Only You by K.T. Quinn

7

Molly

The Day He Asked Me Out

I couldn’t get the image of Donovan out of my head. Standing on the balcony, holding the pasta like my own personal Prince Charming.

I didn’t handle embarrassment well. One time when I was a teenager, I accidentally called my calculus teacher “mom” in front of the whole class. For a week after that, I pretended to have the flu so I could stay home from school. It wasn’t a big deal, and nobody else remembered it now. But I was mortified, and I still thought about the memory to this day.

As far as embarrassing moments went, yelling at Donovan in the lobby was probably in my Top Five. I had quickly forgotten about it because of the pandemic and the hotel locking down, but now that I knew he was my neighbor, all the embarrassment came rushing back tenfold. It was even worse now because he had been giving me food!

And then, when he found out it was me, he didn’t get upset. He did the opposite: he made me cookies!

What kind of guy did that?

He invited me out to the balcony again, but I didn’t dare accept. I couldn’t even respond. Just the thought of going out there and facing him made me cringe. I was too scared to even go out and retrieve my bottle of wine. All I wanted to do was crawl in bed and disappear.

It was made worse by the overwhelming urge to call my mom. She would have listened to the story, laughed with me about it, and then made me feel better.

I just want to go home, I thought.

I was bored the next day. I took another luxurious bath to kill some time in the morning, and when I got out, I had a text waiting on my phone.

Donovan: Sorry, no breakfast today. I’m running low on supplies. But I have leftover pasta from last night if you’re hungry.

I ignored the text because I was still too embarrassed to reply.

By the afternoon I was going stir-crazy, so I decided to venture out of my room. I tied a T-shirt around my face again as a makeshift mask. It made me feel like a bank robber.

The hotel tower was shaped like a square, with four hallways making up the sides. If I walked down the hall, after four left turns I would end up back where I began.

The first hallway had a few rooms, the elevator, and the vending machine.

The next hall was full of hotel rooms, all of which were empty.

The next hall had more empty hotel rooms, plus the gym with the big “CLOSED” sign taped to the door in five languages. The wall between the hallway and the gym was all glass, giving me a view of the interior for seven or eight steps.

The last hall was like the second one, filled only with empty rooms. Then I was back to the hall with my room.

I circled my floor like a power-walker at the mall. After a few minutes I started getting into a rhythm.

My hall.

Empty hall.

Gym hall.

Empty hall.

I wondered how long the loop was, so on the next lap I counted my steps. It was about fifty steps per length, or two hundred total. How many were in a mile? About two thousand? That sounded right.

With nothing else to do, I decided to walk at least two miles. Twenty laps.

I put in my earbuds and listened to a news podcast. Normally they covered a wide variety of subjects, but today they were only talking about the pandemic. So far, the United States hadn’t implemented any containment measures. There were several more cases in Washington and Oregon, and rumors of two cases down in California. The CDC said they were monitoring the situation and would present guidelines if things got worse.

In Europe, the only countries to institute travel bans were Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. International travel was still permitted everywhere else. On my twelfth lap, a brilliant idea came to me: I could travel to a neighboring country like Austria and fly home from there!

But of course that was out of the question. Travel was restricted. I wouldn’t even be able to reach the border, let alone cross it. Nobody in or out.

Could I contact the American Embassy in Rome? Maybe they would find a way to send me home. That would be something to consider in a few more days. Maybe things would end naturally before then.

On my next lap, I saw a man bending down in front of my door. It wasn’t Donovan or the concierge: it was an older man dropping off our supply boxes for the day.

“Hello! Buongiorno!” I said excitedly. “Do you speak English? Do you have any new information about the hotel? Are they opening things back up soon?”

The man took a step back. “No parlo ingles,” he said. He was holding two objects in his hand. It took me a moment to recognize them.

Two single-serving bottles of wine. The ones that came in our care packages.

“Hey…” I said.

He smiled and waved goodbye, then turned to walk away.

“Did you take that from the box? You’re stealing our wine!”

The man took off in a dead sprint down the hall, then disappeared through the door to the stairwell. I didn’t bother chasing him, both because I doubted I could catch him and because I had plenty of wine in my room.

“At least he left the food,” I thought while opening the box.

I continued walking laps while eating my pitiful sandwich. Today was ham and swiss. On the third bite I thought I tasted a drop of mustard. I considered that a win.

But after eating Donovan’s pasta a couple of times, this tasted awful by comparison.

