Chapter Eight

Truly was handling last night's epic gaffe remarkably well.

If, by remarkably well, you considered putting your phone on "do not disturb" and hiding under the covers of your bed until noon, which she did.

Avoidance was a completely natural coping mechanism no matter your age, thank you very much. But she couldn't avoid her phone forever. She had a call scheduled with her agent at two and she needed her phone for that.

With one eye shut and her teeth sunk borderline-painfully into her bottom lip, she flipped her phone off "do not disturb" and watched with bated breath as her emails and texts flooded in.

Colin's name crossed her screen and her heart stopped.

Colin (8:15 a.m.):link>

A link. That was it. No context, nothing. Not even a preview because it was hit or miss if those even showed up.

She clicked it and held her breath, waiting for... she didn't know. An article to wikiHow's How to Take a Hint: He's Just Not That Into You?Stupid, stupid, stupid. Truly was never going out drinking with Lulu again. She was a bad influence, the worst, most meddlesome—

The page loaded and Truly frowned.

It was an article on hangover cures. Specifically, 15 Wacky Wonderful Hangover Cures from Around the World.

She scrolled and—tried not to gag.

Pickle juice she could get behind. Hair of the dog? Probably not a smart choice, but a fair one. Raw eggs? No thanks, though if it worked for Rocky, it had to have some merit, right? But some of the items on this list? Sparrow droppings in brandy? Deep-fried canary?

Truly (12:18 p.m.):Pizzle? You're cracked, McCrory.

She wasn't expecting a near instantaneous text back but—

Colin (12:20 p.m.):Centuries of Italians swear on bull penis, Truly. Don't knock it 'til you try it.

Centuries of Italians, her ass.

Truly (12:21 p.m.):My nonna is rolling in her grave. I'm not a pit bull. I don't need a bully stick.

Colin (12:22 p.m.):Your bark suggests otherwise.

She scoffed into the silence of her apartment, her heartbeat obnoxiously loud inside her head. Asshole. She smiled as she typed.

Truly (12:23 p.m.):You're a real piece of work, you know that?

Colin (12:25 p.m.):You happen to look in a mirror lately, sweetheart?

Her insides fluttered. Stupid, traitorous body just had to go and have the most obnoxious reactions where Colin was concerned.

Truly (12:27 p.m.):Jerk.

Admittedly, not her best comeback. But—

Colin (12:27 p.m.):Jerk? Really? Is that the best you got?

Truly (12:28 p.m.):You can't handle my best.

Colin (12:30 p.m.):I think you'd be surprised what I can handle.

Her breath vanished and heat filled her chest.

She was playing with fire, flirting with Colin when she didn't know what she wanted. Except she knew one thing she didn't want, and it was to stop.

Words were her thing, and Colin gave as good as he got. She hadn't felt this keyed up just from talking to someone in... that she even had to think about it was tragic.

Truly (12:33 p.m.):Famous last words.

Colin (12:35 p.m.):Sounds a little like you don't believe me.

Truly (12:36 p.m.):Why should I?

Colin (12:42 p.m.):Because I'm a man of my word.

Colin (12:42 p.m.):And I know what I want.

Her heart hurled itself against the wall of her chest as she read his text two, three, four times, starting to suspect she was the one who'd bitten off more than she could chew.

What was she supposed to say? Duly noted? Good to know?

The obvious answer would be to ask him what it was he wanted, but she couldn't just come out and do that. If she asked Colin what he wanted, she'd need to dig deep and figure out what the hell it was she wanted and she wasn't ready for that. She didn't know if she'd ever be ready.

She didn't want to stop, but this? Whatever it was they were doing was safe. No need to ruin a good thing by taking it any further.

Truly (12:48 p.m.):Sorry again for anything offensive I might have said last night. I don't usually cut loose like that.

She wasn't a coward. She wasn't. She was just... exercising self-preservation. Being responsible and—and mature.

Fifteen excruciating minutes passed without a reply. Fifteen excruciating minutes during which Truly worried her thumbnail down to the quick while waiting for her ancient-ass coffeepot to sputter out twelve ounces of sludge.

Her phone dinged and she leaped across the kitchen, scrambling to snatch it off the counter.

Colin (1:03 p.m.):I wasn't offended.

Colin (1:04 p.m.):For what it's worth, maybe you should cut loose more often.

Oh sure, because tipsy Truly was a riot.

Truly (1:06 p.m.):Just do me a favor and don't let it go to your head, McCrory.

A half an hour later, just as she was about to hop on a call with her agent, Colin finally responded.

Colin (1:41 p.m.):Wouldn't dream of it, St. James.

