Set on You Read online

  My eyes dart behind him. It isn’t a coincidence that he shifted his body in front of his locker like a bodyguard stationed outside a nightclub. He’s holding my phone hostage in there. I’m convinced.

  Like a panther focused on its prey, I storm toward him.

  We’re face-to-face, chests heaving, connected in yet another face-off. But this time, his chest is bare, and I’m losing the battle to resist ogling him with each passing second.

  To distract myself, I search his face far and wide for something to critique. Anything at all. And I come up empty. I hadn’t noticed until now that his pupils are surrounded by soft rings of gold.

  The severity of his expression tempers with a slight brow raise. I take it as a sign of weakness. It’s my time to pounce.

  I gaze left to fake him out before making a break for his locker. As I stick my hand in, he blocks me with his shoulder. I attempt to push him backward with my forearms, but his body is like a sturdy tree. One of those majestic three-thousand-year-old trees in Yosemite. He doesn’t even budge.

  He watches me, mouth twisted in amusement as I step back in a huff. “You’re not getting in my locker,” he says, as if it’s just pure fact, as simple as one plus one equals two. He extends his arm to the side, palm against the locker, blocking me from any future attempt. But I don’t give up that easily.

  Fully aware of his strength, I make one last go of it.

  He stops me as I lunge toward him, placing his hands square on my shoulders. He turns me swiftly yet gently against the lockers. “Keep trying all you want. I can do this all day.”

  The coolness of the metal against my back offsets the warmth of my skin. I desperately try to ignore how he smoothly circles his right thumb over my shoulder. His hooded eyes hold my entire body captive, despite the fact that his grip isn’t all that tight. He’s not holding me here against my will. I could probably leave at any time. In fact, I probably should. But I don’t, and I don’t know why.

  I don’t dare blink. Blinking is for the weak. We only break eye contact when his gaze flickers to my lips. I glance at his too. They’re not too thin and not too thick. In fact, they’re perfect. My inner cavewoman desperately wants to feel them against mine. And that’s when I question my sanity. If there was an appropriate female equivalent to “thinking with your dick,” my mug shot would be right alongside. The real Crystal, a woman of logic and all things practical, would never be attracted to this infuriating asshole.

  Unexpectedly, his lips brush against mine, stealing my air. Heat flushes through me like a violent tsunami, ready to obliterate everything in its wake. All of my internal organs clench. My muscles seize. My eyes close. My toes curl.

  Am I even still alive? Did he really just kiss me?

  I’m frozen in place and time. I can’t physically move.

  His kiss is featherlight, testing, as if he’s unsure if he should continue. He tastes familiar somehow, minty and fresh, bringing me alive slowly but surely. His hands loosen on my shoulders, as if confident I won’t pull away from him. His right hand drifts up the nape of my neck and into my hair.

  I panic, because my hair is a tangled, sweaty rat’s nest. But as I feel the pads of his fingers stroking up and down the back of my skull, I’m lost in this moment. I want to savor it forever. I tilt my chin upward to deepen the kiss, which he takes greedily. There’s a tremor in his hand as the pad of his thumb skates over my cheekbone. No one has ever touched my face like this, as if treasuring every curve and line.

  It’s only now that I realize my arms are hanging like dead noodles. I snake my hands up his hard stomach, over the ridges of his shoulders. His muscles clench under my palms. I’m practically on my tiptoes when I lock my fingers behind his neck, pulling us completely flush. He lets out a tiny sigh of relief into my mouth.

  His lips open and close against mine in a slow rhythm. I moan into him, and he pulls back for half a second. There’s a stormy change in his eyes as they darken to an electric mossy hue, my new favorite color. The air shifts around us, as if we’re in the eye of a chaotic twister.

  It’s desperate, needy, wild. I pull him down, closer to me until I can feel him, hard against my stomach.

  Our kisses devolve into a frantic flurry of hair pulling, teeth clinking, and lip biting. The further his tongue goes, the deeper I slip into a haze, a daydream that I never want to wake from. Every time his lips dare to leave mine for a split second, I pull him back to me, harder, closing the gap between us, wanting more and more.

