Page 9 of Sunny Side Up

four

The next morning, on my usual walk with the Golden Girls, I saw a familiar face on my way back into the building. The one that had been in my dreams all night. I couldn’t help it! That blushing smile had found its way into my subconscious.

The construction worker from outside my window was leaning against a brick wall, smoking a cigarette, which shouldn’t have been appealing but I was trying not to kink-shame myself.

He hadn’t noticed me yet. I felt my stomach flip, followed closely by a wave of embarrassment for the voyeuristic show I had put on the day before while possessed by a flash of courage.

I tried to breathe normally, ignoring my shaking hands.

I’d dressed for the dog walk as though I might possibly run into him, and I absolutely hoped I’d run into him, but I wasn’t prepared to actually run into him.

Normally, in New York, you run into the people you want to see most only when you’re looking your worst. I was wearing a camel overcoat, a white tee with a black lace bra underneath, and camel-colored cashmere sweatpants.

It said, I’m trying to seduce you, but I’m also trying to be discreet about it, so we can both pretend like this never happened if I read the situation wrong and it turns out I’ve lost my mind .

Then, before my brain could catch up to my mouth, I walked up to him and started speaking.

“Can I bum one of those?” I asked, nodding to his cigarette.

I think the last time I had a cigarette was when I pretended to smoke one with a group of my fellow interns back in the day.

I smoked weed, but that was different.… If a morning cigarette meant our fingers could graze in the exchange, skin briefly touching skin?

I was all for it, and in desperate need of a light.

“Sure,” he said with an easy smile, his eyebrows rising as he looked me up and down.

His grin suggested that he knew that I knew that we had both known that he saw me naked yesterday.

His hand was covered in a layer of gray dust and his lighter looked like a truck had run over it, but I can confirm: When our fingers synced in the passing, it was a sheer shock of electricity.

He leaned in to light the cigarette and I had to remind myself that I could not just grab a stranger by the face.

“I enjoyed the view yesterday,” he offered. Was that an Irish accent I detected?

I took a drag of the cigarette and started coughing. Not a cute cough, not a gentle clearing of the throat. A decidedly unsexy series of wheezes, pupils watering, face reddening, the whole thing. Nice. There goes my mysterious woman act. “Thanks,” I managed to choke out while avoiding eye contact.

“I can just put this out, if you prefer,” he said, smiling with a mischievous grin.

Here goes nothing, I guess…

“I just got divorced,” I blurted out, then tossed the full cigarette on the ground. “And I don’t actually smoke.” I bent over to make sure the cigarette was out, picked it up, and started looking for somewhere to put it.

“Oh, sorry to hear that.” He stood up straight and reached his open hand out toward me, motioning with his chin to give him the cigarette; he’d deal with it.

He pulled a wrapper out of his front pocket, wrapped the cigarette up, then shoved the whole thing into his back pocket.

All taken care of. “Or is it a good thing?”

“I don’t know why I just told you that,” I said, backpedaling. “I don’t even know you! I guess I just feel like I have to announce it at all times, like some disclaimer. Ignore my erratic behavior! I get a free pass!”

He laughed at my rambling, and it was a glorious sound. “Sounds to me like you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

Confirmed. The accent was Irish. He didn’t even have to say words: The lilt of his voice was like his finger running down my chin, down my chest, down to my—

He winked, like he was reading my mind.

“Thank you,” I said, exploding into a full blush. I was going to have to dunk my face in concealer the next time I attempted flirting.

“I love your accent.” I couldn’t believe how forward I was being, but I urged myself on: Why be shy now? You’ve already done a full nude catwalk for this man. As he turned to stamp out his own cigarette, I thought I could make out the shape of his lips curving up in a smile. “Irish?”

He nodded.

“How long have you been in the States?”

“Not long, actually,” he said. “Left Dublin a year or so ago.”

I waited to see what he’d do with his cigarette, whether he’d wrap it in the same sleeping bag as mine, but he held onto it like a natural appendage. I wondered if his mouth tasted like smoke. I didn’t think I would mind if it did.