***

For some reason, he kept texting her.

Wednesday it was a recipe for cow cod soup, which, lo and behold, contained, to her immense disgust, bull pizzle.

Colin (11:31 a.m.):Cow cod and bananas and Scotch bonnet peppers cooked in a white rum sauce. Apparently, it's a rural delicacy in Jamaica. Who knew?

Truly (11:34 a.m.):Good for them! I'll pass. ??

Colin (11:37 a.m.):Pizzle is low in cholesterol and high in protein, calcium, and magnesium. It's thought to boost stamina.

Why that brought a fond smile to her face would forever remain a mystery.

Truly (11:38 a.m.):Are you seriously looking up facts on pizzle during your lunch break?

Colin (11:40 a.m.):No, I'm texting you during my lunch break. I looked those up during a particularly lengthy call with a client that should've been an email.

Truly (11:41 a.m.):Shame on you, McCrory. Not giving your clients your full, undivided attention? Tsk.

Colin (11:42 a.m.):I'm great at multitasking.

Colin (11:43 a.m.):Apparently cow cod soup is thought to be an aphrodisiac.

Truly (11:45 a.m.):hahahahah no.

Truly (11:46 a.m.):Also, your pickup lines need work.

Colin (11:49 a.m.):Not a pickup line. If I was using a pickup line on you, you'd know it.

Colin (11:50 a.m.):But also, noted.

Thursday morning it was a picture of an extra-large to-go cup of coffee, a rain-soaked sidewalk out of focus in the background. No actual text message, just Colin's big hand wrapped around the cup, fingers long, and his knuckles thick.

Truly zoomed in on the side of the cup and laughed—caramel macchiato with an extra pump of vanilla syrup, two pumps dark caramel sauce, and mocha drizzle. And he'd given Caitlin grief for her coffee order.

Truly (9:27 a.m.):Looks like someone has a secret sweet tooth.

Colin (9:35 a.m.):It's your fault.

Her brows rose. She couldn't wait to hear how he was going to spin this.

Colin (9:36 a.m.):I was up until two finishing your book.

Colin (9:37 a.m.):Never really understood what all the fuss was when people talked about having a book hangover.

Colin (9:37 a.m.):Now I get it. Thanks to you.

Colin (9:38 a.m.):You're so good at what you do, Truly.

When the New York Times called her debut compulsively readable, Truly had felt like she'd chugged a bottle of champagne—restlessly giddy and a little sick to her stomach because what if this was it? What if this was as good as it gets? What if she couldn't live up to everyone's expectations? What if her next book left something to be desired? What if she was a one-hit wonder? What if this moment right here was the pinnacle of her career? What if everything else was downhill?

Colin's praise was like swallowing the sun. It left her hot all over, flushed not just in the face but from her hairline down to her feet, damp in the creases of her elbows and her knees, uncomfortably sweaty all over. It was too much, but she'd be damned if she didn't want to bask in it, if she wasn't greedy for more.

Colin (9:39 a.m.):I don't mean to sound surprised. I knew you were talented.

Colin (9:40 a.m.):But it's something else, I guess, losing sleep over someone's words because they're that fucking talented. Because you just can't get enough.

She wasn't sure how her hands managed to be so steady as she typed when her stomach felt like a washing machine set to spin.

Truly (9:41 a.m.):Book hangover, hm?

Truly (9:42 a.m.):Just a thought, but have you considered trying pizzle?

She bit back a smile, staring at her screen, waiting for a reply.

Colin (9:44 a.m.):Ha freaking ha.

Colin (9:45 a.m.):Bet you think you're real cute, huh?

How had he put it?

Truly (9:46 a.m.):You happen to look in a mirror lately, sweetheart?

Never let anyone say Truly couldn't give as good as she got.

Colin (9:49 a.m.):Well played, St. James. Well played.

Her thumbs felt sloppy as she tapped at her phone's screen.

Truly (9:50 a.m.):Thank you. I'm glad you liked my book.

A strange way of saying thank you for liking my weird brainand the stories it birthed. Because everything she wrote had a teeny-tiny piece of her embedded in it. If Colin liked her books, he had to like her, right?

She snorted. Stupid question. It didn't matter whether he liked her. She didn't care.

Colin was just some guy she worked—consulted?—with. It didn't matter that he had thighs she wanted to bite or beauty marks she wanted to play connect-the-dots with using her tongue or that she'd been waiting with bated breath to know whether he liked her books since the moment he'd texted her that picture of his Kindle.

She didn't care.

She didn't.