  Who am I and how did I end up making out with a stranger in the men’s locker room? I really ought to tear myself away and run.

  But the feeling of his lips on mine is like an explosion of euphoria. Of everything I want and need. The perfect taste. The perfect sensation. The perfect pressure. The perfect everything.

  His hand dips around my bottom, hooking underneath my right thigh, lifting it around his waist. A low groan escapes his mouth, vibrating into mine as my hips roll against his, sending a blinding jolt to the forgotten corners of my body. His lips dart hungrily to the side of my mouth, down my jaw, and over my neck as he hoists me off the ground completely. He backs me up against the locker again, my legs hooked around his waist.

  I’ve never been picked up by a man before. To call this “exhilarating” is the understatement of the century.

  “Fuck,” he whispers in my ear as I rock against him, one hand linked around his neck, the other gripping his hair. He’s looking at me, not through me. In all my hookups, I don’t think I’ve ever held eye contact for longer than two seconds before looking away. In fact, I don’t even remember linking eyes with Neil.

  Squat Rack Thief’s expression is the perfect mixture of pleasure, adoration, and sincerity. I didn’t know he was humanly capable of this. I revel in it. I lose myself in it.

  I’m about to spontaneously combust from the pressure alone when the changing room door squeaks open.

  His head jolts back in the direction of the door. His muscles clench and seize underneath me, holding me in place for a breath. All I want to do is capture this moment and freeze it in time. Our eyes are still locked as he sets me down more gently than I’d expect, flashing me a Shit, we’re busted look.

  A stout, balding man barely covered by an impossibly tiny towel strolls around the corner, whistling. Red-faced from the sauna, he stops dead in his tracks when he catches sight of me, chest heaving, lips swollen, caged against a locker. I only see the man’s stunned reaction for a fraction of a second, because Squat Rack Thief shifts, as if protecting me from sight.

  I blink, the silence yanking me back to reality. Cheeks burning like the fiery flames of hell, I inch past Squat Rack Thief and scramble out of the changing room without looking back.

  On my way to take shelter in the women’s changing room, I nearly bulldoze one of the gym ladies from earlier. The one with the visor.

  “Excuse me, hun. Is this your phone?” She holds my white iPhone in her extended hand. “Accidentally took it from the mat area, thinking it was mine. I left my phone in the car today. Guess it’s just habit.”

  Instead of being ecstatic to be reunited with my beloved phone, all I can think is, Crap.

  I was dead wrong.

  Squat Rack Thief is innocent.

  “Oh, uh, thank you for returning it,” I manage through my fog. I can barely look this lady in the eye without blushing.

  With my phone safely in my possession, I spend at least half an hour in the changing room, hunched over on the bench in a daze. I can’t leave. The risk of crossing paths with Squat Rack Thief on the way out is too great. He probably thinks I’m a total loon, falsely accusing him of stealing my phone and climbing him like a ladder in the changing room.

  Despite my best efforts, even after I’m showered and dressed, my heart rate stubbornly refuses to settle to a resting BPM.

  chapter six

&nbs
p; I ENTER THE GYM, ball cap hanging low over my eyes in a poor attempt at going incognito, or as invisible as possible in hot-pink Lululemon leggings. My gym bag snags on the turnstiles. I tug it twice before pulling it free.

  When the combination lock in my bag makes a loud, echoing clunk against the stainless-steel turnstile, Claire, the redheaded girl behind the front counter, holds her hand over her mouth. She does a piss-poor job of not laughing in my face.

  So much for stealth mode.

  I take a cautious scan around as I head for the changing room, fully expecting to meet Squat Rack Thief’s inevitable taunting look from one of the machines I’m planning to use. All the regulars are here. The veiny gym bros. The hard-core female bodybuilder flexing up a storm in the mirror, admiring her impressive, award-winning, competition-ready figure. Yet Squat Rack Thief is nowhere to be found.

  Head down, I busily film my planned segments for the day. But every time a tall, muscular dude enters the gym, my stomach free-falls and I do a double take. I’m on guard, just waiting for him to show. But he doesn’t.

