After the ballet, they’re in the parking garage and Andy is awkwardly shuffling his feet and Sharon is shifting her purse from one hand to the other. Rusty is upstairs and Nicole long since gone with a gentle kiss to her father’s cheek and a murmured, “Don’t let her go, Dad.”
Sharon is buzzing with emotions. She’s angry and confused and excited and overwhelmed. She didn’t ask for this, for him. But he’s standing there like he’s terrified to move and she’s going to lose it if she doesn’t. “Do you have anything to say?”
Andy huffs and finally turns his attention on her, all the emotion blazing across his face. How could she have ever forgotten how tightly wound he was, how loose a lid on his emotions? “Do you want to hear what I have to say? Cause you’ve been dodging me all week.”
“You’ve been lying to me all week,” she counters. The sting of deception is still fresh, unpacking baggage she long thought tucked away.
He shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to tell you the truth,” he argues, stepping closer, not quite crowding her. “I’ve been trying to tell you what happened and that I wanted what Nicole was saying to be the truth—“
She sucks in a sharp breath and puts a hand on his chest—a barrier, a plea, a moment. “Andy, I don’t want to talk about—“
“We’ve got to, Sharon!” His own plea, his own press. He steps closer, cups his hand around her elbows. “I wanna talk about how glad I am that I got outta my own way to see the person you are. I wanna talk about the way I leave the building and I gotta call you because that was already too long without hearing your voice. I wanna talk about the way that you and I got something really great here and we’re terrified.”
He’s earnest, overly so, but he’s laying his cards on the table. She doesn’t want to see his hand. Andy won’t let her look away though. He nudges his finger beneath her thumb to keep her gaze. “I wanna talk about us, Sharon, and why I stopped trying so hard to convince Nicole what she was saying was wrong.”
“Andy, we can’t—you can’t—“
“Can’t what? Care about you?”
“Yes,” she snaps, a rasping thing pulled from her throat and past her fears. She doesn’t have the words to articulate that men run from her, that they don’t stick around. That no matter how she tries, she isn’t enough or she’s too much and—
Andy grabs her hand and presses the palm of it to his chest where she feels the thundering pulse of his heart. He grins at her, crooked and helpless. “Too late, sweetheart. You’re in there.”
She shudders, clutches at the fabric of his shirt instinctively like she can touch his heart and find the place where she now resides there. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she says helplessly. She hadn’t gone looking for Andy Flynn, hadn’t prepared herself for finding a person who complimented her so fully as a partner, friend, and potential lover.
“But it did,” he says, tucking her hair behind her ear and letting his hand settle at her hip, waiting to tug her forward or keep her close. “I’m sorry for not being more forthcoming with you and Nicole, I am. But I think we owe it to the both of us to explore what this could be. If that’s not what you want, tell me now and I button it up.” He ducks to keep his gaze on hers. “So, what’ll it be?”
Sharon sucks in a breath. There are so many reasons that they shouldn’t open this door. It could end in catastrophe professionally. It could end in heartbreak personally. The time in her life for taking risks with her heart is long since gone. But….
But she thinks of all the times she called Andy on the weekends because she saw a new vegetarian frozen pizza in the grocery store and thought he should know (even if he teased her mercilessly about her reliance on frozen pizza and he promised to take her back home to Jersey for a real slice). She thinks of Andy walking her to her car after a long day, of being the first to offer her support as she was finding her way, of Andy taking her to Dodgers games and buying her a new cap because hers was frayed to hell and her nose was freckling. Everywhere she looked—personally, professionally—he was there.
It was where she wanted him.
She kissed him before she could talk herself out of it. Her arms wound around his neck as she pressed her lips to his, his bottom lip as plush and soft as she’d imagined. Andy groaned and hauled her closer, hands around her waist and splayed on her back. If she thought he’d be tender and hesitant, she was wrong. He devoured her, stumbled them both back until she was trapped between her car and his body, mouth working insistently at hers. His tongue brushed against the seam of her mouth as his hands settled at her hips. She sighed, clinging to him. He tasted of apple cider and mint.
When she pulled away with a breathless, “Wait,” he stopped and nuzzled at her jaw and pressed his forehead to her cheek.
“Don’t you think,” she said, burying her fingers in his hair and scratching at his scalp playfully. “You should take me out first?”
Andy grinned against her skin, pressing a quick kiss to the pulse point in her neck. “Overlooking the fact I’ve been taking you out,” he teased. “It would be my pleasure to officially take you out.”
The heat that was erupting between them while he had her pressed against her car was cooling into something warm, red orange embers to keep her cozy. “C’mere,” he murmurs, pulling her against his chest and sinking his fingers into her hair, lips pressed to her ear and temple.
She breathes him in, her voice soft even to her own ears as she asks, “No more lies?”
He sucks in a breath and hugs her closer. “No more lies,” he promises. Then, hopefully, “Walk you up?”
“You just want to kiss me goodnight,” she accuses, hiding her smile into the crook of his neck.
“Yes,” he says simply, gleeful at the fact that he could say such things now, could hope for such things.
She pulls away and kisses his chin, sliding her hand down his chest and belly before settling her hand in his. “Then lead the way.”