***

Friday, he sent a screenshot of his email inbox showing 122 unread messages along with a string of upside-down emojis. She sent back a screenshot of her word processor's stats window showing her target word count for the day along with several skull emojis. She'd written a measly four hundred words and had two thousand more to go. He replied with—

She fumbled her phone.

Jesus Christ.

It was a selfie.

No.

It was soft-core pornography.

Colin's pale pink button-down stretched tight across his broad shoulders, a triangle of chest hair peeking out from where he'd left the top two buttons undone. His sleeves—mercy—were rolled to his elbows, one forearm corded with muscle and dusted with dark hair visible in the shot as he held up a thumb and smiled at the camera, silver wire-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose.

Colin (3:13 p.m.):You've got this.

She wasn't entirely convinced this guy wasn't put on this planet for the sole purpose of driving her insane.

Truly (3:15 p.m.):I didn't know you wore glasses.

Colin (3:17 p.m.):I'm just a little far-sighted. I can usually get by without them.

Truly (3:19 p.m.):You look good.

Wait. No, that wasn't what she wanted to—

The message went from sending to sent. Shit.

Truly (3:19 p.m.):I mean, you look good wearing them.

Truly (3:20 p.m.):They look good, is all I'm saying. They suit your face.

She set her phone down before she could dig the hole any further.

Colin (3:22 p.m.):Careful. Don't hurt yourself.

Oh, sure. Make fun of her.

Truly (3:23 p.m.):Don't be a dick about it.

Colin (3:24 p.m.):Wow. You were right, I guess.

Truly (3:25 p.m.):About?

Colin (3:26 p.m.):Me being so pretty it pisses you off.

Blood rushed to her face and her insides twisted unpleasantly.

Truly (3:28 p.m.):I thought we agreed to forget I sent that.

Colin (3:29 p.m.):Technically, I never agreed to anything.

Technically, her ass. It was implied.

Colin (3:30 p.m.):Come on, Truly. It's not a big deal. Nothing to be embarrassed about.

Truly (3:31 p.m.):Bold of you to assume I'm embarrassed.

She wasn't embarrassed. She was mortified.

Colin (3:33 p.m.):... so, are we going to talk about it?

Talk about it? Really? What was there to say that hadn't already been said? Or heavily implied.

Truly (3:37 p.m.):There's nothing to talk about.

Colin (3:45 p.m.):If you say so.

She did say so. She said so emphatically, in fact. With her whole chest, metaphorically speaking.

She typed that out, felt weirdly doth protest too much about it, and deleted the whole thing, letting her silence speak.

She thought he was gorgeous, and he knew it, and that was all there was to it.

It didn't have to mean more than that. She didn't know if she wanted it to mean more than that. But she had a feeling she was going to need to figure it out.

Soon.

***

Saturday morning passed without a text from Colin.

Which was perfectly fine. For the best, even. He was a distraction she didn't need, definitely not when she had four pesky chapters left to write, a list of admin tasks the length of her forearm to knock out, and some planning to do if this trip to Chelan was going to go off without a hitch.

Not that she was going to get any of it done if she kept glancing at her phone every five minutes waiting for a text that might never come because damn it, Colin was a distraction whether he was texting her or not.

Truly pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, checking for a fever, something, anything that would explain away this preoccupation, the persistent fluttering in her gut. Occam's razor stated that the simplest explanation, the one that made the fewest assumptions, was preferable to those that were more complex, but there was nothing preferable about having a dumb crush.

And God, was it dumb.

So what if she liked Colin's stupidly gorgeous face and wanted to run her fingers through his Pantene-commercial hair and trace a new constellation out of his beauty marks using her tongue and sink her teeth into his big, dumb biceps that no goddamn lawyer had any right to have? So what if he made her laugh and wasn't too proud to say sorry? He was also argumentative and annoying and got a sick thrill from pushing her buttons and he made it hard for her to focus. And that? That was something she could not abide.

Not now, with Mom and Dad's marriage on the brink of collapse and Truly the only person who gave enough of a damn to fix what was wrong.

A shadow fell across her table and her gaze left her screen, flickering to the half inch of watery coffee and melting ice left in her cup, her hand covering the plastic lid protectively, not ready for a bored barista to clear the table and boot her out when she'd accomplished squat despite the change of scenery.

"So this is where the magic happens."

Her head snapped up.

Colin stood beside the table, coffee in his hand. His dark hair was damp from the rain, curling in front of his ears, his thin white tank cut under the arms to nearly his waist, so damp it was practically see-through. All she could think about was that stupid picture she'd screenshotted on his IG. The one of him wearing those obscene swim trunks, rivulets of lake water clinging to his chest.

Her breath caught, voice clogging in her throat.

