“I forgot to ask how your room is,” I say, dropping her hair and taking up with her hand, lacing our fingers together.

“It’s, um, great.” She looks from our joined hands to my face. “Beautiful actually. Thank you for this. For all of it. I needed it.”

“So did I.” I loop an arm at the small of her back and scoop her sun-warmed curves into me.

She stiffens at first, and then I can almost see her make the decision. To relax. To enjoy. To let herself want me. I can’t know for sure what the decision is, but she leans into me instead of away. The sun melts her expression into a smile, into pleasure. She props her elbows on my chest and works her fingers into the hair by my ears. It feels so good, I close my eyes and wait for more of her touch. She doesn’t disappoint, walking her fingers to my temples and adding gentle pressure, coaxing a groan from me.

“That feels incredible.” I slide my hands lower on the swell of her hips, lower still to cup her butt. “You have such a great ass, Banner. Have I ever told you that?”

She fixes her eyes on the tiles at our feet and licks those perfectly symmetrical lips, sinking her teeth into the bottom.

“No, you haven’t.” The words come thin, like the breath has been sifted from them. “You don’t think it’s, um, too square?”

“Square?” I laugh at the unexpected question and squeeze the firm roundness overflowing my hands. “I have no idea what that means, but I want to bite your ass every time I see it, if that answers your question.”

Banner’s eyes widen, and then a deep-throated laugh unspools from her that reminds me how much I love to make that happen.

“Wow. Thanks.” She gives a tiny shake of her head. “Leave it to you, Jared.”

“Why’d you ask me that?” I squeeze her ass again just ’cause.

“It’ll sound silly to you.” She lowers her lashes and chews on the corner of her bottom lip. “There’s this blogger who said . . . things about me when I started dating Zo. That’s all.”

The smile I’ve been wearing since I took her in my arms slowly falls apart.

“What kind of things?”

Rose gold tints her cheeks as she toys with my tie, studying the pattern instead of looking at me.

“She said I was like the, um, the biggest Kardashian,” she says softly, her smile less natural than before. “She called me Sponge Banner Square Pants because she said my ass was, well, square.”

And August wonders why I hate people.

“I can usually brush stuff like that off,” she says, looking up at me with that same stiff smile I can’t stand. “I know. I’m a powerful woman and all that, right?”

Uncomfortable chuckle.

“I should be impervious to that shit.” She twists her lips into a grimace. “But some of it sticks from time to time, and kind of . . .”

She doesn’t say the word “hurts,” but it does. I can see that some stranger, some person who doesn’t even know Banner—doesn’t know that she speaks God knows how many languages by now, doesn’t know she’s the first to go to college in her family, doesn’t know she charges into dangerous situations she has no business being in to rescue grown men who should know better, doesn’t know that she sees potential in broken people like Quinn and refuses to give up on them even when they give up on themselves—some person has hurt this spectacular woman by saying her ass is square?

Fuck that.

I take her chin between my thumb and index finger and lift until her eyes meet mine.

“Listen to me, Banner,” I say firmly. “Your ass is not square, but if it was, so the hell what?”

“I know that,” she says hastily.

“Yeah, you’re a strong woman. You’re a lioness. Hear you roar. Got it, but no one likes things like that said about them in a conversation, much less tweeted to thousands of—”

“Millions,” Banner interjects softly. “Tweeted to millions of people with a photo for reference.”

“Tweeted to millions of people with a damn photo for reference,” I say, futile rage testing my calm. “Humans, we suck. I know we have these bright shining moments, but a lot of us just suck most of the time, and we say mean things to gain more followers. The worst of us exploit each other’s pain to get something for ourselves, and then there’s people like you.”

“Jared, you don’t have to—”

“People who get this human thing right. People who are actually kind. Actually have a conscience. Actually feel guilt when they hurt other people.”

I’m on dangerous ground here because it’s her guilt that keeps her across the hall instead of sleeping in my bed tonight, but this is more important than me getting laid. Which is saying something since few things take precedence over me getting laid most of the time.

“I’ve had beauty queens, porn stars, waitresses, strippers, lawyers,” I list.

“Okay, Jared, I get the picture,” she mutters, lips pressed together suppressing a laugh.

“Senators, ambassadors, stewardesses,” I say. “Excuse me, flight attendants. I even had a princess, though I’m not allowed to talk about that.”

