If I could stop the world from turning and the hours from passing, and if I could keep dusk from becoming daylight again, I would do it and stay in this night forever.
My emotions are still bigger than I am after the concert ends and the quartet leaves the stage. They threaten to carry me away like a hot air balloon the entire time Phoenix and I stroll along the boardwalk and through the parking lot. His hold on my hand is all that tethers me to the ground. The present drifts and fades and returns during the ride home, especially when "Thinking Out Loud" has its turn on the playlist.
When we park outside of my building and Phoenix helps me out of the vehicle, and when he walks me inside and to my door with his hand against the small of my back, all sense of time seems to collapse. Twenty-three-year-old me takes over before thirty-year-old me can second-guess myself or consider how the question might sound.
"Do you want to come in?"
His eyes search mine, as if looking for clues about what my words mean. Seven years ago, a night like this would have ended with us together at my place or his, a trail of discarded clothing leading to the bedroom. A kiss here, a caress there, tongue against tongue leading to skin against skin, leading to his hands and mouth exploring my most sensitive spots. My growing need for him, the frantic fumbling for a condom, and the sweet ecstasy of what came next. Time slipping away and somehow ceasing to exist at all.
But before then, before our relationship became intimate in that way, our date would have ended outside of my door with a kiss and a promise of him calling me tomorrow, which he always did. Or, at the point just past that, him coming inside and making out with me for a while, as we progressed to the more serious relationship we later had. I don't know which version of us I'm asking for now, or what my words mean. I'm just not ready to say goodnight.
"If you aren't tired of me yet," Phoenix answers, his gaze still locked with mine. His mouth quirks up in a smile that shines through in his eyes and lets me know his reply is more teasing than it is self-deprecating.
"Yeah, good point." I scrunch up my nose as I open the door, but then grin at him to let him know I'm kidding. "I'm not, for the record."
He follows me inside. The door clicks shut, and the sound sends a flutter of anticipation coursing through me. There's something about being behind a closed door with him that heightens the energy of the room. It could be the sweet perfume of the roses he sent me lingering in the air, or my larger-than-life feelings clamoring for release. Whatever it is makes me want to crash my lips against his and see where it takes us.
Phoenix opts for a more chaste approach, touching my shoulder first, then brushing his fingers along my cheek. "Kick me out when you are." He kisses the tip of my nose.
"And if I don't kick you out?" I wind my arms around his neck and peer into his eyes again.
"Then you might be stuck with me." His lips graze over mine, but he doesn't kiss me. No, this is a slow dance of close-but-not-quite, as his hands find the curve of my waist and he pulls me closer to him.
"Only until you go back to Vegas tomorrow." I run my fingers up the nape of his neck and through his hair.
"Shhh. Don't remind me."
He places his index finger against my mouth, as if he really doesn't want the reminder of his upcoming departure and drive. It's instinct for me to kiss his finger, but what seems innocent enough in my mind causes him to suck in his breath and hold it for a moment. For once, his expressive eyes work in my favor, because they reveal what his self-restraint doesn't. I'm not the only one with colossal emotions going on.
I tilt my head up. His finger slips away, allowing me to bring my mouth to his. This time, his lips do what I want them to, pliant against mine, parting, inviting me in. A switch flips in me somewhere, because now there's nothing else in the world outside of him and me, and all I want to do is taste him.
We end up on the sofa somehow, shuffling there in step with one another without losing rhythm or knocking something over along the way. He pulls me onto his lap, and then I'm straddling him, my hands working to unbutton his shirt while his head dips to my neck. The soft kisses that remind me of this afternoon turn into gentle nibbles, until he reaches my shoulder and retraces the path his lips left, trailing kisses up to my mouth again. I reach the bottom button of his shirt, and it isn't an accident when my hands roam over the bulge in his pants on their way to his bare chest, or when I adjust my body so I'm rubbing up against his pelvis.
"Del..." he murmurs. For a moment, his pause makes me wonder if he's going to stop, but then he kisses me with more urgency than before.
His hands find the zipper on the back of my dress and I feel it slide open, exposing the skin on my back to the air in the room. I help him move the straps off my shoulders and down my arms, until the top part of my dress falls away to my waist. I expect my bra to be next, but he doesn't reach for its hooks. Instead, his hands glide over my uncovered skin, while his tongue continues exploring my mouth. It only makes me crave his touch more, everywhere he isn't touching me. So when his hands settle on my waist and he starts to dial down the intensity of our kiss, I can't stop my whimper of protest. His quiet laugh when he hears me doesn't help.
"I know," he whispers. "I'm trying to remember this is technically a first date and that I leave tomorrow."
The still-aroused part of my brain doesn't see why this is a problem. "It's a second first date, and we're only making out. Things were still pretty PG."