Inexplicably, Colin's face fell. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bother you, I just wanted to say—"

"No!" She gestured to the chair across from her. "Hi. Sorry, I'm a space cadet. Did you, um—" It would be weird to ask him if he wanted to sit, right? Wait. "Hold on. You live across town. What are you doing here?"

In her coffee shop. The one just two blocks from her apartment.

"Before you ask—because I know you're going to—no, I'm not stalking you." Until now, she didn't know it was possible for an eye roll to look fond. "I was in the area."

Truly leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. Did she honestly believe he was stalking her? No. Could she help but give him a little grief? Also no. "In the area, hm? You don't say."

Colin tipped his head back, mouthing a silent prayer up at the ceiling. For patience, probably. If she happened to get a thrill at the way the move bared his throat, putting his Adam's apple and his moles on display? That was between her and God. "I coach Little League, okay? We've been dealing with some scheduling issues at our usual park, and uh, Kinnear doesn't have a diamond but it's big enough so..." Rambling had never been so infuriatingly adorable. "Anyway, I was in the neighborhood."

"Because you coach Little League." Jesus. "Do you rescue kittens from trees in your downtime, too?"

A smile ghosted across his face, the corners of his eyes crinkling and his lips twitching. "Your ability to make any compliment sound like an insult is truly a gift, you know that?"

Ha freaking ha. "Maybe I'm just waiting for the skeletons to come tumbling out of your closet. I mean, you take on adoption cases pro bono, you're Mr. Emerald City Family Defense Fund Volunteer of the Year, and now you coach Little League? There's got to be something to balance it all out. Road rage or maybe you've got a secret porn addiction or—"

Colin choked. "A porn addiction? Yeah, no."

She clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth and tried not to smile. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, McCrory. We all have our weaknesses."

A sly smile graced his face. "Someone sounds awfully curious about my masturbatory habits."

Her cheeks warmed.

Like she said. They all had their weaknesses.

"It was an example. Don't—" She cleared her throat to disguise the way her voice nearly broke. "Don't read into it."

Colin hmmed and leaned in, forearm resting on the back of the chair across from her. "Like I probably shouldn't read into how you somehow knew I was named ECFDF's Volunteer of the Year?"

"Exactly." Wait. "No, that's not—" Fuck. She huffed and damn it if Colin didn't smile. Damn it if his smile didn't whip the flock of butterflies inside her stomach into a frenzy. "Why can't you just ignore my blunders like any other perfectly polite person?"

Colin cocked his head, a thoughtful if not feigned frown puckering his brow. "You know what? Maybe that's my flaw. Maybe I'm not perfectly polite. Maybe I like giving you grief. Ever think about that?"

Only nonstop for the last three weeks. "Colin McCrory admitting to having a flaw? Alert the presses."

He snorted. "Truly St. James giving me the Heisman? Must be a day ending in y."

"Sorry," she said, reaching for her drink. "I don't speak sportsball."

"Don't play dumb. You know what I mean."

She wrapped her lips around her straw and took a measured sip, heart racing. "I thought we agreed not to talk about that."

"Once again, I'll remind you I never agreed to anything of the sort."

The man was a menace.

"Well?" She looked pointedly between Colin and the chair he was gripping. "Are you planning on standing there all day and giving me grief, or are you going to sit?"

The cutest wrinkle formed along the bridge of Colin's nose. "That was without a doubt the world's worst invitation I've ever heard. Award-worthy awful."

"Bold of you to assume it was a request." In a move she'd probably brag about later, Truly managed to hook her ankle around the chair and kick it out. Ta-da. "Sit."

Colin hesitated before lowering himself into the seat across from her with a smile. "Don't let me disturb you."

"You aren't. Disturbing me. I've been here an hour and I've written..." She peeked at her screen. "Three sentences. And they're not very good sentences at that. So, if I'm disturbed, it's not because of you."

His lips folded in, the corners of his eyes crinkling like he was trying not to laugh.

If I'm disturbed—Jesus. She shut her eyes. "You know what I mean."

Since the moment she met him, it felt like her center of gravity was off-kilter just enough that she had to work a little harder to maintain her balance.

"If you're disturbed, I'm free from any and all responsibility. Got it." He lifted a hand to his chest. "It's quite the relief. I was losing sleep wondering if the problem was me."

"Ass," she said, fond.

"Careful." Colin grinned. "That time it almost sounded like a compliment."

"Maybe you're the one who's disturbed if you think ass is a compliment."

"Whether I was disturbed was never a question." Colin gestured to her computer. "Three sentences, huh? New book?"

"Interview, actually. For my alma mater."

"Alma mater?" His eyes narrowed. "Hm. Let me guess, UW?"

