Yes. I have a massive crush on a woman with a Ph.D., so I need a degree, a job and a place to live in Seattle. Please admit me. So I can get laid.
Chapter 13
November, Bethesda, Maryland
November wasn’t April, butpulling through the Walter Reed gate filled Grace with déjà vu. This time her stomach fluttered with a different question: Was she going to sleep with Rey? Assuming that like her he wanted to be more than friends, the answer was yes, but she was uncertain how to navigate the change in the terms of their relationship. Nearly ten days of cross-country driving stretched before her, the result of texts from three weeks ago. She’d read the messages a half-dozen times as she debated whether to pack lingerie or her pink flannels printed with Space Needles and cartoon salmon.
Rey
I’m moving home.
What?
Rey
Army doesn’t have a use for me, so home it is for this apple boy.
Mamá is doing okay, but she’s not well enough for the drive. Haven’t decided how to move my car.
Can’t the army ship it?
Rey
My truck’s going with my household goods because I don’t know if I can get in and out of the cab. They only ship one vehicle.
Know how to handle a manual transmission?
No.
Rey
Want to learn?
By answering, she’d been netted. Or maybe she’d been caught when they’d exchanged pictures from their bunks, or the night she’d confronted her sister at karaoke, or as far back as the kisses seven months ago. While finalizing the outline of the trip, neither of them had mentioned hotel rooms. Winter on the northern plains didn’t seem appropriate for see-through nightwear, so she’d packed for her own warmth instead of for an awkward seduction.
Yet somehow the higher she ventured into Tranquility Hall looking for Rey’s suite, the closer she knew she came to showing off the salmon PJs.
Rey’s propped door invited visitors. Game consoles littered the coffee table behind the chair where he sat, his gaze fixed on the phone she’d sent him in April.
She took the instant to absorb the breadth of his shoulders and chest, his dark hair and intense focus. Below the hem of his long shorts, two different black Terminator limbs both ended in shiny tubes stuck into a pair of black high tops. The odd note wasn’t his prosthetics, but how normal they looked to her after months of discussing his therapy.
He raised his face, and the smile when he saw her made her last flicker of what-the-hell-am-I-doing retreat. Then he stood. It looked as simple as pushing on a slim red cane to lift himself, but she knew the thousands of crunches and lifts and stretches he’d committed to build muscle and balance. Standing, his khaki cargo shorts hung at the perfect spot to emphasize his flat stomach. The black knit shirt looked soft to the touch, although the way it molded his chest and biceps showed that only the fabric would be yielding.
His grin tipped her that he’d caught her checking him out. “Grace.” He said her name one beat slower than others said it, like a soft stroke on the nape of her neck.
“Rey.” Right then her bra straps tightened until she couldn’t breathe. She planned to spend a week with him in a car, but suddenly the reason she felt nervous wasn’t the reason why she should. “Hi.”
“Hi back.” The low words made her shiver inside her cashmere turtleneck.
She didn’t have time to reply. Two steps, three, a half-dozen to reach her and then he dropped his cane, wrapped her in his armsand kissed her. His body was rock hard and months of thinking about him had primed her to melt on contact with his lips.
“Grace.” His chest vibrated against hers, more an awareness of him speaking than actually hearing words, because her head had filled with a hum of pleasure.
She might have swayed, then she understood the room wasn’t dark and opened her eyes.
He loosened his hold as she rebalanced. “Okay?” His voice rose.
“Oh, yes. I mean, well.” She couldn’t babble by herself, yet reality was the contradiction between the man in front of her who struggled with words and the man who wrote to her. Easiest way to reconcile the two was probably the oldest, so she grabbed his shoulders and lifted to her toes to press her mouth to his. She’d spent too many nights alone with a pillow, when this hard body was what she yearned for. Until now she hadn’t considered his height, but they fit the way a man and woman should.
