The next dayafter I closed the diner, I visited Aunt Mabel at the rehab facility in the neighboring town. “It took me ten minutes to figure out how to put the new register tape in,” I said with a sad shake of my head. Everything at the diner seemed extra hard for me. Keeping orders straight. Remembering drinks. Refills. To go boxes.
I was a lawyer. It shouldn’t be that hard for me, but it was.
She was using a walker, but her pace was good. She wasn’t favoring her new hip as much as the other day when I stopped in last.
“Earl says hi and misses you,” I added as I walked beside her down the hall.
She looked at me and smiled. Her gray hair was a little tousled, but still stylish as it brushed her jaw. She had on a pretty green sweatsuit and sneakers.
She was sixty-five and healthy. It was the hip and the physical therapy she needed for it that had her in here. Her motivation to get back to her full and busy life was what had her walking the halls.
“He’s a sweet man.”
“I heard from the plumber–he’s a friend of Buck Wilder’s–and it’s going to take a week for the basement to air out, since we can’t open the windows in this cold. He’ll patch the pipe to the hot water heater but thinks both it and the furnace should be replaced.”
She nodded. “Yes, Curtis called me and gave me that update. Plus, he had Vince, the HVAC guy, reach out to me with furnace options. Said it would be ten days.”
“Ten days?” I asked, wide eyed.
She grinned. “Think you can stay with Buck Wilder all that time?”
I flushed. Hard.
After he’d made me come–okay, he’d finger fucked me to orgasm–he’d cut the twine on the haybales, then spread it for the cattle. By the time he’d dumped out a long line of it, the cattle had moseyed over and started to eat.
Then I’d driven the tractor back to the barn. He’d made dinner–a chicken dish that’d been in his slow cooker all day–then watched football sprawled on his couch in front of the fireplace.
When it was time for bed, he’d given me one of his flannels and told me it looked better on me as he adjusted his dick in his jeans.
Instead of having sex like I wanted, he’d kissed me and pulled me into his arms. Then we talked. Beneath his cozy down comforter and my head tucked against his shoulder, I couldn’t remember feeling so safe. Protected. Wanted.
When I talked about my life in New York, he heard me. And listened.
I shared about my job. My parents. How I liked yoga and hated sweet potatoes. I learned he was twenty-five. The third youngest Wilder kid. The one who rode a horse and a tractor before he knew how to ride a bike. That his favorite meal was enchiladas and that he liked cinnamon toothpaste. We talked for hours, like it was easy. Like it was natural.
Like being in Buck’s arms, in his bed, was the most natural thing in the world.
What guy would hold off on sex like this?
I was a sure thing. I’d literally begged for it in the tractor like a dick-starved hussy.
Any guy… probably any guy in the world besides Buck would have let me ride his dick in the tractor. Then left. Gotten what he wanted from me and bailed.
Buck wasn’t having sex with me because I hadn’t committed to everything he wanted. I had no doubt that he wanted sex with me, but he wanted everything else with me more. He wanted it all.
To share our thoughts and feelings. Work the land with him. Eat a meal he prepared. Savor a quiet night on the couch. Tangled together in bed.
He was showing me what our life could be if I just said yes.
He wanted me. Watched him come in the tractor. I felt him hard and thick beneath his boxers all night in bed.
Before dawn even brightened the sky, he’d brought me into town since I’d left my car the day before at Aunt Mabel’s house. There, I’d changed my clothes, then drove to the diner. Buck followed, then honked and drove off once I was inside with Joe, who arrived early to make the baked goods.
I was afraid to admit it, but I missed him. It’dbeen nine hours and I wanted to see him. To feel that dark, heated gaze on me. His beard on my neck. His voice murmuringgood girlin my ear.
“Speaking of sweet men,” she added, cutting through my thoughts.
“Buck? Sweet?” I countered.