"Why, did you go to WSU or something?"

He made a face. "God, no. Stanford."

She wrinkled her nose and he laughed.

"You got a problem with that, St. James?"

There he went again, saying her name. Saint James.

"Your mascot is a tree, McCrory."

Colin scoffed. "Unofficially. Officially, we're the Stanford Cardinal. Not that there's anything wrong with trees. They're, uh, sturdy."

She snorted. "Oh, that's right. A color. So intimidating."

His tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, lashes lowering as he cut his eyes. "Don't tell me you went to USC."

"No, you had it right the first time. I did go to UW. I just didn't graduate. The interview's for my high school alma mater."

At nineteen, she hadn't a clue what she wanted to major in, let alone what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Rather than waste a bunch of money on classes trying to figure it out, she'd taken a gap year and worked at the box office at the Emerald City Repertory Theatre to make a little money, a job that gave her plenty of downtime to read.

And that was around the time she'd started writing.

Part of her expected him, successful attorney that he was, to balk at her not having a degree. But leave it to Colin McCrory to defy her expectations. "Shouldn't they have awarded you an honorary degree by now?"

A laugh escaped her. "What?"

"For all those times you hit the New York Times bestseller list. I mean, doesn't Taylor Swift have an honorary doctorate from NYU?"

She snorted. "While I'm flattered you just compared me to the Taylor Swift"—and weirdly turned on that he even knew that about NYU—"you're delusional. She's Taylor Swift."

Colin shrugged. "And you're Truly St. James."

She stopped laughing. Be still her fucking heart.

She cleared her throat. "Well, no. No honorary degrees for me."

"Not yet."

She rolled her eyes, suppressing a smile. Ridiculous.

"So this interview—is it about your books?"

Truly ran her thumbnail along the edge of a peeling sticker on her laptop. "Kind of? The school paper is running a series of alum interviews, so most of the questions are pretty standard, but the Gender and Sexuality Alliance asked if I'd be willing to answer a few more specific questions on bi-erasure and biphobia in media. Those are the questions that are tripping me up."

She wrote queer romance novels. She'd typed the word bisexual at least a hundred, two hundred times, but she'd said it out loud a total of fifteen? Twenty times? The number of people she'd come out to in person was even smaller: her parents, Justin, Lulu...

She'd been in a serious, monogamous relationship with a guy for the last six years, during which time she'd worked out that her appreciation of women transcended mere admiration and fell firmly into the camp of attraction. That straight girls didn't look at each other and feel the things Truly felt. They didn't zone out thinking about how soft another girl's skin was or get a jumpy thrill in their stomach when they shared lip gloss or sipped from the same can of soda because holy shit it was like their lips had touched. They didn't eagerly agree to play spin the bottle on the off chance they might land on their best friend the way she had in eighth grade. They didn't drink too much vodka as an excuse to make out with each other the way she had in high school. They definitely didn't feel sick to their stomach the next day when everyone laughed it off because no harm, no foul, guys got off on watching girls do that sort of thing.

By the time she'd discovered this part of herself, put a name to it, she was two years into dating Justin and being bi was just an ancillary part of who she was. She wasn't about to break up with him just so she could—what? Explore that part of herself? She didn't feel the need to explore something she already felt sure in.

But it made coming out kind of weird. Unnecessary? She was in a serious relationship with a man; did anyone really need to know? She didn't have a problem saying it; the words themselves came easy. If she was doing a book event and someone asked—as people often did, curious about what had drawn her to queer fiction—she'd answer. But in her day-to-day life? She could probably count on one hand the number of people she'd come out to. She'd hardly had any practice, not that practice mattered when each time felt brand-new.

She stole a glance at Colin from beneath her lashes.

He didn't look weirded out, not even confused the way Justin had when she'd told him she was bi. He just looked curious, a wrinkle forming between his brows she'd feel tempted to give him shit about under any circumstance other than this.

"What's tripping you up about it?"

"I guess I don't feel the most... qualified," she admitted. "I feel like there's got to be someone out there who'd be better suited to answer these questions than me."

His dark brows slanted low over his eyes. "I'm not sure I follow."

"I mean, I like girls, I like guys, I like people. But I've never dated a girl. I've never walked down the street holding another girl's hand before. I was with Justin for two years before I had my big Aha! moment." Which was less one moment and more many realizations that had occurred over the course of several months, culminating in her getting wine-drunk with Mom and telling her everything through snotty tears. Because even though her parents were the kindest, most open-minded people she knew, there was still this awful, insidious voice in the back of her mind that had whispered what if. What if everything was different when it was their daughter? "I don't know if I'm saying any of this right. I guess it just feels like... you know when someone asks if you've been somewhere, and you've only ever been to the airport? So, geographically the answer is yes, technically, but you feel like a fraud for saying so because you haven't really been there?"

