It was midnight when I arrived back at my apartment that night. I have a few silent prayers that Mitch wouldn’t be there as I ran up the stairs to the third floor. I needed to talk to Lola alone.

“Please don’t let Mitch be here,” I mumbled again as I unlocked the door. “Just for tonight.”

When the door was open, my eyes scanned the floor in search of any masculine shoes but all I saw was Lola’s flipflops. The apartment was dark and quiet and I knew she was probably sleeping. Not that that was going to stop me from going and talking to her. She’s woken me up on countless occasions before to talk to me about boy problems.

Before bothering her, I went to my room to change out of my clothes. I’ll admit, I had taken extra time getting ready tonight, hoping it would maybe push things in the right direction. I have no idea if Justin even noticed but things had definitely happened so it was worth it.

Once I was in my pajamas, I went to Lola’s room and opened the door. I could see her figure in bed and I crawled into the other side.

“Lola.”

She moaned a bit when I nudged her shoulder. When she didn’t immediately open her eyes, I poked her again.

“Lola…”

“What?” she mumbled into her pillow.

“Wake up. I have to talk to you.”

She opened one eye to look at me. “You and Justin hooked up.”

What the hell? “How did you know that?”

“You have this stupid smile on your face and you smell like him.” She smiled a bit. “How was is?”

I rolled my eyes. “We didn’t sleep together.”

“But something happened.”

I smiled. Yeah, something definitely happened. “We kissed.”

Lola smiled and opened her other eye. “Really? And?”

I bit my lower lip but that didn’t stop my smile from growing a little bit. “We’re going to try dating.”

“Aw, really? I’m so happy for you.” She shifted over to give me a hug and then laid back down on her side, facing me.

“But you can’t tell anyone. Not even Mitch.”

“Why?”

“Because only you and Trace are allowed to know. That’s the only way it’s going to work.”

“Why?”

“Because Justin has this thing about Ben not finding out.”

“Is he worried about Ben being mad about you two dating?”

“Yeah. Which I don’t understand because it’s not like me and Ben simply broke up. He cheated on me and I think that should give me the right to date whoever I want. Even if it’s one of his friends.”

“Yeah but Ben didn’t do anything to Justin and if Ben finds out it’ll affect Justin’s friendship with him.”

“That’s what Justin said.”

“So can you keep it a secret?”

“I have to. That’s basically the only way. I had to talk Justin into it because he was so worried about Ben finding out.”

“It’s going to be hard.”

I sighed and rolled onto my back. “I know. But hopefully we’ll just do it for a while and then it won’t be such a big deal and we can come out in the open.”

“Yeah.” Lola smiled at me. “So you must just be ecstatic that you and Justin are dating.”

I hugged a pillow to my chest and a small laugh escaped me. “Tonight was so amazing. He’s so great.”

“I bet he’s a good kisser.”

I could feel a blush spread over my cheeks. “Oh my gosh, Lola, he’s amazing. He’s like the best kisser ever. You don’t even know.”

“I can imagine.”

“This was the best night ever.”

“I bet it would be an even better night if we both went to bed and talked about it more in the morning.”

I laughed a bit and sat up. “Okay.”

“I bet you’re too wound up to sleep.”

“Yeah, I am. I’ll just watch some TV or something.”

Lola yawned and closed her eyes. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Night.”

I really was too would up to even think about sleeping. I felt like I could go run around the block ten times but I refrained since that’s not the wisest thing to do at midnight in LA. So instead, I crawled into bed and turned on my little TV in my room and began to channel surf. Not that it really mattered what I watched. All that was going to be going through my head was the events of tonight.

* * *

Before my alarm clock could even go off, the vibration of my cell phone woke me up. Groaning, I rolled over to my side and reached my hand out from under the covers to grab it from my bedside table.

Who’s the jerk sending me a text message at 7:09 on a Tuesday morning?

Call in sick for work?

A smile spread across my face as I read Justin’s message. Burrowing deeper into bed, I wrote him back.

Why would I do that?

