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“We skipped a few steps. No big deal. We’re just overachievers. Tell me your number and I’ll text you mine.”
“You turned off my phone and threw it on top of the cabinet.”
“Okay,” he said. “Well, then, I guess I’ll be back tonight and you can’t change your mind.”
“Not planning on it. But here’s my number, anyway. If I know me, and I do, I’ll get my phone back before you’ve made it to Welches.”
She told him her number and he programmed it in his phone.
“I just sent you a text message that is nothing but the penis emoji.”
“There’s a penis emoji?”
“It’s actually an eggplant but it’s the best we have. Now we’re caught up,” he said. “I have your number and you have mine. We have plans for this evening. We are doing great at being a very healthy fake couple. You have a great day, and I’ll see you tonight. Preferably naked.”
He kissed her on the mouth and she was surprised by how quickly the kiss ended. It was a goodbye kiss, a simple one, and she liked it. Why did she like such a quick kiss? she wondered. Erick got into his truck and pulled out of her driveway. Because it made her feel like a real girlfriend, being kissed like that. That’s how her parents kissed good-night when one was heading to bed before the other. It’s how her brother, Hunter, kissed his wife goodbye before he left for work. It was a quick kiss because real couples could do that sort of thing and they could do that sort of thing because they knew they’d be together again soon and then they could kiss as long and as hard as they wanted.
Real couples kissed like that. But she and Erick weren’t a real couple. He’d even called them a “fake couple.” A “healthy fake couple” but still a fake couple. Yesterday she would have been fine with that. Yesterday she’d never had sex. Yesterday already felt like a million years ago.
This week just kept getting more and more complicated. Not only did she have to host her family for Thanksgiving and decide if she would sell her business, now she had a much more pressing engagement for this week—she had to figure out how to turn Erick from a fake boyfriend into a real boyfriend.
But not to make her parents happy and not to shut her siblings up, but for one reason and one reason only.
The man was so damn sexy.
7
ERICK PUT IT off all morning, all afternoon and almost all evening. He was back at his own house in his own bedroom and looking at a picture of his twenty-one-year-old self holding two-hour-old Ruthie in his arms at the hospital. What was he thinking having a child at twenty-one? Twenty-one was seventeen plus four which meant in four years if Ruthie followed in his footsteps, he could be a grandfather.
Horrible thought. He still felt like that kid in the picture holding that red-faced, squalling baby most days. Especially since Ruthie still looked like that when he got on her bad side. But he hadn’t been lying to Clover. Ruthie really was the best thing that ever happened to him. And as much as that girl loved Clover, he had to do it. He had to bite the bullet, face the music and pay the piper all at once.
He had to call his daughter and tell her that he and Clover were sort of dating. No, not dating. They were “going out on a couple dates.” That was better. Dating sounded serious. He didn’t want Ruthie getting her hopes up that this was going somewhere. That would be bad, right? Getting her hopes up? Clover was amazing—hardworking, smart, beautiful. So beautiful. Especially when she was naked and splayed out underneath him with her head thrown back in ecstasy and...
Wait. Maybe he wasn’t worried about Ruthie getting her hopes up about them. Maybe he was worried about getting his hopes up about them. They’d only spent the one night together, but God, what a night. He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around being the first man to ever have sex with Clover. It didn’t bother him—the opposite, really. He couldn’t help but feel a little bit honored that she’d picked him for the job. He didn’t know what he’d done to earn her trust
and her body, but whatever it was, he wished she’d tell him so he could keep doing it.
Of course, he could hear Ruthie’s voice in his head telling him he should never judge a woman’s worth by her sexual history, that the concepts of sexual purity and virginity were outmoded views that reinforced a toxic patriarchy in America that sought to police women and their bodies. And while he agreed with her because he knew what was good for him—and also because she made a good point—he still couldn’t quite wipe the stupid grin off his face every time he thought about being Clover’s first. It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with him feeling like he’d been paid a very high compliment.
Not that he would tell Ruthie any of that. They were close when he wasn’t threatening to lock her in her room for all eternity if she set another factory farm on fire, but he wasn’t about to discuss his sex life with his daughter. Oh, hell, no. He knew his daughter too well. She might do something horrible like try talking about her own relationship with her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Ryo, who was back in Japan this semester, which meant Ruthie’s phone bill was getting bigger than her paychecks. He should probably mention that to her when he called her. Daring to put a price tag on love would distract Ruthie from the news that he was dating Clover and might keep her from asking questions he didn’t want to answer.
He called his ex-wife’s house number and Ruthie picked up.
“Hello, this is the Technology Police. No one uses landlines anymore,” Ruthie said in her usual dry deadpan voice. “Please hang up and call a cell phone like a normal person.”
“This is your father speaking. You should know already I’m not a normal person.”
“Pops, what is it? What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Watching Evan play World of Warcraft,” she said. Evan was her ten-year-old stepbrother, and while Ruthie had found it supremely disgusting when her mother had gotten pregnant eleven years ago, she’d apparently gotten over her disgust enough to actually enjoy spending time with her baby brother. Not that she’d admit to it. “He’s so good at it and it’s so fascinating to watch, please kill me.”
“I sent you your phone today. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
“Okay, don’t kill me. Just put me in a coma until tomorrow.”
“It’s your own fault for leaving your phone behind. And really unlike you.”