That's what it felt like whenever anyone asked her about being bisexual. Like she was Bi Lite.

She chanced another glance at Colin, praying her metaphor had made some modicum of sense, steeling herself for whatever expression she'd find.

Colin's soft smile nearly bowled her over. "For what it's worth, speaking as someone who spent a lot of time hanging out in the airport before ever actually exploring the, uh, surrounding scenery? It counts, Truly. And anyone who says it doesn't?" His lips parted just enough for her to get a glimpse of his tongue tracing the edges of his front teeth. "They can go fuck themselves."

Her brain glitched, a distant memory of an old computer making an ancient dial-up noise filling her head like static. There was something absurdly hot about Colin saying fuck with his whole chest, so hot she was pretty sure her system had just undergone a hard reboot because of it.

She cleared her throat. "So, you're, um..."

The airport metaphor was vague and she didn't want to assume.

"Bisexual?" He filled in the blank for her. "Yeah, I am." For the first time since he'd sat down, Colin looked distinctly uncomfortable, eyes darting away. "Do you have a problem with that?"

She reared back so fast her chair legs scraped earsplittingly shrill against the tile floor. "I literally just told you I was bi. Why would I have a problem with you being queer if I'm queer?"

The math wasn't mathing.

One side of Colin's mouth quirked, but he still had yet to look her in the eye. "People have double standards about all sorts of shit."

People were hypocrites, sure, but she wasn't.

"People suck." Perhaps it wasn't the most eloquent, but it was honest.

Colin laughed and pressure she didn't even realize she was holding inside her chest eased. "Yeah. Yeah, they really do." He stole a glance at her from beneath his lashes. "My ex-girlfriend seemed really chill, you know? Put the A in ally, even had a rainbow bumper sticker on her Beemer. Until I say it's bullshit queer men can't donate blood unless they've abstained from sex with other men for three months and she shrugs and says well, statistically ..." He scoffed. "Talk about a red flag. But I was stupid, and, you know, at that point living in the airport lounge, if we're still working off that metaphor."

Justin's foot had practically lived in his mouth during their relationship, but he'd never said anything that offensive. Nothing that had ever gotten her blood boiling quite the way it was now.

"Your ex-girlfriend sounds like a cunt." She slammed her computer shut and slid it to the side so she could rest her elbows on the table. "Good riddance."

A flabbergasted laugh escaped his lips. "Yeah." He nodded, pink-cheeked and grinning. "I guess she does, doesn't she?"

Truly smiled around the straw of her coffee, inordinately pleased and buzzing because of it. "She totally does."

Colin nudged his coffee cup farther to the side so he could mirror her, elbows on the table, leaning in, his gaze steady. "My point, before I got off on a personal tangent, was that there's no such thing as being queer enough. Action and attraction are two different things. You could go the rest of your life never dating a woman and it wouldn't change a thing. If anything, I think you're the perfect person to talk about bi-erasure in media because you spent the last six years in a straight-presenting relationship that was queer because you're queer. And the gender of your partner? Doesn't change that."

The heat inside her chest unfurled, settling into a syrupy warmth that made her swallow hard, like she wasn't so much breathing oxygen but something thicker and sweeter.

"That's—" Words were her bread and butter and yet she couldn't find the right ones to do her appreciation justice. "Thank you."

Colin did the unexpected, frowning.

She frowned back at him. "What's with the face?"

"You're thanking me? For what?"

For saying the right thing. For saying what she hadn't realized she'd needed to hear until he'd said it. For seeing her.

"For, you know"—she waved her hand in the air—"saying what you said. It was... nice."

"Nice," Colin repeated, brow still furrowed. "Why do I feel like you meant to add a surprisingly in there?"

Her chest constricted. She'd bust his balls about plenty, but not this. This wasn't a laughing matter.

"No. No qualifiers necessary." She ignored the urge to cross her arms and curled her fingers around her coffee instead, grip so tight the cup crunched under her fingers, plastic lid nearly popping off. "You said what I needed to hear. So, this is me saying thank you."

"Careful, St. James. That really sounded like a compliment."

Without permission, outside of her volition, her hand crept across the table, stopping just shy of Colin's. Close enough that a single twitch of her pinky would cause their skin to brush. "It was. A compliment."

A small, almost disbelieving smile crept across Colin's face. "Oh. Well." He ducked his chin, smile growing as he stared down at the table at where their hands almost touched. "You don't have to thank me for being honest."