I shut my phone and then laid my head against the pillow. I’m really not a morning person but something about waking up and remembering the night before instantly put me in a better mood.

My phone vibrated again and I opened it.

Because then we can hang out. We’ll go to the beach. It’ll be fun…

I laughed and seriously considered calling in for a moment. But after getting my raise, I couldn’t justify it.

I can’t. But I’ll try and get off early.

All I got in response to that was a sad face and I smiled. He wasn’t going to guilt me into skipping out of work so I put my phone down and pushed the blankets off me. It wasn’t until I had showered and did my hair and makeup that I saw I had another text message waiting for me.

Are you going to call when you’re off? I cancelled plans tonight so we could hang out.

I text him back to say I’d call him when I got off and then got dressed and left my room. Lola was already gone to work so I guess our discussion of my night was going to have to wait until later.

Work turned out to be a bit of a bust. The photoshoot I was supposed to do makeup for was cancelled because the model was sick so Lucy and I ended up going shopping for supplies for most of the morning and then I basically did nothing for the rest of the day. I know, really productive, right? I should have just called in sick.

It was close to four when I arrived back at my apartment. I called Justin on my way home but he didn’t pick up. He was probably golfing again. I asked him about why he feels the need to turn off his phone while he golfs and he gave me some spiel about needing to concentrate on his game. He’ll keep his phone on when he’s trying to sleep but turn it off when he’s golfing? That doesn’t even begin to make sense. He’s not the easiest person to debate with though, so I didn’t even bother.

After leaving a message telling him I was home, I wandered into the kitchen to find something to eat. I sighed as I stared into the fridge. I really needed to go get groceries. Lola and I share food but she never actually goes to buy any. She’ll just give me money and let me do it. She says it’s because she doesn’t know which food to buy. I say it’s just because she’s just really lazy. If I’m away she’ll seriously just not eat until I get back and buy food. I don’t even know how she survived when I was in Ohio.

Finally I made a sad little bowl of plain rice. We didn’t even have any soy sauce to put on it. But I was hungry and it was going to have to do. I’d get groceries tomorrow.

I was sitting on the couch with my rice, watching Dr. Phil when there was a knock on the door. Putting my bowl aside, I got up from the couch to get it.

Seeing Justin on the other side immediately made my day and a smile spread across my face.

“Hi.”

He smiled and came into my apartment. “Hey.”

It wasn’t until the door was shut behind him that he leaned down to hug me. I was about to make some remark about how I didn’t think my neighbors would phone up Ben if they saw us together but before I could, his lips were on mine and I basically could care less about anything else.

I had thought the memory of his kisses from last night were fresh in my mind but experiencing it all over again was a million times better. This was seriously heaven. It was like it wasn’t just his mouth kissing me. It was like his whole body was kissing me. Wow, that sounds really stupid. This is what being giddy over a guy does to me.

He pulled away too soon, leaving me wanting more. “Hey.”

I smiled. “You already said that.”

He looked around me. “Lo here?”

“Nope.”

“So just you and me.”

“You, me, and Dr. Phil.”

“I hate Dr. Phil,” Justin stated with such a serious look on his face I almost burst out laughing.

“Good thing it’s possible to change the channel.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the living room. “What were you doing? Why wasn’t your phone on?”

“I was recording.”

I sat down on the couch. “Recording? Since when?”

“A friend of mine called me up this morning. We were just fooling around.” He sat down beside me and pulled my legs onto his lap. His eyes watched me was I picked up my bowl of rice. “Are you just eating plain rice?”

“Yeah. Want some?”

He nodded and I lifted a forkful to his mouth. He accepted it and chewed it slowly and then swallowed. How can he make even eating rice look hot?

“So what’s with the rice?”

“I have no food. It was either rice or some questionable looking Chinese food. I’ll get food tomorrow.”

“Maybe we can order in food tonight.”

I took a bite of rice and then offered him another forkful. “You don’t want to go out?”

“Not really. Do you?”

I shrugged. It honestly didn’t matter as long as I was with him. Ugh, how cheesy was that? “I could go either way.”

