They gossiped the rest of the way to the airport, and Maddie hugged her when she got out of the car.
“Good luck this weekend, Lex. Thanks for letting me use your car, and have a great trip.”
She hugged Maddie back.
“Anytime, Mads, you know that. And thanks.”
Drew left straight from the hospital to pick Alexa up at the airport. Carlos high-fived him as he walked down the hall toward the elevator.
“You’ll be at Heather’s 4th of July party on Sunday, right?”
Drew nodded as he got in the elevator.
“See you there.”
Alexa walked out of the terminal just as he drove up, and he jumped out of the car to kiss her. Okay, maybe he was being hasty about ending things. Maybe Carlos was right. He’d just been overtired and still upset about Jack on Wednesday morning. They could keep this going a little longer.
He squeezed her hand as he got on the freeway toward his house. Did she look tense? She looked tense. Should he ask why?
“Hungry?” That was an easier question.
She shrugged off her cardigan. She was still in business mode, wearing one of those conservative dresses that he secretly loved. “Starving. I barely had time for lunch, and I’ve depleted all of my office snacks this week.”
“You want to go straight to dinner, then? That burger place again, maybe?”
She turned toward him and grabbed his knee. Man, he loved it every time she touched him. Yeah, they could definitely keep this thing going for a while longer.
“Yes, and can we get that Tater Tot casserole this time? I can’t promise to eat it all, but it looked amazing.”
Apparently, many people had had the same idea for dinner that night. They stood together at the bar while they waited for a table, drinking beer and talking about everything and nothing.
He didn’t talk about Jack. He’d already texted her that the test results had come back positive, and he didn’t want to bring both of them down. She didn’t bring up her program, and he didn’t ask, although he was dying to know whether she was going to talk to her sister about it.
Instead, he told her about the kid who kept throwing things across the exam room and giggling, and how he had to step out in the hallway to laugh. She told him about the naked protestors who kept following the mayor around. As they laughed, the tense look on her face relaxed. Maybe it was the beer, but he hoped it was being with him.
Just as he was about to ask her if she wanted another beer, he heard his name. He turned and saw his friends Robin and Lucy walking toward him.
“Hey!” He hugged them both, then turned to introduce Alexa to them.
“Hey guys, this is my . . . this is Alexa. Alexa, meet Lucy and Robin.” He’d almost slipped and called her his girlfriend. How the hell had that happened?
No one had seemed to notice his flub, and Alexa was chatting away with Lucy, so he turned to Robin.
“You going to Heather’s party on Sunday?”
“Yeah, you?”
Just as he nodded, the hostess called his name, so they said their good-byes and followed her to the table.
This is my . . . What was he going to say? What was going to be the end of that sentence? Alexa guessed it didn’t matter, because he hadn’t finished it, so whatever he’d been about to say, he hadn’t really meant. Still, she spent the entire time they were at dinner with that sentence fragment running through her head.
Okay, maybe not the entire time. The rest of the time, she compared herself and the dowdy navy blue sheath dress she’d worn to work that day to Lucy and Robin in their cute little sundresses. And her didn’t-look-good-in-a-cute-little-sundress-anyway figure to their nonexistent hips and thighs. And the salads on their table to her Tater Tot casserole.
Good God, she was a disaster. Why would she even think that he would finish that sentence the way she wanted him to?
“Monroe, is everything okay? You look worried about something.” Drew leaned over and smoothed out the furrow between her eyebrows with his thumb. She couldn’t help but smile when he did that.
She almost asked him all of the questions in her head but decided against it. It wasn’t the right time. She’d been stressed all week; she needed to relax tonight.
Plus, what would happen if all of his answers were the wrong ones? She’d spend the rest of the weekend miserable and pretending to smile?
“It’s fine. I mean, I’m fine. I was just trying to decide between another beer or a glass of wine.”
They woke up the next morning wrapped around each other, the cool ocean breeze blowing in on them from his open window. She must have stirred, because his hand moved from her hip to her breast.
“Good morning,” he said against her ear. He caressed her body and she sighed in response.
“Mmm, she likes that. Weird, I thought I heard someone say she couldn’t take it anymore just a few hours ago.”
She held his hand in place when he tried to move it.
“If you heard that, and I’m not confirming that you did, whoever said that probably said ‘until morning’ at the end there but it was muffled somehow. In a pillow, maybe.”
He laughed and kissed her ear, her cheek, her neck, as his fingers kept moving. Okay, he definitely enjoyed some things about her body, whether it was built for little sundresses or not.
“Coffee?” she said into the pillow a while later.
He turned her over and smiled down at her, his eyes roaming over her from her waist to the top of her head. She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him along his jawline.