Lap number fourteen. Almost a mile done. Empty hallway, then the hall with the gym…

As I passed the gym, I did a double-take. There was movement inside. At first I suspected the delivery-man-slash-wine-thief, but then I realized it was Donovan. He was running on one of the treadmills, facing away from me. He was wearing only a pair of shorts.

I slowed down my pace to get a better look. Donovan pumped his chiseled arms as he ran. His back was covered with tan muscles which flexed and contracted with every stride.

This would be easier if he didn’t look like a snack, I thought.

I reached the end of the glass, and the view was gone.

I continued walking around my loop. I was tempted to go back to my room to avoid the awkwardness of potentially running into him, but I wanted to complete my walking goal, too. I was bored, and I only had five more to go.

Plus, deep down, I wanted to get another look at Donovan.

I slowed down when I passed the gym on the next lap. There was absolutely no denying it: Donovan was sexy as hell. I had pictured him as being muscular underneath his polo shirt, but the real thing was even better than I imagined. And I wasn’t just thinking that because I was starved for social interaction from my seclusion. If my girlfriends saw him in a Roman club, they definitely would have hit on him.

On the third pass, Donovan was glistening with sweat. It made his muscles stand out even more than before, if that was even possible. He wasn’t too bulky, either—he was chiseled. Just the right proportion to make my stomach tingle every time I laid eyes on him.

I walked faster around the other three hallways so I could get back to him quicker.

He was sprinting on the treadmill now, taking long strides and pumping his arms furiously. I could hear the thumping of his feet on the treadmill as he tried to maintain his speed. His shorts were tight enough that they left nothing to the imagination. His ass looked absolutely wonderful.

When he was out of view, I picked up my pace again. I knew it was wrong to objectify a guy. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t want some guy ogling me while I exercised at the gym. But I couldn’t help but feel excited about seeing him again.

I rounded the corner. The gym was just ahead. Before I reached it, I slowed down so that it would look like I was maintaining a normal pace…

But Donovan wasn’t on the treadmill anymore. He was standing in the doorway of the gym, two feet away from me.

I jumped back, then raised my T-shirt mask over my mouth. “You scared me!”

He leaned on the door frame and smiled at me. His chest was an oil painting of muscles, from his pecs down to a six-pack of abs. He casually used a towel to dry the back of his neck. His chest and arms were covered in a sheen of sweat, which made every nook and cranny of his breathtaking body stand out in glorious contrast.

“Getting an eyeful?” he asked in a deep, confident voice.

I blinked. Nice going, Molly. Looks like there was a new moment to add to my Top Five list.

“I was walking around on the floor,” I said defensively. “I was doing that before you started working out. Which, by the way, you’re not allowed to do. The gym is closed.”

He kept on smiling at me, like this was all some joke. “It is?”

“Yes. There’s a sign on the door.”

“I don’t read Italian.”

“It’s in English,” I pointed out. “And French, and German, and another language I don’t recognize.”

“Maybe I don’t read any of those. Did you consider I might be illiterate?”

“You’re not illiterate,” I said curtly. “You were passing notes with me.”

Donovan just shrugged. “The door was unlocked. Who’s going to stop me? There’s nobody else in the hotel to use the gym. The other floors are deserted, I checked. Unless you want to use the gym…”

“I’m fine walking around the hall,” I said. “I hate running on treadmills. I prefer to feel like I’m actually moving.”

He toweled off one arm, then the other. I struggled to keep my eyes on his face.

“Want to get dinner on the balcony tonight?” he asked. “Without all the awkwardness this time.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “I don’t… I don’t think I want…”

I tried to think of an excuse, but nothing came to me. It felt like my brain had shut off. It probably had to do with the chiseled, shirtless guy smiling at me. I felt my cheeks grow hot.

“Stop trying to think of an excuse,” Donovan said. “What else are you going to do tonight? Sit in your room? Come on. It’s going to be a beautiful night. You’re in Rome. The least you could do is enjoy the sunset. Besides, you owe me a bottle of wine for last night’s dinner. See you on the balcony at six.”

He returned to the gym, allowing the door to close automatically behind him. He sat down on the weight-lifting bench and began curling a dumbbell. His bicep flexed, and a vein bulged along his olive skin. His dark hair hung across his face as he leaned forward, focusing on the movement…

Eighteen laps is close enough, I thought as I hurried back to my room.