  Truth be told, I’m relieved. How am I supposed to face him again after yesterday? It was undoubtedly the hottest moment of my life, and my clothes stayed on the entire time. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it was better than sex. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. All day and night.

  Unfortunately, there’s a ninety-nine-percent chance he thinks I concocted the phone thievery as an excuse to attack him in the changing room. Not only does that make me look like a desperate, sex-crazed lunatic, but I can’t help but ponder what would have happened if that bald man hadn’t walked in and interrupted us. Would we have gone any further? Probably, given we were dry humping against the lockers, my legs hoisted around his waist like a pretzel. And worse, I catch myself wishing we had, which goes against my vow to take a break from random hookups.

  While we didn’t actually have sex, no faceless Tinder random has ever made me feel . . . that before. No less a nemesis who refuses to tell me his name.

  I chastise myself for my lingering thoughts of him as I exit the gym, thighs already burning from my workout. I must resist thinking about that man, no matter how many abs he has, or how deep his V line is.

  By the time I’m half a block away from home, my mind has spiraled into hypotheticals. What if he’s avoiding me? He must be. Either that, or he’s come down with a sudden illness, or he perished in a freak accident. Avoidance is the most logical explanation, though. It’s no coincidence he’s suddenly changed his schedule after days of coming to the gym at the exact same time. Obviously he doesn’t want to face me.

  Maybe he can’t stomach the awkwardness, similar to how I long to disappear into dust and nothingness when I see Tinder Joe, who, by the way, still acts like I don’t exist.

  I attempt to push Squat Rack Thief out of my mind as I check the mail in the lobby and head up to my apartment, flyers, bills, and a massive package of sponsored protein bars in hand.

  The moment I open the front door, I’m unexpectedly greeted by a bright-eyed, newly permed Grandma Flo wielding a batter-covered whisk. She’s wearing Tara’s flour-covered apron, which reads GET SOME.

  Before I can even ask why Grandma Flo is in my apartment, the whisk is halfway down my throat, choking me. “Do you taste the butter?” she demands, luminous hazel eyes boring into mine like an operative interrogating their latest captive under seizure-inducing fluorescent lights.

  When I gag dramatically, she takes mercy and removes the whisk. “Uh, yeah. I taste the butter. Why?” I ask, catching a glimpse of Tara snickering on the couch among a pile of books.

  Tara followed me on the Instagram train. She’s a bookstagrammer, someone who reads 483,398 books a year and posts reviews. With thousands of followers, she receives stacks of free books in the mail from publishers who want her to advertise and review upcoming releases. Reminding her to keep her books in her room instead of littering my living room with them has become my second job. Tara makes some money from her bookstagram, but certainly not enough to warrant it being a full-time job, which is the only thing that saves her from Mom and Dad’s disapproval. She has a “proper” job as a registered nurse in the neonatal ward at the children’s hospital.

  Satisfied with my response, Grandma Flo swivels back to my kitchen, still talking. “At the church potluck, Janine asked Ethel if my shortbread was store-bought. The gumption!”

  Janine Fitzgerald is Grandma Flo’s church nemesis. As the story goes, their rivalry began over a coveted church pew and went downhill after a particularly dramatic Bible study. I only half-listen as Grandma goes on a long-winded rant about how Janine likes to hold her hands in the air during sermons, purposely to block her view.

  I plop onto the couch beside Tara. “How long has she been here?” I ask, voice low.

  “Two hours. She said she had some business in the city. She walked in on me while I was naked. Didn’t even bother to knock.”

  “Why were you naked in my apartment?” I fury-whisper. “And aren’t you supposed to be doing a shift at the hospital?” I kick off my running shoes and toss the unopened mail on the coffee table.

  She shakes her head, promptly ignoring my first question. “Yeah. I got sent home early.”

  The look on her face tells me there’s a story here, so I remain silent, just waiting.

  “I was the unfortunate victim of pea-green explosive diarrhea.”