“Oh my God.” She rolls her eyes, but that beautiful mouth is no longer stiff, instead pliant and softened into a smile.

“And some were pretty, some were smart, some were funny. Some probably had square asses. I can’t even remember now.” I frame her face and hold her eyes with a look that goes serious so she’ll know I mean it. “But none of them were you. There’s only ever been one Banner, and her . . . I’ve never been able to forget.”

Her smile falls away and she swallows hard.

“This blogger bitch person has no idea who you are.” I caress the silky skin covering one high cheekbone. “She has no idea that you’ve always been the girl I liked most, and I don’t even like people.”

We stare at each other. I’m afraid to blink and shatter this unflinching moment. Everything I’ve laid out says so much about how I feel about her. I don’t feel for women. I fuck them. I date them. I don’t feel for them, not what I feel for Banner, and now she knows.

“I, um . . . Thank you.” She clears her throat and pushes a swathe of hair back over her shoulder. “You probably want to get changed, right? To shower?”

Disappointment drains some of my fervor.

“Uh, yeah. Right.” I drop my hands from her face and shove them into the pants of my suit. “And you probably want to shower.”

“Yeah.” She runs a palm over her arm. “Sunscreen is kind of sticky.”

“Great.” I start toward the stairs, and she joins me. “So we’ll both shower and then maybe scrounge up something to eat?”

“The kitchen is fully stocked.” She shoots me an almost shy look on the landing at the top of the stairs. “Fridge and pantry loaded.”

“Great.” I rock on my heels for a few seconds of awkward silence. “Well, we can come up with something for dinner and maybe eat out tomorrow?”

“Sounds great.”

“Great,” I say again and turn toward my bedroom. She turns to hers. “Have a good shower.”

Have a good shower?

That’s your parting shot, Foster? I ask myself once I’m under the stinging spray of the shower in my bathroom. How things got so awkward there at the end, I have no idea, but I was fumbling and stumbling like some college boy. No, in college I had more game than that. This was middle school level awkward.

Keep the cards close to your chest.

That’s Negotiation 101, but what did I do? Laid them all out on the table—and too soon. Banner’s relationship just ended in an epically bad way because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, per usual. She’ll be dealing with the fall out, personally and professionally, for weeks, months. She needs time, but what do I keep doing? I keep pushing. I’ve always prided myself on knowing when to press and when to hang back, to let things come to me, but I don’t have that with Banner. When she doesn’t come to me, I chase her. When she needs space, I crowd her. I’ve always known how to get what I needed from women, and I’m realizing now it was because I needed so little. Mutual physical satisfaction. This is different, much more complex than simply getting in Banner’s pants.

I rest my head against the wall and fist my painfully erect cock.

Though getting in Banner’s pants . . . I wouldn’t turn it down right about now. I need more than that, though. And it’s disconcerting because I’ve never needed more before.

I walk out of the shower, dry off. I’m pulling on briefs when the air changes in the room. The leftover steam shifts with the opening of my bathroom door. I glance up and couldn’t be more shocked to see Banner standing there, wearing a white fluffy robe like the one hanging on the back of my door. Damp hair falls past her shoulders. I don’t speak. I don’t move toward her. I don’t do anything but stare because I’ve screwed things up enough doing things. I wanted Banner to come to me.

The next move is hers to make.

28

Banner

“I don't need to be so full of myself

that I feel I am without flaw.

I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time.

I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities."

- -Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar-Winning Actress

Why are you here?

The perfectly reasonable question ricochets inside my head, a lonely echo bouncing around.

I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to . . . what do I want from Jared? We’re well past just liking each other, but not ready for the l-word. We’ve already bumped uglies—twice. I’m the one who insisted on my own room. So what exactly am I here asking him to do?

See me.

The answer whispers from behind the wall I’ve built around myself, a drawbridge I’m ready to lower. Why him? Why Jared, the guy I’ve made sure to hate through the years? I think I made sure to hate Jared because I liked him so much, and if he did what Prescott said he did, then he couldn’t possibly have felt the same for me. My incredulity from that night in the laundromat when he kissed me, when he said he’d been thinking about it for a long time is only matched by my shock earlier when I told him about the blogger. I wondered how someone like Jared, with his parade of beauty queens and Cindy’s, would go so drastically “off brand” and choose someone like me. And tonight I heard the answer.