Page 17 of Just A Little Joy
Once we got to the car, Travis opened my door. It was entirely unnecessary, but I liked it. A lot. Maybe too much. Before he shut the door, he reached inside like he was going to pull my seatbelt before he beat a hasty retreat and slammed the door. Naturally, my thoughts went immediately to what I had inadvertently fucked up. When he eased into the driver’s seat of his surprisingly practical SUV, whatever trace of annoyance had caused the slammed door seemed to have evaporated.
No one had opened a door for me in years, and the simple gesture mattered more than it should have.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to close it so hard.”
“No worries,” I offered hesitantly.
“I bet you’re thinking I was annoyed at you,” Travis sighed. I glanced over at him in the dark interior, and I could see his head lying against the headrest while he gave me a searching look.
“If you wouldn’t read my mind, that would be great, thanks,” I said with a smile. “Yes, I was, but I got over myself pretty quickly. Who could be annoyed at someone with a face like mine?” I teased.
“Absolutely no one,” my boss…my sexy, single, hot-as-hell boss…said with a wink. And with that, he straightened and pressed the button to start the car. His luxury SUV purred to life.
“Nice car. The heated seats must come in handy,” I offered.
My mom swore that the best way to distract my dad was to ask him about his toys, so it was worth a shot. While I waited for his response, I ran my hand over the baby-soft leather and fancy wood accents. The warmth under me didn’t help the way my chest fluttered every time he glanced over like he was reading my mind again.
“I couldn’t live without them because no one wants a cold ass, but I’m spoiled with this car. There’s no reason for me to have one this big, but it was too pretty to pass up.”
“You wanted it and, I’m assuming anyway, could afford it. That’s reason enough, right?”
“Ha! Where are you when I’m paying bills? I think ‘because I wanted it’ should be part of all purchase approvals. When I signed my last contract, I knew it was likely to be my last, so I took part of my bonus and bought her. It was my parting gift to myself from professional sports.”
“How long did you play?” I asked as I watched the drizzle cover the city streets in a light sheen.
I’d started to give directions, but it was clear Travis knew where he was going. Small talk was all that was left to distract me from how close we were to each other, and I could faintly smellhis woodsy cologne. I’d bet the back seat folded down, and there was at least an acre of space to spread out in this vehicle. Fine, maybe not exactly an acre, but definitely enough room for two.
“Just at ten years.”
“Is that a long time?”
“Yeah, the average is around five years, but I was able to stay at it.”
“I might’ve gone home and watched YouTube videos after I got the job. I don’t know much about hockey other than that you guys like to fight.”
“We do a little more than fight,” he said, and a quick glance let me see the grin that played across his lips. “But not by much,” Travis added with a soft chuckle.
The air in the car carried an electricity that was hard to put into words, other than I knew it was there. It felt like currents were zinging between us, or at least from me in his general direction. When I looked down at his hand resting on the gearshift, his pinky kept twitching in my direction. When I glanced at my own lap, mine was doing the same.
The quiet of the early morning felt like a blanket protecting us from any outside intrusions or expectations. I spent the rest of the drive trying to figure out how I could “accidentally on purpose” link my fingers with his. I couldn’t help noticing that his hand never strayed more than an inch or two from where my thigh rested on the leather seat.
No one was more disappointed than me when he pulled up in front of my duplex. My neighbor had a certified green thumb—his front porch looked like a jungle—while mine looked a little threadbare in comparison. Refused to let it be a metaphor for my life or lack of success in finding the Daddy that would end my unmossed rolling stone ways.
“I guess we’re here,” Travis said.
There was a tone to his voice that I didn’t recognize. If I didn’t know better, I might’ve thought it was wistfulness—but that didn’t make any sense, so it couldn’t be. The air felt thick with all the things neither of us had said yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to break it.
“Yeah, I guess we are.” Stating the obvious didn’t help, but I didn’t know what else to say. My hands suddenly turned clammy. I rubbed them against my jeans, trying to distract myself from the fact that Travis was less than a foot away from me in a car that now felt closed in and tiny. It would be the easiest thing in the world to lean over and kiss him. Or let him kiss me. Kissing each other would be the ideal solution because then there’d be no one to blame.
“Is the cleaning stuff bothering your hands? I think we’ve got gloves somewhere in the back. I’ll look for it tomorrow,” Travis said as he picked up my hand to inspect it.
He lightly traced over my palm in the dark and then brought it closer to his face to inspect it. A reasonable person would have turned on the overhead light to see better.
We were not reasonable people.
“Does it hurt at all?”
“If I say yes, you gonna kiss it to make it better?” The words flew out of my mouth before I thought the better of them. I heard the laughter in my own voice. It was a joke. Anyone would take it as a sarcastic joke.