his phone. He lets out a deep breath. “And while I appreciate your belief in me, my college self definitely didn’t deserve it. I didn’t even pretend to look for a job after graduation. I moved back home and took advantage of the grace people give you when someone you love dies. I slept all day, ate all the food my mom would buy, and left the kitchen trashed. I worked a few shifts at my town’s Wendy’s just to have some cash to buy weed and booze. I was a lowlife with no interest in doing anything different.”
“That doesn’t sound super unreasonable after losing a sibling,” I whisper, placing my hand on his thigh.