  I cover my mouth, stifling a bubble of laughter as I open my laptop to begin my workout plan for a virtual client in Arkansas. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”

  “It was so potent. You would have fainted,” she says, expression grave.

  “Anyway, why is Grandma here?” I ask.

  Tara opens her mouth, itching to spill the tea, but stops when Grandma Flo emerges from the kitchen, plate of cookies in hand. She sets them in front of Tara, who she feels is “much too thin” and at risk of “withering away” at any given moment.

  After settling into the chair, she fusses with one of my tiny succulents on the side table. Apparently unsatisfied with its state, she carelessly dumps the remainder of Tara’s tea over the top. RIP succulent. Grandma Flo has never had a green thumb.

  “As you know, I canceled Easter this year,” Grandma Flo starts slowly, choosing her words carefully. She delays, picking at a loose thread in the stitching of my chair.

  I half-close my laptop to give her my full attention. “Were you actually at the casino?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I was . . . with someone.”

  “With someone?” Tara and I ask simultaneously.

  She flashes us her ring hand, unveiling what looks like a ruby, flanked by an elegant yellow-gold band. “I’m engaged.” She holds her breath, as if bracing for our reaction.

  While Tara launches to her feet and shrieks in delight, practically crushing Grandma with a hug, I sink into the couch, only narrowly saving my laptop before it topples to the floor. My mind refuses to compute her words. “Engaged?” What fresh hell?

  The only man I can picture Grandma Flo with is Grandpa. Though he passed away of bone cancer three years ago, I never imagined she would date again. I think about how they used to sit side by side in matching La-Z-Boys watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! every single night. Or how their wild nights out consisted of attending a Tuesday sermon, then heading home at eight to devour a bag of Chex Mix while gossiping about their fellow churchgoers.

  “I didn’t even know you were dating.” The words sound foreign coming out of my mouth as I turn to Tara. “Did you know?”

  “No,” Tara says. “Isn’t it funny, though? Grandma has a more active dating life than us.” She stares at the space on her finger where her massive princess-cut diamond used to sit. I’m half convinced one of the worst parts of her breakup was giving up the ring.

  “Who are you marrying?” I
ask, turning my attention back to the matter at hand.

  “Martin Ritchie,” Grandma says, smiling like a lovesick baby deer.

  Tara cuts in. “Oh! We know him. The guy that lives down the street from you, right?”

  Grandma nods with pride. “The very one.”

  “That guy? Really? The one with the mustache who you and Grandpa used to play bocce ball with?” I conjure up a blurry image of his thick, eighties-porn-star mustache in my mind. He was always in a striped polo shirt, from what I can remember.

  Grandma Flo goes on a ramble about how active Martin is. Something about boating and tennis. Her eyes go misty and sentimental as she details their weekend getaway on Cape Cod. The seafood. Her seasickness. His unwavering support. The romantic sunset proposal. I barely absorb a word. I don’t know how to process this information. It isn’t that I’m upset she canceled our family Easter tradition. It’s the fact that she’s essentially been leading a double life.

  “Wow. I mean, I’m shocked. But I’m happy for you,” I force out, along with a sweet granddaughter-esque smile. “When is the wedding?”

  She shrugs. “We haven’t gotten that far. A summer wedding would be nice, though it’s such short notice. We’d be hard pressed to find any available venues—”

  A wheezy gasp comes out of Tara’s throat, startling me. She looks like she’s just come up with a cure for a life-threatening disease. “Oh my God. I still have my wedding venue. The Sheraton. And most of my vendors.”

  Grandma blinks. “You didn’t cancel them?”

  “Not yet. They’re holding my deposits and I thought . . . maybe there was hope Seth would change his mind.” She pauses, chin trembling. “But he won’t. So you can have it all if you want. Then all that money and planning won’t go to waste.”

  The furrow deepens between Grandma Flo’s thin brows as she considers this bizarre proposition.

  I grip the edges of my laptop, studying Tara’s unreadable face. “And you’d be okay with this?” I honestly don’t know how I’d feel witnessing someone else walk down the aisle at my venue, on my date, with my décor and music, knowing it was supposed to be me.