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“Sleep tight.”
“Ungh?”
And he walked away, without even a backwards glance! My eyes glued themselves to his firm ass cheeks beneath his jeans as he strolled slowly down the sidewalk, like he had not a care in the world, and my mouth literally watered. Was actual drool dripping down my chin? He tossed his keys in the air and caught them, and when he was in his truck, he honked twice—two quick beeps—and backed out of the driveway, leaving me with my mouth agape, my jaw on the porch, and my underwear in a wet wad.
* * *
“Skills,” I muttered, shelving books in the contemporary fiction section the next day during my lunch break, pushing my ever-sliding glasses back up the bridge of my nose. I loved my new contacts, but I hadn’t gotten much sleep after that kiss, so my eyes were tired and dry. “I have skills too,” I said to no one. “You think you can just woo me like that and walk away? No.” I laughed at myself. Thank God there wasn’t anyone around “No!”
“Sam?”
“Shit!” I spun on one foot, dropping three hardbacks when my friend Brady’s voice surprised me. I hadn’t even heard the door open, but there he was, chortling because he’d scared me. A hardcover copy of The Bean Trees landed on my big toe, and I hopped up and down in pain. “Owwwuh!”
“What’s up?” Brady pursed his lips, holding back a laugh as I jumped around the library like a capuchin monkey.
My response came out a little more high-pitched than I intended. “Nothing!”
“Uh, okay? Didn’t you hear me come in?”
“Obviously not.” Maybe I needed to get my hearing checked. Or maybe I needed to stop thinking about Frank freaking Sims.
I shook my foot. The pain was a dull throb now. Taking a deep breath, I pulled my hair back, twisting it into a sloppy bun to keep the mess off of my face. Everything about me was a mess today. I found a pencil on my book cart and weaved it through to hold the bun in place, and Brady followed as I pushed the cart to the next aisle. “Sorry. Guess I was in my head.”
“No worries,” he said. “What’s goin’ on? You okay? You look a little flustered.”
“I’m fine. I didn’t sleep very well last night.” More like not at all. My vibrator kept me up till the wee hours. I’d already renamed it Frank. “Everything okay with you?” I asked my lovely friend, realizing I’d missed him something awful. “I haven’t seen you in two weeks. You can’t ghost a girl like that.”
“Sorry.” A sheepish smile grew on his lips. “Theo had his winter break from classes, and it was so nice. We’ve been havin’ a hard time gettin’ back to reality. But break’s over, so eventually, we had to find our way back to real life and, you know, like, go to work.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing for two whole weeks? Canoodling?” The bitterness in my voice gave me away. I was lonely.
Living with my gramps certainly wasn’t doing my social life any favors, but the sadder part was that, with him gone, things were even less exciting. I didn’t even have anyone to go grocery shopping with. Theo and Brady treated grocery shopping like date night, and Juni ordered her groceries online, but I loved the mundaneness of pushing my cart down every aisle, looking at cans and boxes of foods I never ate. I had been on a steady diet of microwaveable mac ’n’ cheese, potato chips, and peanut butter sandwiches since Gramps left for Florida. Plus, at the grocery store, I could people watch. I liked to guess in my head what their lives were like. It was a leftover byproduct of being a lonely kid. Luckily, the Food Mart was only four blocks from Gramps’s house.
It made me realize how much I depended on Theo and Brady. They’d become like family, but they were probably getting weary of me trying to inject myself into their lives like a squeaky, pink-haired third wheel.
“Sorry, Sam. I missed you, too, but it’s different now, you know?”
“I know, and I’m happy you guys have each other. Really, I am, but I’m… lonely.” My shoulders dropped, and I didn’t like the weak way I felt when I said it out loud. Sadly, as an only child who traveled with her parents most of my life, it was kind of my status quo. Why couldn’t I find my person, like Brady had Theo?
Why couldn’t I have my own happy ever after? Truthfully, I was still waiting to wake up magically pregnant on some not-so-distant morning, even though no less than four doctors had told me it wasn’t possible.
Brady scootched a stray strand of my hair behind my ear. “Hm. Well, that’s a peculiar thing for you to say since you went on a date last night. I have it on good authority from five different sources that you looked like you were havin’ a good time.” His judgy eyebrow shot up. “So how was it?”
“Oh, mm,” I hummed as I turned back to my cart, pretending to search for a book, but I knew where every single book in the library was, and Brady knew that I knew it too.
“C’mon. This is more than a year in the makin’. Spill. Was it fun? How’d you and the hot deputy get along?”
“It’s not going to work out,” I said, fitting the toe-breaking book in with the rest of the Barbara Kingsolvers on the shelf in front of me.
“Why not? You don’t like him?”
I sighed and turned around, a careful look on my face. “Did you know he’s almost forty-nine?” And he still wants kids.
“Forty-nine? Seriously? I mean, I knew he was a silver fox, but I didn’t think he was that old.”
“And did you know there’s a whole sub-genre of romance books dedicated to silver foxes and younger women?” I rolled my eyes at myself. Was that what I had become? A kinky romance genre? “Anyway, I suppose it’s not the end of the world. And he is really sexy. He’s really nice too.” I could feel my eyes drifting to the side, could hear the dreamy lilt beginning to take over my voice. “He holds chairs and doors for me, makes sure I’m warm and fed…” I jerked myself back to reality. “But what could he want with me? I’m nineteen years younger than him. I mean, he could be my—”
Oh, no, no. The thought flitted through my head again, but we were so not going there. I was not about to get all Britney Spears up in here. And I was not ever going to call Frank “Daddy.”
