Page 100 of The Golden Scoop

“Sounds too good to pass up,” I say.

We untangle ourselves from the sheets—and each other—and head to the kitchen as if we’ve done this a thousand times before. Matt’s in his underwear. I’m wearing one of his T-shirts which on me looks less like clothing and more like a failed attempt at a grungy dress.

I sit on one of the stools and watch as he pulls out all the ingredients necessary to make my coffee exactly how I like it, down to the oat milk.

“Why am I not surprised?” I ask, as the smell of fresh brew fills the space.

“I had to be prepared,” he says proudly. “You never know.”

We take breakfast out to the terrace overlooking the hills. Morning sunlight spills over the rocky mountains, turning everything hazy. Somewhere below the city hums awake. But here it’s quieter. I can actually hear birds chirp.

Once I finish chugging down my coffee like the addict I am, I curl into Matt’s side. He opens his arms for me and my heart clenches at how automatic the gesture is.

Then, as I taste the last drops on my tongue, I remember something he’s said a couple of times over the past few weeks. My coffee order in his fridge just about confirms my current suspicions.

“Hey.” I sit up, turning to him and crossing my legs. “You know how you said you haven’t dated for almost two years?”

“Ask away,” he says with a grin. “I know you’re dying to dig deep and uncover all the juicy details.”

“Did it have anything to do with me?”

For all I know, maybe I’m romanticizing things because I had life-altering sex with panoramic views.

“It did,” he confirms, sheepishly.

“Why? We hated each other. It should’ve had the opposite effect.”

“You hated me,” he clarifies. “I bickered because it was the only way to get a reaction out of you.”

“You just waited?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.

Matt laughs. “I didn’t wait. That makes me sound like a creep,” he says. His cheeks flush enough for me to notice. My heart clenches. “Waiting would mean I thought it was actually going to happen… I tried going on a date once after I met you. It was bad.”

“How bad? Stinky breath and catfished, or you-crashing-my-date-with-Tom bad?”

He closes his eyes. “Not my finest moment,” he groans.

“Answer my question, sir.”

“If you call me that too much, I might start liking it.”

“Matthew!”

I throw a pillow at him. He catches it before it hits his face, then hugs it against his chest as if he needs a shield from his honesty.

“She wasn’t you, Emma.”

My mouth parts. His voice drops low and steady, stripped of every trace of teasing. He reaches out and laces our fingers together.

“It was almost like nothing else could hold my interest long enough,” he admits. “Then you’d start talking about random things, like whatever you’d found at the market that week, and I was done for.”

A small smile pulls at his mouth. “I think in a life as fake as mine, having you in it—someone so unapologetically real—felt like finding water in a desert.”

Suddenly I’m free-falling through his honesty, the only thing grounding me the feeling of his fingers threaded through mine. My brain’s gone on strike. Too many future-deciding statements in too short a timeframe. It’s not willing to process any of them.

Matt reads every bit of panic across my face, but he doesn’t back off. If anything, he softens.

“I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time wanting to fight men I don’t even know,” he confesses. “How could they not realize what they had? At one point, I almost had Harrison convinced to do a drive-by with me.”