Justin’s hands moved to my feet and he began to fiddle with my toes. “What did you do today?”

“Almost nothing. The photoshoot I was supposed to got scheduled for tomorrow.”

“See, you should have called in sick.”

I finished off the last of my rice and set the bowl aside. “You know if I had called in sick it would have been the most important day of my life at work.”

He laughed. “Sure.” His hand moved under my pant leg to my ankle and I silently congratulated myself for shaving my legs this morning. “This is why you should always listen to me.”

I smiled and dropped my head back against the armrest of the couch. “You wish, man.”

He started to tug on my ankles and I lifted my head. I flutter went through my stomach when I looked at him. A smile spread across my face.

“What?” he chuckled after a minute.

I decided to be a bit bold and shifted on the couch. His eyes widened slightly when I moved my body so I was straddling his legs and facing him.

“Well hello there,” he laughed, resting his hands on the back of my calves.

I smiled and draped my arms loosely around his neck. “Hi.”

A grin was slowly forming across his face. “And here I thought you were this nice, sweet girl.”

My mouth dropped open a bit. “Whatever, buddy. I can move.” I started to lift off him but he pulled me back down by his hands on my calves.

“I’m kidding. I like you here.”

“I bet you do.” I replaced my arms around his neck and stared at him. Just being here like this felt so right. That’s got to be a sign, right? This feeling inside me means this relationship is a good thing.

You’ve got this look I can’t describe
You make me feel like I’m alive

Justin wet his lips slowly and that sparked something inside of me. I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his. Oh yeah, this was right.

I’ve found that Justin has this thing about his hands when he’s kissing. He can’t keep them still and it’s like not only do I have to keep up with his mouth but his hands too. I’m perfectly content to just let my arms rest on the back of his neck but his are moving up my back and now he’s weaving his fingers through my hair. I gave myself another congratulations for leaving my hair down today.

I think I could be happy to just sit here and kiss him all night. There was no rush and as much as I wanted to soak as much of him in as I could, he was obviously content with just slow kisses. And hey, who was I to complain?

There was suddenly a tug on my hair and he pulled his face back. I opened my eyes to look at him.

“My watch is stuck,” he said.

“What?” My question was answered when there was another tug on my hair, this one harder. My hands raised to my head. “Ow.”

“Hold still for a second.”

I tried to keep my head still but it felt like he was tearing a chunk of my hair out. “Ouch! Stop.”

“Sorry. It’s stuck in the strap. Lean your head down.”

Sighing, I leaned my head down and he began trying to pull his watch free again. Finally, after a particularly hard tug, he announced it was free. I raised my head and saw him pulling strands of hair from the band of his watch.

“Look at how much hair you pulled out!” I exclaimed, bringing my hand to my head.

“Sorry,” he apologized again. “I had to. It wouldn’t come out.”

I rubbed the sore spot on my head. “Way to kill the mood.”

He smiled and leaned towards me. “I can get the mood back.”

I pulled my head back before he could kiss me and he gave me a questioning look.

“First,” I said, lifting his hand from my hip. He smiled when I pulled off his watch and put it to the side. “From now on you aren’t allowed to wear watches around me.”

He laughed. “Deal.”

Once his watch was safely away from my hair, I allowed him to kiss me again. The stinging of my scalp was soon forgotten as his lips worked their magic on me. I really just never wanted this to end. I’ve really missed being able to just make out with someone. I love kissing and the past two months without it have just been kind of dull.

Justin pulled away, bringing my lower lip with him briefly before releasing it. “Did you tell Lola?”

“Mm hmm.” I leaned my head forward to kiss his jawbone. “Did you tell Trace?”

He moved his hands down to my hips as I kissed his neck. “He figured it out.”

“He’s a pretty perceptive guy.”

He sighed a bit and leaned his hand against the back of the couch. “Uh huh.”

My lips turned up in a smile when I heard his breathing speed up a bit as I worked my way to his ear. He was really into this.

I guess both of us were too distracted to hear the front door open. Lola’s gasp and Mitch saying “Wow” got our attention though.

