AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A guy steering clear of emotional entanglements would have inserted a “Cool” there effortlessly. Instead, sitting under a gnarled tree, I went the other direction, because I couldn’t not ask. “Old boyfriend?”
“Yeah. I mean, he never hit me with a camera or anything else. He wasn’t violent or abusive.”
“Just an asshole?”
“Just... absent.” She let the word hang for a few moments, and I heard thetik tik tikof her turn signal. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I wanted to apologize because it was actually very noble that you wanted to set him straight. I think coming to my rescue, however unnecessary, is above the call of duty for a sex buddy.”
“Are we buddies now?”
“You know what I mean.”
It bothered me that it rankled how she hadn’t answered the question. “Just so you know, I would have confronted him if he treated any person I was working with that way. I wasn’t trying to save you.” Except, I kind of was, if I was honest with myself. I would have told the guy off if he was a jerk to the other officiants I worked with, but I wasn’t sure I’d threaten a fistfight if he got in Father Dominic’s or Judge Cooper’s way.
“That’s really all I wanted to say. You deserved an apology and it felt like a cop-out to text it.”
I racked my brain for something to add to keep her on the phone. “You’re forgiven. I mean, you don’t need to apologize, but we’re good,” I added, with no better options. “It’s too bad it happened, though,” I blurted when I heard her intake of breath like she was about to say goodbye. I liked hearing her voice in my ear.
“Why?”
“I was looking forward to Friday night. I mean, you’ve been on my mind.” She didn’t respond and I hurried to fill the silence. “Not in a weird way,” I added quickly as a cool breeze blew around me. “Just, you know, we have a good time together.”
I wished I could see her expression. I knew her flirtatious, annoyed, and ready-to-strike expressions, but I didn’t know which one she might be wearing now. “We have a good time,” RJ said finally. “And sometimes you’re on my mind, too.”
The old tree was solid against my back and I relaxed. “More dreams?”
“You’ll never let me forget that, will you?”
I wasn’t forgetting it anytime soon. “Probably not.”
“You’re telling me you haven’t had sex dreams before, Lear?”
“Recently, they’re usually about you.” I didn’t mention the non-dreams, the fantasies of making her laugh or holding her hand thatplagued my thoughts when I wasn’t careful to direct my brain elsewhere.
RJ chuckled, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded breathier. “Good dreams?”
I imagined lowering my lips to the spot on her neck that seemed to always make her let out a small moan, and I felt myself growing hard behind my zipper. “You want me to tell you about them?”
“Yeah, I think I—” She stopped suddenly and a horn blared. “Shit!”
I straightened immediately, my pulse rocketing up at the change in her tone. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Fine, sorry,” she said with a sigh, voice returning to normal.
“What happened?”
She was quiet for a minute while I pictured her in a ditch somewhere. “I got distracted and veered into the other lane.”
I could only blame my dumb response on my body’s still-tense reaction. “Distracted by what?”
“Seriously?” Her tone implied she was giving me a patented RJ look. It was comforting. “The impending phone sex.”
“We weren’t having phone sex,” I said, relaxing against the tree again. “Not yet.”
“Well, I had already skipped ahead to the inevitability of it.”
“Always so impatient,” I chided her, once again picking blades of grass with my free hand. “There’s something to be said for living in the moment.”
“I’ve always lived three steps ahead of the moment, or tried to. When I was a kid, my grandmother would say, ‘Ruthie, you got your feet right here and your head an hour into next Tuesday.’ Always Tuesday.” Her tone was wistful, and I wished I could see her face, the way her features relaxed.