"Christ, McCrory, can you just take the damn compliment?"

His fingers ghosted across the back of her hand, so soft, so brief she wasn't sure whether it was an absentminded gesture or deliberate. Either way, her stomach fluttered. "It was nothing, Truly."

It wasn't nothing. It was something. Something she didn't have the words for.

Not yet.

***

"Bullshit. You were not."

"Hand to God, I swear." Colin dug his fork into the slice of red velvet loaf cake between them. "Just ask Caitlin. She's got pictures. Dig back through her Instagram and you might even find one."

She steadfastly ignored the way her cheeks heated at the jibe. "No wonder you were so defensive of the tree. You were the tree."

He wasn't more than a few years older than her. She racked her brain, thinking back on the football games she'd gone to her freshman year. The idea that their paths might have inadvertently crossed, even at a distance across a football stadium, while Colin was dressed up like an evergreen tree, was too funny.

"Put some respect on the name, St. James." He set his fork down. "I was The Tree, representative of El Palo Alto, a 1,083-year-old coast redwood and the namesake of the city."

"My sincerest apologies." She held up her hands in supplication. "Those must have been some big shoes—sorry, roots?—to fill."

"Ha fucking ha." He rolled his eyes. "I auditioned on a dare, okay? My cousin Cillian—he's my best friend—he didn't think I'd do it and I—" He cringed. "Ah, shit. There's no way to confess this without sounding like a douche."

"Is that new for you?" She grinned. "Go on. Stop stalling. Spit it out."

Colin heaved a sigh. "Fine. Disclaimer, I was eighteen—"

"You were stupid. Got it."

Colin scoffed. "Not every eighteen-year-old is stupid."

"True, but everyone who uses I was eighteen as a disclaimer either did something stupid or hormonally driven. If there were a Venn diagram, it might even be a circle."

"Maybe I was a little stupid."

She hummed the Jeopardy! tune.

Colin looked up, stone-faced, unamused save for the persistent and undeniable twitching of his left brow. "Fine. I heard the mascot got to, you know"—he made a frazzled, senseless gesture before raking both hands through his unfairly luscious hair—"hang out with the cheerleaders."

"You decided dressing up like a tree and learning to dance to an eight-count beat was preferable to, I don't know, asking someone on a date like a normal person?" She reached for her drink. "Weird flex."

Colin smirked. "You haven't seen me do yoga."

Wrong time to take a sip. A vivid image of Colin bent over in downward dog flashed through her brain, making her sputter, little drops of her iced latte splattering across the table and, naturally, the back of Colin's hand.

Rather than reach for a napkin, Colin wiped her spittle off with his thumb. She was really glad she was sitting down.

"At least tell me your ploy paid off."

His brows rose. "You're asking me if I got laid? You what—you want to hear about my college exploits? Are you serious?"

"Exploits? Ew." She tossed her napkin at him, which he dodged, and nudged him harder, nearly a kick. Her foot slipped and her ankle hooked around his under the table and her heart lurched. "I'm not asking for the details. I just want to know whether the whole mascot idea was worth it."

"In the sense that I was offered the position and I saw what a Division I athletic scholarship looked like?" He laughed. "It started as a dare, but considering I probably wouldn't have been able to afford law school otherwise, yeah, I'd say my humiliation paid off."

Oh. Shit. Now she felt like an asshole. "Sorry, I—"

"Don't. My parents could've afforded it. They just didn't want me to go to Stanford. Stay in state, Colin. Go to WSU, Colin. Join the family business, Colin." He rolled his eyes.

"Family business?"

"McCrory and Sons Contracting." There was a bitter edge to his laugh that made her chest squeeze. "Well, McCrory and Son Contracting. My dad officially changed the name the day I passed the bar."

Jesus Christ.

Both her parents were in show business and not once had either pressured her to follow in their footsteps. They'd only ever wanted her to follow her dreams, pursue her own passions no matter how wild or outlandish or even mundane they were. Because they loved her. Because they wanted what was best for her and not some version of her they had cooked up inside their heads.

Mom and Dad had always given her the space to reach for the stars and provided her with the comfort of a safety net should she fall. She'd never taken it for granted and yet someone claiming to love their child and yet giving them hoops to jump through to attain that supposedly unconditional love was unfathomable.

"Contracting? So your father's a what? Builder? Architect?"

They'd already covered that he was an ass.

He nodded. "Technically, my first job was hauling four-by-fours and H-beams on weekends. But I never got paid, so I'm not sure it counts."

Four-by-fours and H-beams? That explained the arms.

"Truly?"