Justin’s body tensed and I turned my head to see them standing there. Shit. Lola was smiling but Mitch had this completely shocked look on his face. Lola’s eyes suddenly widened and she slapped her hand over Mitch’s eyes.

“Oh! Sorry! Sorry!” she said, pulling Mitch towards her room. “Sorry!”

As soon as I heard her door shut, I turned back to Justin and buried my face in his neck and giggled. “Guess we’re not so good at hiding this.”

He didn’t say anything but I felt him nudge me, motioning me to move off him. I raised my head to see his face. “What?”

He shifted again and I pulled myself off him and sat down beside him on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“Only Lola and Trace are supposed to know.”

I laughed a bit. “It’s only Mitch. He won’t tell anyone.”

“The more people that know, the more of a chance there is that someone will let it slip and Ben’ll find out. Only Lola and Trace, Emily.”

Some annoyance went through me at the way he was talking to me. “Why the hell are you getting mad at me? It’s not like I knew Mitch was coming over.”

“You’d think that maybe you could have mentioned she would be here soon so we wouldn’t have been sitting here making out for the whole world to see.”

Glaring at him, I shifted on the couch and felt something under me. Pulling Justin’s watch from under my leg, I tossed it at him. “Why are you being a jerk?”

“This is just a little irritating, Emily.”

I opened my mouth to respond but then I realized exactly how loud we were being. I usually try to not air out personal matters in front of people and knowing Lola and Mitch, they probably have their ears pressed against her door, trying to hear.

Shutting my mouth, I stood up. “I’m not fighting about this out here,” I said and began to walk to my room. He got up and followed me and I made sure the door was shut behind us before I said anything.

“First of all, Lola is home early so I didn’t know she would walk in on us. Second, the only way Mitch knew Ben was through me and they didn’t even get along that well so I doubt he’s going to call him up and say anything.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “And if you’re so worried about someone seeing us, maybe YOU should be more aware of the environment we’re in and if someone will see us when we’re together.”

I finished my little speech by sitting on my bed and crossing my legs with attitude. He better choose his next words wisely.

He sighed and ran his hands over the top of his head. “It’s just that we were only supposed to tell two people.”

“I didn’t tell Mitch. And him seeing us was not my fault.”

“I know that. And you might think that it’s not a big deal if more people know but it’s a big deal to me because I know if Ben ever found out he’d be really pissed off and it would ruin our friendship.” His voice was calmer now and I felt myself relax a bit. “And I just need you to understand that.”

My hands dropped to my lap. “I do. But you need to understand how hard it is not to tell anyone. I’m happy and I want to tell people but I can’t and that sucks.”

He leaned back against my dresser and sighed. “I know. It sucks for me too. But it’s just how it has to be right now.”

I nodded with resignation and looked to the side. Justin moved form the dresser over to me and he crouched down in front of me, taking my hands in his hands.

“It’s just for now, Em,” he said softly. “And later we’ll figure it out.”

I stared at him for a minute before nodding again. It was quiet for a long moment before I said, “Mitch won’t say anything.”

He squeezed my hands. “I’m not worried about him. I know he won’t.”

“Okay.”

He pulled me up so I was standing and hugged me. “I guess I was being a jerk. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

So was this our first official fight as a couple? If so, I could definitely deal with this. Ben was the worst person to argue with because he would become completely unreasonable and normally our fights would end with me being exhausted with trying to get my point across and just give into him. But this with Justin was an actual adult argument with a reasonable ending. This must be what a healthy argument felt like.

“Want to go see if Lo and Mitch want to order in food?” Justin asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Okay.”

He stepped back from me and picked up my hand as we left my room.

“You aren’t supposed to be wearing your watch of torture around me,” I commented, seeing his watch back on his wrist.

“Well you threw it at me.”

“I was mad.”

“I guess a watch thrown at me is better than a glass.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t cheat on me and I’ll never have to throw a glass at you.”

He laughed slightly and squeezed my hand. “I’m not stupid enough to ever even think of cheating on you, Chief.”