The Seven Year Slip

HE GAVE ME A confused look. “About what?”

Was it hot in here, or was it just me? “I don’t think—we—this . . .” I just had to go out and say it. Draw the line, because it very much needed to be drawn. “I’m not going to sleep with you,” I blurted.

His eyebrows jerked up in surprise. A blush quickly rose across his cheeks, and he choked on his own breath. “I—I wasn’t—no, no, that’s fine. I wasn’t thinking you would, Lemon.”

“Oh. Well.” I averted my gaze. I felt embarrassed. A fool. I looked anywhere—everywhere—but at him. “Just so we’re clear, then.”

“Of course,” he replied, quickly recovering. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

“You didn’t! I just—I don’t think it’d be a good idea. You’re staying at my aunt’s place, I’m staying here, too . . .” Seven years in the future, I added in my head. “I just really don’t want to complicate things. Sorry,” I added, because I just didn’t do this. For a variety of reasons, but mostly because he was very handsome, and I was very much attracted to him, and that was the kind of surprise that I did not see coming. Oh, and we were separated by seven years.

Nothing good could come out of this.

Rule number two, I reminded myself.

I grabbed our plates and deposited them in the sink—like I should’ve done instead of dance with him. It was a mistake. Above us, Miss Norris worked her way through a Sondheim. I grabbed a sponge.

Iwan gave a start, rising from his chair. “You don’t have to—”

“You cooked,” I said, waving him to sit back down. “I clean. That’s the rule.”

“And what if I want to get some practice in for my future dishwashing gig?”

“If you’re that bad,” I said, letting the water run for a bit until it got hot, “then I hate to say it, but you might need to start looking for a new profession.”

He mocked a gasp. “Rude!”

“Truthful.” I put the plates in the sink, and turned back to him fully. “The dinner was lovely, Iwan. Thank you. I almost don’t regret not kicking you out of the apartment.” His mouth fell open in a question as I went to pull some blankets out of the linen closet. He was still giving me that perplexed look when I returned, two pillows and an afghan under my arms.

“Almost?” he asked.

“Someone has to take the couch,” I replied, and decided that it would be me.

He jumped to his feet. “Absolutely not.”

“Don’t pull the ‘You’re a girl so you deserve the bed’ bullshit, please. Gender roles and stereotypes are not my cup of tea.”

“I’m not, I’m pulling the ‘There’s a perfectly good bed in there and we are both adults’ card.” He put his hands on his hips, as if posing like a dad could get me to comply.

I opened my mouth, but then he gave me a look—the kind that told me to test him if I dared.

I mumbled, “You look like a parent about to go into a parent-teacher conference.”

“We can even put a pillow between us,” he went on, ignoring me. “You don’t really want to sleep on the couch, do you? And you certainly won’t let me . . .”

No, I wouldn’t.

“Just—I’ll think about it as I do the dishes,” I added when he went to argue again, but then he raised his hands in defeat and bowed out to take the bathroom first.

The thing was, he wasn’t wrong. We were both adults and there was a perfectly good queen-sized bed in my aunt’s bedroom that we could both sleep in. The couch wasn’t doing anyone any favors—it had always been more for looks than actually fainting on, anyway. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

I grabbed my chocolate from the table, finally, unwrapped it, and popped it into my mouth. I smoothed out the tinfoil wrapper. Your future is here, it read.

Lies.

I put all my frustrations into washing our plates and glasses and cleaning up. My head was buzzing from the drinks, but the last few minutes had sobered me up pretty well. I drank a glass of water and took two Advil, and as I headed to my aunt’s room to pick out some pajamas from my stash in her closet, Iwan opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

I froze.

Because I was staring, very prominently, at his bare chest. It wasn’t that I’d never seen a bare-chested man before—it just . . . surprised me a little. He had tattoos, all black linework in similar styles, sporadically across his body. Besides the ones on his arms, there was another on his rib cage, another just to the left side of his navel. And then there was a birthmark just below his collarbone in the shape of a crescent moon.

I asked, very gravely, “What happened to your shirt?”

“I don’t wear one to bed,” he replied simply and stepped to the side to let me into the bathroom. “Do you mind?”

Of course, if I was a nun. “Oh, no,” I said coolly, “you’re fine.”

“Okay.”

Another awkward pause.

Then I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep on the—”

He rolled his eyes. “If anyone is sleeping on the couch, it’s me.”

“I refuse. You’re my aunt’s guest.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, and I tried not to stare at how his muscles moved under his skin. The way he held his right shoulder a bit higher than the left. The way I wanted to put my mouth on that crescent-shaped birthmark—“Then we’re at an impasse,” he said.

“Fine,” I muttered, tearing my eyes away from him, and grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts from my aunt’s closet, and locked myself in the bathroom. I splashed cold water onto my face, and definitely decided to forget about what he looked like without a shirt on. Not that I had stared at the cut of his muscles as they disappeared beneath his blue pajama bottoms. Not that I scrubbed my face raw trying to get the salacious thoughts out of my head.

Seriously, my mouth on his birthmark? Ugh.

Even though my aunt was gone, I swore I could hear her laughing at me from wherever she was now.

See, darling? she would say. You can plan everything in your life, and you’ll still be taken by surprise.

And—worse yet—this was a surprise I was beginning to like. That scared me the most. The way I kept wondering how to paint his eyes—more blue, probably, layered after the diluted gray dried. The way I remembered what his hands felt like in mine, calloused and gentle, how his other hand, as we danced, followed the ridges of my spine down my back, a little too far and not far enough.

Something, something well-laid plans.

And it—all of it, the way I’d paint his eyes, the touch of his hand on my lower back as we danced, his crooked smile, the champagne-feeling of fizzy bubbles in my chest whenever he met my gaze—terrified me.

“One more time,” I muttered as I crept out of the bathroom and grabbed my purse and keys. “Try one more time.”

There were no sounds from my aunt’s room, so I figured Iwan had already gone to bed. If I left, closed the door, and came back—maybe he’d be gone. Maybe the apartment wouldn’t send me back to this time again.

So that’s exactly what I did.

“Goodbye,” I whispered, sort of hating that I wasn’t going to say it to his face, but this was for the best. I needed to leave. Nothing good could happen if I stayed.

I opened the door. I stepped outside.

I waited one—two—three—

I counted all the way to seven. A lucky number.

Then I inserted the key and turned the lock, and as I held my breath, I opened the door and stepped back in.

And as the door closed, I realized I was in very, very big trouble.

So I crept down the hall to the bedroom and slid onto the left side of the bed. Iwan was already breathing deeply, turned onto his side, the moonlight casting white across his auburn hair, turning the ginger to fire. There were holes in his ear from where, I assumed, he used to have earrings, and the tattoo of a very small whisk behind his left ear, and I realized he wasn’t the kind of guy I went for, and I certainly wasn’t the kind of girl he’d like. Straitlaced and anxious, a broken and horrible mess with walls so high I’d forgotten what I’d blocked off on the other side.

“Go to sleep, Lemon,” he muttered, his Southern drawl thick with sleep.

Mortified, I quickly slipped under the covers, turned my back to him, and waited for either sleep or death to claim me.