They also cheer you on in good times, like Truly’s.

I’m not far away from Gin Joint.

Not far at all.

I make my way to her bar so I can congratulate her in person on nailing it. Along the way, I follow Walker’s advice and make a donation to an animal rescue. There. I feel better. When I reach Gin Joint, I don’t see Truly behind the counter, so I ask the guy mixing drinks where I can find her.

“She’s in her office. Is she expecting you?” he asks.

A jerk would barge in. A gentleman asks. “No. But I have to see her anyway. Do you need to call her first and tell her I’m here?”

He smiles, shaking his head. “Nah. I’ve seen you around. Go on ahead.”

I turn down the hallway, head to the last door, and knock. When she answers, she’s like a breath of fresh air, and I want to breathe her in all night long.

Because she smells like so much more than a friend.

36

“So you nailed it? Just like I knew you would.”

Her smile is huge as she ushers me into her office, the door falling shut behind us. She’s so giddy that her enthusiasm is practically a new perfume, and it’s going to my head.

“Yes! I met with him today, and I went over all my plans. He said it sounded fantastic. He just needs to check with his partners and”—she stops, crosses her fingers—“then we should be good to go.”

“And do you have a name for this new establishment?”

“I was thinking of something really on the nose like An English Pub because, hey, then won’t I come up quickly on search results?”

“That’s what I admire about you—always thinking.”

“Always hustling.” One corner of her lips curves up, and she shoots me another smile. “Thanks again, Jason. I really couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I think you had it in you already. I was just company.”

She leans against her neat desk, looks me up and down, and says, “Good company indeed.”

Her voice has changed slightly. It’s softer and a little bit more seductive. How is that even possible?

“And a great friend too,” she adds.

Is that a reminder to herself? But I can’t read in her tone whether she’s underscoring the word as a barrier or stating the simple truth: we are great friends. The way we’ve interacted this week affirms it. “We’re doing pretty well at this friendship thing, aren’t we?” I ask.

“We’re rock stars at it.”

“No one is as good as we are at getting right back into the friend zone,” I say, and it feels like it could be true enough until she touches my arm, setting off sparks. Heat rolls through me, fanning the flames of my desire for her, stoking the fire into a blaze.

“Jason, I really did need you for this. You might think you were just company, but I couldn’t have done this without your help. You have such a fine eye and a nose for details. That made all the difference in the world.”

My heart thumps a little harder, a little more insistently. I wish I didn’t like her compliments so much. I wish I could take them on a surface level. But there’s nothing surface about what I’m feeling for her, and I don’t want to sling quips and dirty words right now.

“We helped each other,” I say. “There’s no one else I could have asked.”

“It’s the same for me. You’re the only one with the insight I needed. And it was a lot of fun to scour pubs together.”

“It was incredibly cool. And I loved spending all that time with you,” I say, choosing the bare truth.

Because here it is: I don’t want to be in the friend zone. I want to be in her zone.

Her eyes widen. I see hope in them, and I want to believe she feels the same way I do, that this extra time we’ve spent together in the last few weeks has done to her what it’s done to me.

She runs her hand up my arm. “I loved spending all that time with you.”

I’m not entirely sure what is happening here. But we’re swept up in a storm of compliments. A sea of confessions. And in the eye of this storm, there is no more room for innuendo or flirting. We’re both standing here saying only what’s true. And what’s true is that I want her to have everything she desires. “I’m happy for you, Truly. I want all your dreams to come true.”

“I want yours to as well.”

I take another drink of truth serum. “Going to Chip’s wedding with you . . . it never felt like you were a fake date.”

Her voice is breathy. “It never felt fake to me either.”

Tonight doesn’t feel like the baseball game, the last pub visit, or the jujitsu class. This doesn’t feel like anything else we’ve done before. Maybe I simply had to clear my head of all the noise that was in it to arrive in this new zone. This is the zone I want to be in.

I wrap a hand around her waist, running my thumb along her hip, making her shudder. “You smell amazing.”

“What do I smell like? I don’t really wear any perfume.”

I lift my chin, drawing a deep breath of her gorgeous scent. “I know you don’t wear perfume. Your scent is in my head. It’s in my brain. I can’t get it out. It drives me wild. You smell like fresh air.”

She laughs. “I suppose there are worse things to smell like.”

“There’s nothing better to smell like. And the funny thing is, I thought I was immune to it.”

I move closer, lift my hand, and finger a strand of her hair. Her breath catches. “How is one immune to air?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Don’t know. I’m certainly not.”

She nibbles on her lip and meets my gaze, her eyes soft and vulnerable. “I don’t want you to be immune to me.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I think I’ve lost all resistance.”

“Have you now?”

“Pretty sure.” I’m damn well certain this is the zone I want to be in. The contact zone.

She lifts her hand, reaches for my collar, and brushes her fingertips over it. “I love being friends with you. And I love all the other things in our lives. I don’t know how to make sense of what’s happening or what I’d do about it if I did. But right now, I need you to kiss me. Because you can’t just stand here in my office looking like this and talking like this and saying these things.”

I flash her a naughty grin. “I can’t?”