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  I kept waiting for something like that to happen with Niall, but nothing did. Instead, the weeks passed, and we moved along as though we’d known each other forever, yet we were still brand-new to each other every time we talked. The butterflies didn’t go away. My heart leaped every time my phone rang and his name showed up on the screen.

  Being with him was easy. Talking to him was easy. I never had to repeat myself to explain what I meant. If he asked me a question, and he did, lots of them, he listened to the answer and actually retained the information for like, longer than a day. He took me out for dinner on my birthday and bought me a card, and I didn’t even have to hint around for the week beforehand that I would be turning thirty-four. I’d never known a man who did that. Even my brother had been known to forget to wish me a happy birthday, and we freaking shared it.

  A month isn’t such a long time unless you’re falling in love, and then it can feel like four years instead of four weeks. I wasn’t sure what I felt for Niall was love. It wasn’t the same as I’d felt for anyone before, I knew that much. The more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know. Being with Niall was easy, but it was also strange because it was so effortless. It scared me shitless, you know, how simple it was to be with him. It was good, enjoying his company.

  That terrified me.

  I couldn’t ignore how casually he took my hand when we walked, his fingers stroking the inside of my palm every now and then to send shivers up and down and all through me. How he let his toes nudge mine beneath the table, or his fingers trail along my shoulder blades and the back of my neck when he got up to use the restroom and came back. And how he kissed me, all the time. Hello, goodbye, randomly at any time I found myself tucked up against him, his mouth on mine. Sometimes quick, sometimes lingering, his kisses never failed to make my heart beat faster. We spent hours on his couch making out, like in high school, before I’d started having sex, only not like in high school, I knew exactly what I was missing out on. Hands roaming, hair getting mussed, he’d kiss me until my mouth felt puffy, my lips a little chapped. I kept my hands on the outside of his clothes, waiting for him to beg me to touch him, but he didn’t. And I let him drift his fingers beneath my clothes without ever urging him to go farther. Waiting, waiting to see what Niall would do all on his own, to see which one of us could hold out the longest. There were nights I left his house on legs so shaky it was a trick getting upright to the car, my panties soaked with my arousal. I hadn’t been so turned on without getting release in...well, ever.

  I couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t get enough, delirious with anticipation. Tease and denial, only which one of us was doing the teasing and which the denying? Four weeks of that and nothing more.

  No wonder I was losing my mind, just a little.

  I’d become accustomed to negotiation. Laying it all out—expectations, desires, safe words, hard lines. I’d forgotten what it was like to simply allow a relationship to grow naturally, without intervention or force or struggle.

  I should’ve just taken him, right? Because that’s what dommes do. They take what they want. Demand and command. Maybe that was what he was waiting for. Well, that can be fun, for sure, and I wouldn’t even try to pretend I don’t like getting what I want, how I want it and when. But I’d also meant what I’d said to Niall. That maybe in porn or for other people it was all about the sharp edges or being fierce. I wanted to be able to be soft.

  And because he didn’t beg me, because he didn’t force, Niall was giving me that.

  We’d spent the day wandering the farmers’ markets and quilt shops of Southern Lancaster County. Amish Country. Why? Because I’d mentioned earlier in the week that although I’d lived in the area my entire life and that my mother still lived in Lancaster, I’d never done any of the touristy stuff.

  Niall took me on a buggy ride driven by a young Amish man without a beard, who wore an awesome, flat-brimmed straw hat that Niall tried to buy off him. The kid laughed and shook his head at the foolishness of us “English” and directed us to his aunt’s shop. She sold quilts and canned jars of pickles as well as hats. Niall bought me a bonnet, and because the sun was bright, I wore it. I took a picture of us in our hats and made it the background of my phone.

  This was...maybe not love, but something close to it, all right. Ooey-gooey, mushy, gooshy more-than-like. And I was all up in it.

  “Hey, you want a whoopie pie?” Niall was already plucking up a few of the local treats and putting them into the quaint straw shopping basket.

  They looked homemade, which was great, except that I couldn’t find any ingredients. I shook my head. “I’d better not.”

  He looked confused. “No? How come? They’re delicious.”

  “Probably made with lard.” At his even more confused look, I laughed and said, “I don’t eat anything made from a pig.”

  “Oh. Right. Right?” He looked at the whoopie pies. “These have pig in them?”

  “They might.” I took a jar of pickled red beet eggs from the shelf and put that in his basket, instead. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have one.”

  “Nah. Not if it has pig in it.” Niall shook his head and kissed me right there in the middle of the aisle. Two little Amish girls in matching dresses, their hair in braids, giggled.

  It was a great day, and I didn’t want to ruin it, but I was ten minutes from my mother’s house by the time we’d done everything Niall had planned for the day. When I asked him if he’d mind stopping by, he laughed and shook his head. I laughed, too, but without much humor.

  “You’re taking me home to meet Mom?” he asked.

  “You’ve met her already. You know what you’re getting into. I just thought it would be nice of me.” I made a face. “She’s kind of a pain in the ass, but...she’s alone.”

  Niall reached across the center console to take my hand. “Yeah. I get it. My mom’s alone, too, which is why I feel like I have to spend so much time doing stuff for her. I keep trying to get her to move closer, but she says she’s been in her house for forty years, and she’s not about to leave it. I know she’d be fine, she’s capable of doing stuff for herself, but since I’m an only child and she lost my dad...”

  “You like to make sure she’s taken care of.” He was talking about his mother. I was thinking of how he acted with me. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I like that about you.”

  He looked pleased. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” I leaned to kiss him. “You’re a good man.”

  So we went to see my mother, who opened the door and scolded me for not calling her first so she could put on something other than her housedress. Never mind that my mother’s housedress came complete with matching earrings, bracelet and shoes, or that she was expertly made up even for an afternoon alone at home. She offered us both coffee cake, though, which meant she wasn’t too pissed off. When my mother is really mad, she withholds food.

  “So, he’s very nice,” she said in a low voice when Niall excused himself to use the restroom. “He works with Evan, no?”

  “Yep. He was at the Bar Mitzvah. You met him there.”

  “I thought he looked familiar. I knew it. He’s the one who forgot to wear a yarmulke.”

  I had no idea if that were true, but I sighed. “Could be.”

  “He’s not Jewish,” my mother said.

  “No, Ma. He’s not.”

  “Well,” she said with a sigh and a wave of her hand as she lit a cigarette. “I tried to set you up with Myra Goldberg’s son who’s a doctor, but you’re going to do what you do.”

  “You just said he was very nice!” I reached for one of her cigarettes, but she slapped my hand. I didn’t really want one. I was just seeing what she’d do.

  “He can be very nice all he wants.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We’re just dating. We’re not even serious.”

  “You brought him over to meet me,” my mother said. “That’s pretty serious.”

  “He’s already met you. I figured you