"I know. That's why we're eating early."
"What about your dad?"
"He'll be there," was all she said.
"I could eat right up until the steak was served and not spoil my appetite," I said.
"Then should we stop for food?" Tiffany asked, sounding confused.
"No. You have some of my stuff at your place?"
"Mostly what I could move in by myself, like clothing." She reached over to squeeze my bicep with a wink. "But I'm not sure it'll fit anymore."
After a three-hour drive, we hit a Target for the essentials, and then Tiffany directed me to her place. Palm trees lined the entrance to a complex of bi-level, standalone apartment buildings. Each cluster of beige stucco buildings had covered parking and access to a gated pool.
Tiffany's place was on the ground floor, underneath an outdoor staircase for the neighbor above her. Reddish-pink bougainvillea grew around the entrance and over the brick wall of her back patio.
She let us into the apartment. From the doorway, I looked around my new home. Or, at least, the place I'd be staying until I figured out my next move.
"It's nice, right?" she said, dropping her keys on the breakfast counter. "I mean, it's nothing special now, but we'll fix it up." I stepped inside with my plastic Target bags of boxers, undershirts, some new clothes, and toiletries. She brushed the arm of a couch in the center of the room, the same dark brown as the front door, then fluffed some blue throw pillows. Her TV sat on the ground. "I can make a few dollars go a long way. I wanted to wait for you anyway, to see what you like."
There was nothing too personal about the apartment, but it was bigger and nicer than mine had been before I'd gone away. For fuck's sake, it had a second room. Even growing up, there'd been no spare space.
In any case, I had more pressing things on my mind. I set the bags on a glass-top kitchen table and turned to Tiffany. The last thing I'd wanted to do was a Target run, but now that it was out of the way, the first and only thing I wanted to do was sink myself into a woman. "Show me the bedroom."
"Come." She motioned for me to follow her across the apartment to a door at the end of the hall. The bed was good, white and fluffy, twice as large as the twin I'd had at my place, and flanked by light-wood nightstands. Compared to a jail cell, it was the Taj Mahal. My limbs wouldn't hang off the edges of this one.
"I picked white for now," she said, "but I figured we could get some blue in here. Think beachy but masculine. Maybe even an ocean theme with turquoise-you know about Tiffany blue, right? The color of a Tiffany's box? That would be funny. Or if that's too girly, there's nautical with sailboats . . ."
Not blue. I couldn't do blue. It reminded me too much of endless skies, crystal-clear water, Lake's eyes . . . "Anything but blue."
She turned to me. "Sailboats are for like a kid's room, huh? I'm rambling. I'm a little nervous. This is weird."
"Yeah, it is." I came into the room, tilting her chin up for a kiss. "Don't worry. This part won't be."
She softened but took my hand. "I'm sure you're dying to, you know, which is why I told my mom we'd do an early dinner. I figured we could come home and spend all night catching up."
I arched an eyebrow. "Seventeen months inside, and you're asking me to wait? You think I'm superhuman?"
She pouted playfully. "Just a few hours. I guess I could call and tell them we'll be late, but they probably already started-"
They. Lake's cooking. If there was something worth postponing sex for, it was that. I imagined her moving around the kitchen like she had that first day we'd met, slicing avocado a little too carelessly because she couldn't keep her eyes off me. Telling me, an adult man seven years older than her, that I shouldn't drink beer and operate heavy machinery.
I planted a kiss on Tiffany's mouth. "No, don't call. I can wait."
"Okay. We're supposed to be over there soon, and we should probably shower."
By we, she meant me. I'd been sweating since I got out. No, I'd been sweating since I'd been taken in. Since I'd left that courtroom at the dead of summer, I'd been perpetually hot, inside or outside, even in winter.
Tiffany left me alone to change and clean up, which was good, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep my hands to myself otherwise. Need burned through me, a heat I'd never felt, even as I turned the water stark cold. I had to be skin to skin with someone. I wanted to see how Tiffany and I got on after we'd been circling this for so long. Even if she wanted romance, I could do that, I just had to fuck before my head exploded.