Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

            He sounded like he wanted to say something else. A little wistful. Almost apologetic. It made me regret spending thirty minutes putting on makeup to go out with someone else, some poor guy I don’t even want to impress for the simple reason that he isn’t . . .

            Yeah.

            “I . . .” I take a deep breath and take a step back from Ted, whose only fault is . . . not being another guy. I cannot picture him watching The Bachelor with me, which is apparently a deal breaker. The more you know, huh? “I’m gonna go inside now. But thanks for everything. I had a lovely evening.”

            If Ted is disappointed, I can’t tell. To his credit, he hesitates only briefly. Then he smiles and retreats to his car without any I’ll call you or See you next time that we both know would be nothing more than lies of politeness. I silently thank the EPA gods for transferring him to another team last week, and make my way inside.

            I’m surprised to find Liam in the living room, sitting on the couch with a beer in one hand, a stack of papers in another, ridiculously cute reading glasses perched on his nose. Or maybe I’m not. It’s Saturday night, after all. We usually spend our Saturday nights on that very couch, watching TV, talking about everything and nothing. It makes sense that he’s here, even though I was gone.

            For the life of me, I can’t remember a better activity than staying at home in my pj’s and hanging out with my roommate.

            “What are you reading?”

            Liam glances up at me, takes in my short-but-not-too-short dress, my loose hair, my red lips, then immediately looks back to his papers. “Just a guideline document for work.”

            “How to achieve your very own oil spill in ten easy steps?”

            His lips quirk upward. “I think you only need the one.”

            “Listen, we’ve been over this. It’s okay if you don’t want to quit just yet, but the very least you can do is not work on weekends. Come on, Liam. Do it for the environment.”

            He sighs, but he takes off his glasses and puts away the papers. I smile and reach forward to grab his beer and take a sip without bothering to ask. Liam studies me in silence, but doesn’t start reading again. When I lift one eyebrow—what?—he caves, and asks: “Isn’t he coming in?”

            “Who?”

            Liam looks toward the entrance.

            “Ah.” Right. Other men exist, too. Hard to remember sometimes. “No. Ted’s not . . . He went home.”

            “Oh.”

            “I’m not . . . We’re not . . .” How to put it? “We haven’t . . .”

            Liam nods, though he cannot possibly have made sense of what I just mumbled. And then he says nothing. And then things seem to get a bit weird. There is an odd tension in the room. Like we’re both holding back something. I’d rather not search inside myself to figure out what.

            “I should go to bed.”

            “Okay.” He swallows. “Good night.”

            It might be that two fuzzy navels were too many, or maybe I just never really got the hang of high heels. The fact remains that I lose my balance and stumble just as I try to walk past him. His hands, large and solid and warm even through my dress, close around my hips until I’m stable again. I’m standing, and he’s sitting down, and like this I’m several inches taller than him, and . . . It’s new, seeing him from this perspective. He looks younger, almost softer, and my first drunken instinct is to cup his face, trace the line of his nose, run my thumb over his lower lip.

            I stop myself, but my slow, misfiring brain doesn’t. It feeds me an odd image: Liam smiling and pulling me down into his lap. Pushing between my knees. His hands skimming up my thighs, under my dress, tickling my skin, making me laugh. He reaches my lower back and his grip tightens, long fingers sliding under the elastic of my panties, cupping my ass to press me to . . . Oh. He is hard. Big. Insistent. He arranges me exactly how he wants me and I exhale just as he groans in my ear, “Careful, Mara.”

            Wait. What?

            I blink out of whatever the hell that was, just as Liam lets go of me. He says, “Careful, Mara,” and I take a step back before I can humiliate myself with something moronic and utterly embarrassing.