Page 13 of Succubus

“Obviously not.” I put a kiss on my fingers, press them to the screen over his forehead. “Love you.”

I hang up and strip off my shirt and my sweat-stained tan sports bra, which is the only bra I currently own. I stand in front of the closet door mirror tugging on a shapeless T-shirt that says EMPOWERED BIRTHING SUMMIT. That was a good conference. I look at myself for a second. There are two creases between my eyebrows, as though I’ve made a puzzled expression too many times and now it’s stuck. A face that can’t seem to figure things out. I pull my hair back and my scalp shows in ominous little strips. I look faded. How much is natural aging and how much is the curse? Imagine asking a doctor that question.

I imagine the doctor instead. He’s unbuttoning his shirt.

Maybe I don’t actually feel okay about the way I look anymore. Suddenly I want to be better looking. To be beautiful. Suddenly I want too much, too many things I can’t have.

CHAPTER 5

I walk the leftover daffodil bulbs to Joel’s, pretending I’m a good neighbor. It’s Saturday, and Dee has taken Ella to the library with the goal of interesting her in any early-reader book that isn’t Libby and the Garden Gate, a short and soothingly uneventful story that is so far the only book Ella will open.

Joel probably won’t even be home.

But he’s getting out of his car, and it’s like I willed him to appear at this exact moment, wearing cornily sexy green scrubs like we’re in a porn scene.

“Tempest!” he says, happy.

Black-eyed Susans bloom in a yellow riot at the weedy border of his property, spilling over from a neighbor’s pollinator habitat garden. The maples that line the street are an undecided mix of green and yellow.

I command myself with desperate ferocity not to let my gaze move from Joel’s face. Although on second thought, his face is maybe the most dangerous place to leave my eyes unchaperoned.

“I was just going to drop these. . . .” I start weakly, making a motion toward doing that.

“Hold on.” He’s suddenly right there, taking the basket from me. “Do you have a minute? Their lives may depend on it.”

I don’t mean to smile, and then I don’t mean to watch his mouth smile back.

“Just give me a second to change,” he says, and he disappears inside.

I wait on the front path, feeling oddly exposed without Ella. A child like a shield. Me, a terrorist. I’ve never been tempted like this. Even Adam was still a choice. This feels more like an addiction, and I’m a sudden junkie, risking everything, Joel’s life included, just to spend a few more seconds in his presence.

What is it about him?

Everything, my brain tells me. Even though I don’t know him at all. I don’t even know what everything is.

And then he’s back, now in adorable sweatpants and a green henley shirt that agrees enthusiastically with at least one of the colors in his eyes. He’s close to me as we walk around the back of the house together, cheerful and unfazed by our abrupt and colossal aloneness, and I breathe shallowly, trying not to take in too much of his scent, trying to memorize it: that clean, sun-soaked black-tea musk.

It’s a cool, overcast day and the air is soft with moisture. The pine tree by the fence has a moody northern look. There isn’t much of a secret to planting the bulbs. Just digging (he finds a spade) and patting the earth down, then watering. I like that he doesn’t care about kneeling on the ground, getting soil on his knees and under his nails. His arm ends up very near mine once or twice, and the sun slips out to get in his hair like it’s also obsessed and can’t keep its rays off him.

I try to evaluate the situation clinically: Is his neck objectively attractive? What about his chin, with that hint of a scar, maybe from teenage acne? Why is he still single? He’s too good-natured and successful—what’s the catch? He might be a sociopath. They’re supposed to be really likable at first. He might have a gambling problem. He has a weird fetish? No guessing! I command myself. He’s a dom, I can see it. Mmm. Friendly and gentle in public, relentless control in bed.

“. . . zucchini?” he’s saying, and I scramble to catch up to the conversation. “And then I’m pretty much homesteading,” he finishes, gesturing around his little yard with the weatherworn blue shed and slightly shaggy grass. “Off the grid.”

I smile. “You realize these will grow flowers, not food, right? You’re going to be pretty hungry over the winter.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just make a bow and arrows out of . . .” He points vaguely toward the house, maybe at one of the neglected-looking chairs on the modest stone patio.

“The cello?” I suggest.

He shrugs, cutely feigning macho indifference. “If it comes to that. Gotta hunt.”

“You seem like you could bring down . . . an elk.” Shit, am I blatantly flirting now? Does anyone mention elk while flirting? “Or at least, I don’t know, a raccoon.”

“I don’t want to brag,” he says. “But you probably haven’t seen a lot of raccoons around here.”

I stifle a laugh, trying to stay deadpan. “Well, it’s also daytime.” I fight a wince. Hanging out constantly with a seven-year-old can make a person annoyingly literal.

“Well, yeah. But come back any night.”