“Are you stalking me?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips.
“No, you’re walking by the inn and I just left,” she said. “Get in so Mrs. Petersen doesn’t see you. She likes to hit the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings and it’s right around the corner.”
I sighed, but did as she said, walking over to the passenger side of her little sedan and climbing in. I immediately wrinkled my nose.
“You smell like…” I started, trailing off.
She gave me a mild smile. “Threesome?”
“You are truly ridiculous.”
“Oh baby,” she said. “I’m not the one who hooked up with my student’s hot older dad, am I? Glass houses and all that. Or should I say glassclassroom…”
I shoved her gently, laughing despite myself. “You’re a horrible influence.”
“I was helpful,” she said. “You clearly wanted to have crazy good sex with Garrison Nash. I facilitated the crazy good sex by being a meddling pain in the ass.”
“Why do I feel like this isn’t the first time?”
She grinned. “Meddling pain in the ass just happened to be my nickname in high school.”
“Somehow that does not surprise me,” I said.
“It shouldn’t.” She pulled away from the curb, heading toward my apartment. It was only maybe a five-minute drive…but I was her captive now. “So—tell me everything. I meant that.”
I bit my lip. “Well…it was good.”
“Wow, descriptive.”
I rolled my eyes. “Really good.”
“I stand by what I said before.”
“Okay.” I took a long inhale. “Well…I asked him to put a baby in me.”
“Ooh…breeding kink, Ilike it,” she said. “I knew you were a freak at heart?—”
“Then we had sex without a condom,” I went on.
Delia stopped oohing and aahing over it. Looked at me.
I looked back at her. “Then we talked. And he said he was going to spend the weekend um…spend the weekend making sure I get knocked up? And said he would stay, and made sure I actually wanted this?—”
“And you do want it, right?” Delia asked.
We were parked in front of my building now, the car still running. I looked up at my apartment…realized I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to go back to Nash, but we still needed to figure out what we were going to say to Nell.
“Do you need coffee?” I asked Delia. “I need more coffee.”
“God, yes,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She turned off the car and we went up to my apartment—a little two bedroom upstairs from the landlord’s place just off Main. I put my bag down and went straight to the coffee pot while Delia looked around, taking in the houseplants and the old furniture and the bookshelves full of kids’ books I’d collected over the years.
“Your place is just as adorable as I expected,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”
“No, it really is.” She pulled one of my kids’ books off the shelf—The Very Hungry Caterpillar—and held it up. “You’ve been ready for this for a long time, haven’t you?”
