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“What just happened?” I croaked.
“I distracted you,” he called over his shoulder.
“My balls hurt,” I called back. “They’ve never worked this hard in their lives,” I muttered under my breath.
Jack came back in the room with a white washcloth in his hands and a shit-eating grin on his face. “That’s one of your advanced lessons. Testing the limits of your body to know what you’re capable of. Also, taking advantage of your youth while you still have it.”
He leaned in to wash me off with gentle caresses even though there wasn’t much to clean up since he’d swallowed it all. I wasn’t complaining.
“You seem to be keeping up just fine and you’re ten years older than I am,” I reminded him.
“I’ve been training for this for years, rookie.”
I hated thinking of him with other men, but I knew it was a fact of life. And, hell, he wouldn’t have answered my ad if he wasn’t the kind of guy out there looking for random hookups.
“So, how does that work, exactly?” I asked.
“How does what work? Training for marathon sex weeks?” He laughed and moved us both under the covers until I was pressed up against his side with my head on his shoulder. It was my new favorite thing. It made me feel like I had an actual boyfriend, and I refused to feel like that little dream of mine made me pathetic.
“No, I mean… like… hookups. Finding someone on an app and arranging to have sex. Do you…” I trailed off as I thought about how to word what I wanted to ask.
Jack rubbed my back. “You can ask me anything, Tee. It’s okay.”
“I don’t know where to start. Like, how do you know who you can trust? And how do you greet them at the door? Do they want to kiss or just… get right down to business? If you’re not trying to get to know each other like a date, is it more like a game of pickup basketball where you just sort of nod and fist-bump the stranger and then get down to it?”
I could tell he was biting his tongue against a laugh, but he still took my questions seriously. As he began to describe what it was like to hook up with a stranger, my stomach dropped into this mucky green jealousy place I didn’t like.
“Never mind,” I blurted. “Not… no. I mean, no. I changed my mind. I don’t…” I shook my head. “Sorry. I don’t think that’s for me anyway, so it’s not something we need to talk about.”
He leaned his head back to look at me and then tipped my chin up with his fingers to make me meet his eye. “Does the idea scare you?”
“It’s not that. I’m just, um, tired. You wore me out. And I’m nervous about tomorrow. And now I’m rambling, but I really don’t want to talk about it anymore anyway. We could always see what’s on TV or you can play your word games on your phone while I doze and drool all over your pecs.”
Jack’s warm fingers traced down the side of my face to my jawline. It was such a tender gesture, so at odds with the man who claimed to prefer anonymous sex to emotional entanglements. I wanted to punch those men in his past who’d hurt him. But then again, I wanted to hug the poor guy who’d proposed. I thought maybe I’d never be able to recover from such a horrible disappointment. Imagining you had a future with someone like Jack Snyder and then having it ripped away from you seemed like the worst kind of heartbreak.
Maybe it was a good thing my future was with Chris instead of someone like Jack. Chris was comfortable and predictable. I knew him like I knew myself. The only scary unknown with Chris was wondering when the hell he was going to finally come to his senses and commit.
When it was finally time to fly back to Chicago the following day, my fear of flying overtook all common sense.
“You look like you’re going to vomit,” Jack said in the morning as we packed up our things.
I avoided making eye contact by refolding all of the clothes in my suitcase for the third time. “I’m not the best flyer.”
“Meaning, you’re scared of flying?”
“No. I was scared of flying. Then I actually went up in an airplane and had to emergency land after the engine crapped out. Now I’m utterly terrified of flying.”
There was silence for a moment. “Wait. Teo, are you saying this trip was your first time in an airplane?”
I would have answered him, except my socks weren’t bundled quite right. I went to work correcting the misbehaving pairs.
Jack pulled the socks out of my hand and gently tilted my chin up until I was looking at him. “Tee. Please tell me that wasn’t your first flight.”