She tore her gaze from where it had landed and lingered on the long line of his shoulders that led to the swell of his biceps. "Sorry?"

Amusement sparkled in his eyes, making it painfully obvious she'd been caught staring. At least he was polite enough not to point it out. Instead he nudged the plate of pound cake toward her, wordlessly offering her the last bite. "I asked what your first job was. Fair is fair, after all."

"Nothing as exciting as being a sanctioned furry."

Colin rolled his eyes, a smile still playing at the edges of his lips. "You're hilarious."

"I'd say I try, but that would be a lie. It comes naturally." Truly split what should've been the last reasonably sized piece of pound cake in half. "I worked as an usher back before my mom retired, when both of my parents were still with the theater. That was my first job. Not the most exciting, but I did get paid minimum wage and I got comped tickets for my friends."

She pushed the plate across the table only for Colin to push it right back.

"That's yours," he said.

"I split it in half."

"That's not even a bite, that's a crumb."

"Just eat it, McCrory."

"You eat it, St.—"

Her name died on his lips as a shadow fell across the table.

"Can I clear that for you?" a barista with a strained smile asked, hand already halfway to the plate.

Truly looked at Colin. "Um, we weren't quite finished yet, but—"

"We closed five minutes ago."

But they didn't close until—the clock mounted over the door read 8:05. Oh, shit. Already?

"Sorry." Colin handed the crumb-covered plate to the barista with a contrite smile. "We'll get out of your hair."

The barista took the plate and walked away.

Wordlessly, Truly gathered up her things, tucking her laptop inside her bag even though she hadn't so much as looked at it once in the four hours since Colin sat down. She had sprawled, pens strewn across the table, two dog-eared notebooks splayed open beside what remained of her third latte and trusty bottle of water she never left the house without.

It took her twice the time it took Colin to grab his belongings, but he waited, the bell chiming above the door as he held it open for her on the way out.

Had Justin ever held the door open for her?

Maybe? No? She couldn't care less about doors and who held them open, but... it was emblematic of how Justin had never cared, how he'd always assumed Truly would be there, one step behind him, her hand on the small of his back.

"Is your car—"

"I live around the corner," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder in the approximate direction of her apartment. "I walked."

"Ah." Colin pressed a button on his keys and the headlights on the silver Honda Civic three spaces down flashed. "That's me."

"This was..." She searched for the right word. "Fun?"

Colin spun his key ring around his finger and laughed. "Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Well, now I'm rethinking my answer altogether."

He grinned. "Bullshit."

"Shut up," she said without heat.

His teeth sank into his plush bottom lip and his gaze dropped to the pavement. After a moment he looked up at her through his stupidly long lashes. "What do you say about doing this again?"

She frowned. Doing what? "Running into each other at a coffee shop?"

He laughed, one tooth still snagged on his bottom lip, his smile charmingly lopsided. "I was hoping we might do it intentionally next time. I could even text you ahead of time."

Her heart hurled itself against her chest. "You mean... like, a date?"

Saying the word out loud made her palms sweat.

Another laugh escaped his lips. "Yeah, Truly. Exactly like a date."

"Why?" she blurted.

Colin smiled patiently. "Because I like you. Because I like spending time with you. Because I'd like to spend more time with you."

This wasn't supposed to happen. Not now. Not like this. It was too soon. She wasn't ready. "That's not a good idea, Colin."

His smile fell and even though she had to do it, even though the words had to be said, her throat ached with the near overwhelming urge to take the words back.

"Ah." He scratched his jaw and looked away. "I—look, I know we're not talking about it, and I know attraction doesn't always equal interest, but... did I read this wrong?"

Colin pointed between them, like it wasn't already clear what he was asking.

"No. You read it right," she conceded with no small amount of reluctance.

His being right was worse because it meant she'd unfairly made him party to her confusion.

"Okay." He dragged out the word, staring at her from beneath lowered brows, looking at her like she was a puzzle he intended to solve.

She crossed her arms and averted her gaze, pulse pounding painfully in her throat. "I just got out of a relationship and everything with my parents is so messed up that I'm not—I'm not in the right headspace for... that."

"Those sound like excuses to me," he said, not unkindly.

He sounded like Lulu. "If I didn't want to go out with you, I'd have no problem telling you that. Trust me."

Colin laughed and some of the tightness in her chest eased. "Somehow, I don't have trouble believing that." His smile faded, his stare softening, less like he was trying to solve her like a puzzle and more like he hoped she'd hand the pieces over. "What do you want, Truly?"

If that wasn't the million-dollar question, she didn't know what was.

"I don't know," she admitted.

He nodded to himself, taking the answer in stride. "Let me know when you find out."