“I’ve seen you around before, since I’ve been working on your building,” he said. “And I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but you’re a total knockout.”

I started coughing again. He laughed and shook his head.

“You need some water. I best be getting back to the job. See you around?” I nodded, and that was it.

He headed inside to continue his shift. He didn’t ask for my number.

Should I have just given it to him? When the door closed behind him and my coughing fit stopped, all I could think was that I needed to get that beautiful display vibrator down off my kitchen shelf.

One week later, after intentionally redirecting my morning walks away from the construction site, I spotted him again.

A cigarette break on the corner, hard hat tucked under his elbow.

This time, I had a plan. I’d made myself a promise that if I saw him again, I’d ask him out.

Or upstairs to my place, really. When he saw me approaching, he stubbed out his cig with his massive work boot.

His stained coveralls had become an aphrodisiac.

“Well, well, well. Look who it is.”

I laughed down at my feet, then looked up. I needed to exude confidence. I was here on a mission.

“I don’t think I got your name the other day. I’m Sunny.”

“Sunny. I’m Cillian.”

I let my gaze run over him. Ever since our first spoken encounter, I couldn’t shake the delicious thought that if I slept with Cillian, he’d become The Last Guy I Slept With.

Not Zack. Now I found myself racking my brain for the least awkward excuse to move us off the sidewalk and into my bedroom.

My plan had been to come down here and let it flow naturally, but I should have at least practiced a line.

What if he turned me down, and then I had to see him every day until the end of this construction project ?

Even scarier: Cillian was a total stranger.

I’d had a handful of true one-night stands in my life, but they’d all been alcohol fueled.

I was currently dead sober, in the unforgiving light of day.

For all I knew, he could be a murderer. Or he could be married !

But I didn’t see a ring… and at the moment, I was probably the one giving off the murderer vibes.

Think , Sunny. Construction. That hard hat under his muscular forearm, dark with freckles and hair and sweat mixed with dirt.

The way the straps of his coveralls framed his sculpted chest, which looked like marble underneath his dark-gray tech shirt with the sleeves scrunched up.

It was freezing out, but his giant frame clearly embraced the cold like a polar bear.

No coat. No sweatshirt. I was getting warm just thinking about his rough, hot hands pressing against my skin.

Luckily, a stroke of genius interrupted the scene I was starting to write in my head: I had a new apartment full of unassembled objects and an unhung mirror.

I could ask him to come by and help. I hadn’t felt this type of endorphin boost in a decade.

“Any chance you’re working tomorrow?” I did it. I’d asked the hardest question.

His eyebrows rose, and I worried I’d overstepped.

“I have some new art pieces for my apartment. I’d, uh, love some help hanging them up.” (I had exactly that one mirror to be hung up, but details didn’t matter right now, and art sounded classier for this type of invitation.)

He flashed me that same boyish grin. “My shift starts at 8 a.m., but I could come over before, if you’re up for it? Say, 6 a.m.?”

Two whole hours.

And well, I’ve always been a morning person.

“I’ll have the coffee ready,” I nodded.

The next twenty-four hours were a blur. I raced straight into pampering and prepping for the first physical interaction with someone other than Zack in a very long time .

I got a blowout, manicure, pedicure—the hardcore kind, where they sand off your calluses with a power tool.

I got my eyebrows waxed; I plucked the errant hairs from my chin and jaw and neck.

My body, my temple, as they say; and it was time to prepare for a potential new parishioner.

I vacuumed my apartment, lit the expensive Diptyque candles I never let myself light.

(I figured I’d fill the apartment with their scent ahead of time, so that I wouldn’t have to worry tomorrow morning that something was catching on fire.) I changed my sheets, my duvet cover, every pillowcase in the house.

I feel slightly guilty about this one, but I dropped off the Golden Girls with the neighbors who’d introduced me to Noor and Brooke.

They have a sweet old lab I took care of for an entire week while they jetted off to Portugal.

They said they’d be honored and didn’t bother to ask about my mysterious plans.

That night, I rewatched the entirety of Normal People to try to calm down, although it ended up having the opposite effect.