She glances up at me and laughs like I’m joking. “You want to give me a piggyback ride?”

“Yeah, grab your shoes.”

She stares at me for a moment, but then she grins like she’s excited. I turn around and she’s still laughing when she wraps her arms around my neck. I help her hoist herself onto my back and then I kick the car door shut.

When we make it to her apartment, I lean forward so she can use her key to unlock her door. Once we’re inside, she’s laughing when I lower her to her feet. I turn around just as she drops her shoes and starts to kiss me again.

Picking up right where we left off, I guess.

“What time do you need to be home?” she asks.

“I told Josh ten or eleven.” I look at the clock and it’s just after ten. “Should I call him and tell him I might be late?”

Lily nods. “You’re definitely gonna be late. Call him and I’ll make us drinks.” She walks to the kitchen, so I take out my phone and call Josh. I video-chat him so I can make sure he’s not throwing a party at my house. I doubt Theo would let him, but I’m not taking any chances with either of those two.

When Josh answers the video call, the phone is lying on the floor. I can see his chin and the light from the TV. He’s holding a controller. “We’re in the middle of a tournament,” he says.

“Just checking in. Everything okay?”

“It’s fine!” I hear Theo yell.

Josh starts shaking his remote, hitting buttons, but then he yells, “Shit!” He tosses the controller aside and picks up the phone, bringing it closer to his face. “We lost.”

Theo appears behind him. “That doesn’t look like a wedding. Where are you?”

I don’t answer him. “I might be a little late tonight.”

“Oh, are you at Lily’s?” Theo says, moving closer to the phone screen. He’s grinning. “Did you finally kiss her? Can she hear me? What line did you use to get her to invite you in? Lily! We watched people wed, let’s hop into—”

I immediately end the call before he finishes that rhyme, but Lily heard that whole conversation. She’s standing a few feet away from me, holding two glasses of wine. Her head is tilted in confusion. “Who was that?”

“Theo.”

“How old is he?”

“Twelve.”

“You talk to a twelve-year-old about us?”

She seems amused by this. I take a glass of wine from her, and right before I sip it, I say, “He’s my therapist. We meet every Thursday at four.”

She laughs. “Your therapist is in junior high?”

“Yeah, but he’s about to get fired.” I wrap my hand around Lily’s waist and pull her to me. When I kiss her, she tastes like the red wine she poured. I kiss her deeper to get more of that taste. More of her.

When she pulls back, she says, “This is weird.”

I don’t know what she’s referring to as weird. I hope she’s not referring to us, because weird is the last word I’d use to describe this. “What’s weird?”

“Having you here. Not having a kid here. I’m not used to free time, or… guy time.” She takes another sip of her wine and then separates from me. She sets her wineglass on the counter and walks toward her bedroom. “Come on, let’s take advantage of it.”

I follow her lead entirely too quickly.

Chapter Twenty-Two Lily

I’m trying to act confident about this, but as soon as I walk into my bedroom, I lose every bit of the confidence that got me in here.

It’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve been with anyone. Probably since right after getting pregnant with Emmy. I haven’t had sex postbaby, and I haven’t had sex with Atlas since I was sixteen, and both of these thoughts start swirling together to create this monstrous invasive-thought tornado in my mind.

I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom when Atlas appears in the doorway a few seconds later. I put my hands on my hips and just… stand here. He’s staring at me. I feel like I’m supposed to make the next move since I’m the one who just invited him into my bedroom.

“I don’t know what to do next,” I admit. “It’s been a while.”

Atlas laughs. Then he saunters toward the bed because of course he can’t just walk in an unattractive way. Every move he makes is sexy. Him removing his suit jacket right now is sexy. He tosses it onto my dresser and then kicks off his shoes. God, even that was sexy. Then he sits down on my bed.

“Let’s talk.” He leans against my headboard and then crosses his ankles. He looks very relaxed. And sexy.

I can’t imagine lying down on that bed in this dress. It would be uncomfortable, and probably not very much fun to try to remove if we get to that point. “Let me change clothes first.” I walk into my closet and close the door.

I turn on the light, but nothing happens. The bulb is out. Shit. I can’t get dressed in the dark. I don’t have my phone on me, so I can’t use the flashlight app to help.

I do my best, but it takes a minute to get the zipper down. When I finally do, instead of stepping out of the dress, for some reason I pull the dress over my head, and of course it snags in my hair. I try to set my hair free, but the dress is heavy, and it’s taking forever in the dark, and I can’t walk out to find a mirror because Atlas is out there. I keep trying to untangle it. After a few defeating minutes, Atlas finally taps on the door.

“You okay in there?”

“No. I’m stuck.”

“Can I open the door?”

I’m standing in my bra and panties with a dress halfway over my head, but this is what I deserve. This is closet karma. “Okay, but I’m not really dressed.”

I hear Atlas laugh, but when he opens the door and sees my situation, he immediately springs into action by flicking the light switch. It does nothing, of course.

“The bulb is out.”

He moves toward me to inspect my situation. “What happened?”

“My hair is stuck.”

Atlas pulls out his phone and uses the light to help him see what I’m tangled on. He tugs my hair and my dress in opposite directions, and then, magically, my dress is on the floor.

I smooth out my hair. “Thank you.” I fold my arms over myself. “This is embarrassing.”

The light from Atlas’s phone is still on, so he can see that I’m standing in my bra and panties. He turns off his phone light, but the closet door is open, and there’s a lamp on in the bedroom, so I’m still very visible to him.

There’s a moment of hesitation on both our parts. He can’t tell if he should walk away and let me finish getting dressed, and I can’t tell if I want him to.

And then suddenly we’re kissing.