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Chapter 11
She was wearing a dress again. And it was a fucking problem.
The dress was yellow, printed with white flowers that had long green stems. The short sleeves touched just above her elbows, and the little white buttons up the front holding it together were nothing short of a tease. All things considered, the dress was pretty, but unassuming. It didn’t show any cleavage and was too loose fitting to allow him to make out the shape of her body. Even the coloring was more sweet than tantalizing. But he was so thirsty it might as well have been lingerie.
The neckline displayed a collarbone that made his tongue heavy with the need to lick. The hemline fell about mid-thigh, longer than the shorts she’d worn last week. But every time she moved or shifted, it adjusted with her, revealing supple brown skin that made other parts of him feel heavy. Aja was a vision, from the braids that cascaded over her shoulder to the white toenails peeking out of her sandals.
Walker hadn’t known he had so much restraint until he’d met her. He was also positive he had never experienced true desperation before either. And fuck, did he feel desperate. Every time he laid eyes on her, he felt desperate to touch and taste and hold. Those were dangerous things to feel desperate for. Especially when he was trying to keep from making a mess out of things by catching feelings for a woman he couldn’t be with.
But he would have given anything to run the tip of his nose along that exposed neck, smelling her perfume at the source instead of in the air. She was sitting next to him again, close enough that their thighs were only about an inch apart. They hadn’t spoken much before they’d come in; after the phone call there was an awkwardness even more potent than their first meeting. Nothing had happened during the call. Nothing untoward or explicit had been said, but the energy had been there. Clear as day as it lit up behind his eyelids. And it was still there, making the hair on his forearms stand on end every time some part of their bodies accidentally brushed.
“I’m finally getting’ the hang of this,” he whispered to her, purple dauber hovering over his sheets.
“Don’t get too cocky too soon,” Aja joked. “You’ll call a false bingo, and you’ll never live it down.”
“The thought keeps me up at night.”
She kept her face forward, but her grin made his throat tight. This Monday was even more sparse than the last. There were only about fifteen other people in the hall. The room was so quiet that he and Aja had been keeping their talking to a minimum because it felt more polite. Walker didn’t like that they’d already been there for over an hour and had barely had a full conversation. Being so close but not talking made him anxious and unsettled. If he was going to push down his growing feelings and keep things between them uncomplicated, he needed something. The sweet sound of her voice was his reward for being a good boy. Without it, he was barely hanging on.
“You want to get out of here early?” He was almost surprised at his boldness. “We could grab a bite… maybe at a place where the waitress won’t make me have a fuckin’ emotional breakdown.”
He got caught up in the heaviness of her long eyelashes when she looked at him. “I can’t stay out too late. I have work to do in the morning.”
“Swear I’ll have you home at a reasonable hour. More than enough time to get all the beauty sleep you need.”
She pursed her lips and looked at him like she didn’t believe him but nodded. “All right. I guess I can let you buy me dinner again.”
In his triumph, Walker silently remarked that he would buy her dinner every night if she’d just keep those eyes on him for a little longer.
It wasn’t until he turned back to his sheets that he noticed he was one square away from a diagonal bingo.
“Wait…” His heart rate increased immediately. This was the closest he’d ever been to having a bingo. He still didn’t expect to get one, but he hadn’t expected that being so near the possibility would have him this excited. If someone had come to him a few weeks ago and told him that the spike of adrenaline he’d get over possibly winning bingo would rival seeing the Braves in the World Series, he would have told them to go fuck themselves. But here he was, suddenly less concerned with leaving, his fingers tight around a dauber, forehead dotted with sweat as he listened intently to the balls being called.
“What’s wrong?” Aja whispered, the lines in her forehead deepening. Walker shook his head and swallowed, his tongue unable to form words.
When it came, his head tilted back to control the rush. Mrs. Schofield’s voice was as relaxed as ever. That slow, steady drawl called out “G46—up to tricks,” sending Walker out of his chair and up into the air.
“Bingo!” His voice was so loud that everyone in the hall turned to look at him. “I have a bingo.” He felt the need to repeat it, to confirm it for himself.
“Oh my God,” he heard Aja breathe softly. “Oh my God.”
The grin he threw her way felt unhinged.
He sat down when he saw one of the attendants approaching him. Once the man was behind him, looking down at his sheets, Walker found that his hands were shaking.
“Show me.” The man’s voice held a seriousness that would have been more in place behind the judge’s bench in a courthouse.
Walker pointed his finger along the line of numbers.
“B13, I36, N4, G46, O92,” the man read off the numbers, cross-checking them with the numbers that had been called over the course of the game. Then, he nodded his head once. “That’s a bingo.”
The confirmation sent Walker soaring. He had to hold himself back from jumping out of his seat, stripping his shirt off, and running around the room, waving it like a flag. On the inside, he was pumped, fists waving, face contorted in happiness. On the outside, he schooled his features enough to give the man a wide smile and a firm nod.
Then, within moments of the man handing him a paper of proof so he could claim his money, everything was back to normal. For everyone else at least. His heart still thundered, his cheeks stayed flushed. Goddamn. He finally realized why people did this—subjected themselves to the flat voices of disinterested bingo callers calling out a truly mind-numbing string of numbers and letters for hours on end. Winning felt incredible. If the feeling could be bottled, he would be first in line to shell out cash for it. He understood now why gambling was so dangerous for so many people. If this was how he was over a small win in small-town bingo, he couldn’t imagine how he’d be after a winning streak at the craps table.
When he finally got his breath back, he looked at Aja. Her eyes were on him, like she’d just been waiting for him to get himself together and turn to her before anyone else.
“Congratulations, Walker.” It was a genuine compliment, he could tell.
