Page 33 of XOXO, Yours

Halfway home, sitting at the blinking yellow light in Limestone with nobody coming from any direction, I text her.

Me: Home safe. Well, almost.

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

Jules: I didn't ask.

I grin at the phone and put the truck in gear. Before I can pull through, it buzzes one more time.

Jules: …good.

I sit at that yellow light a long time, staring at one word with an ellipsis in front of it.

chapter

fourteen

Jules

Six weeks later, I have learned several important things about Payton Blankenship.

One, he is extremely good in bed.

Two, he takes direction well, which is an underrated quality in a man.

Three, he has apparently never met a household repair he can ignore.

And four, he does not understand the generally accepted parameters of a booty call.

We have an arrangement. A casual, mutually beneficial, extremely naked arrangement.

It works.

I text him. He comes over.

There are no dates. There are no expectations. There is absolutely no emotional attachment.

There is, however, a new garbage disposal under my kitchen sink. I told him not to fix it.

He said the noise it was making was bothering him.

I pointed out that he didn't live here.

He said, "Exactly. Imagine how bad it must be if it's bothering me."

And a junk drawer slowly filling up with receipts and sticky notes signed —P that I am absolutely going to throw away. Any day now.

The man also has an irritating habit of staying after the sex is over. Talking. Laughing. Lying on my couch with his enormous bare feet propped on my coffee table while he tells me stories about his siblings.

I've had to kick him out twice.

Three times if we're counting the night he fell asleep during a movie.

Which I don't.

Because he wasn't technically spending the night. He was unconscious for twenty-three minutes.

There's a difference.