Except a part of me knows. We both do. If he rains kisses over my body, if my bra comes off and his hands and mouth find my breasts, and if they wander from there to below my waist, between my legs, and discover the dampness that's already there, we will go far past making out. I doubt either of us would have the willpower to hold back, considering where we've been before and the blissful heights we're both aware we can take each other to.
It doesn't stop me from leaning forward and closing the space between us, or from pressing closer to him when our mouths meet again. It doesn't keep him from shifting us so I'm lying back against the sofa cushions, under him now, or from bringing the feather-light touch of his lips to my neck and my shoulders, and then along my midriff and back up. But when his hands reach for my discarded dress straps and he pulls them over my arms again, and when he sits up, it's a signal he won't let himself do more than this with me tonight.
"At least one of us has self-control." It's supposed to be a joke, but my heart is racing and I'm breathing in bursts, and my voice sounds too gravelly for it to land that way.
I pull myself up so I'm sitting, too. A wayward lock of hair spills across my forehead while I'm in motion, and Phoenix brushes it away from my eyes before I can.
"I don't want to be leaving the next day and be four hours away from you for most of the week if it goes farther." He twirls a different strand of my hair around his finger as he speaks, then tucks it behind my ear.
"If?" I raise my eyebrows. "And it's only an hour by plane."
He smiles at this, and cups my chin in his palm. "I'm trying not to make assumptions about how you'll feel tomorrow or two weeks from now, and I meant what I said last weekend. I don't want to mess this up with you."
If he had any notion of what last weekend and tonight stirred up in my heart, he wouldn't hesitate about making assumptions. I can appreciate how careful he's being with me, though, even if his unbuttoned shirt and the view I have of his chest and abs right now aren't helping me settle down.
My eyes scan the room for a distraction from the jumble of lust and longing still surging through me. They land on the TV remote, so I grab it from the coffee table and hit the power button. The diversion works, because calm returns to my body after I've spent a minute focused on flipping through the channels, and my head wins back control.
"When do things wrap up in Vegas?" I return the remote to the table.
"Soon, I hope. I've been there longer than I expected to be."
"Things are that off-schedule?"
The vague timeframe isn't what I hoped to hear. Phoenix may sense my disappointment, because he drapes his arm around me and hugs me close.
"I wish everything was done there. It isn't far off, and I'm going to keep driving here to see you as much as I can, when you aren't writing and don't have other plans."
"I could visit you there, you know. I don't need to be in LA to write."
"Mmm." He nuzzles my hair. "I would love having you there, but I don't feel right asking you to travel to see me. It's a lot of driving time."
"That you've done twice in just over a week," I remind him. "Besides, you didn't ask me to travel. I told you I could."
"Does chivalry really need to be dead?"
He turns his puppy dog gaze on meâthe same one he used at his place when he confessed that running into me wasn't by chanceâbut I'm not falling into his trap. I glance up at the ceiling instead, pretending to be exasperated.
"Fine. You've left me no choice but to plan a trip with Ava to see another one of Torin's shows, and to accidentally hang out with you while I'm there."
Phoenix doesn't respond. After a few seconds of silence, I glimpse over at him and witness something that looks a lot like panic in his eyes and on his face.
"Why do you seem worried?"
"I had a vision of what my next encounter with Ava might look like if she thinks I'm putting the moves on you."
It's hard to keep a straight face while I consider telling him Ava was certain we'd slept together last weekend until I said otherwise, and that she's already given me her unsolicited opinion about the birthday sex she thinks I should have tonight. That isn't what she would rake him over the coals for.
"Are you scared of Ava?" I'm barely able to keep my amusement out of my voice.
"That's a question?"
"Fair point," I admit. "We'd need to find her a distraction. Maybe Nash could help?"
"Nash?" A crease appears in his brow.
"Those two feed off each other. I think there could be something there."
"I agree about distracting Ava if I want to make it through the experience in one piece, but not with Nash. Just trust me on this."
"Then we'll think of something else. Or, I could leave her at home, skip Torin's show, and spend time in Vegas alone with you. It's a genius idea, right?"
I lean my cheek against his shoulder and turn my own version of a puppy dog gaze on him. I know I've won when he bites his bottom lip and closes his eyes.
"I still don't think you should have to travel to see me, but I'll say yes if you fly there and let me pay for your flights."
I consider disagreeing with the paying for my flights part, but discard the idea when he opens his eyes and looks at me. It's clear he means it, and it isn't out of character for him when I think about all the things he insisted on paying for the last time we dated. It's who he is.
"I can live with that. Are you busy next weekend?"
"Very busy." Phoenix places his hand over mine and bends his head down to whisper into my ear. "I'm spending every second of it with you."
༺â༻ ༺â༻ ༺â༻
Alexa, play "Taking You There" by Broods, on repeat.
So... Vegas, baby! I wish Phoenix luck with that resolve of his for the upcoming several days and nights of togetherness with Del in Sin City.ð