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I swallowed, wiped my lips, then stood.
“Alan, I have to go.”
I had to get away from him. From this. From me. From being so consistent in my life that it was comforting. I wondered how Alan had sex. With his socks on? Scheduled? Did he count in and out strokes and ensure he was consistent each time? Three minutes of foreplay, thirty-seven missionary-style thrusts and a mediocre orgasm? No sweaty rolling around. No wet spot. God, did he use a dental dam for oral? I wasn’t being all that nice to Alan because… because he was a perfectly nice guy.
I didn’t want nice. I didn’t want to be a dull, boring accountant any longer. I wanted to be a romance writer and I was just… floundering. I wanted fun and excitement and to be kissed because a guy couldn’t resist.
I wanted more than what I was living now.
He stared up at me, a piece of steamed zucchini jabbed onto his fork.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. This isn’t going to work. Good luck with your pickleball. I’m sure your team will destroy the others next week.”
17
DEX
* * *
“What the fuck is going on up there?” Theo asked. “Something about a tree in a house?”
I lay sideways on the couch, a decorative throw pillow propped behind my head. While I was holding the paperback, I hadn’t read more than three pages since Lindy and I got back from her house. That had been two hours ago. In fact, I hadn’t read any of it since running into Lindy the day before.
When Theo called, I was thrilled for the interruption into my insanity. I was remaining on the couch solely because of Mallory’s advice. To let Lindy go on the date and discover I was what she wanted. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but Mallory was a woman and knew Lindy. Two things I wasn’t: female and knowledgeable about my girl.
“Yeah, Lindy’s house got taken out with a tree by a crazy neighbor and a chainsaw. She’s staying with me until it’s fixed.” I stuck my arm out and dropped the neglected paperback on the coffee table.
“Jesus. Mav left a text and said everyone was okay, but something like that usually involves me patching up a few patients.”
He was a trauma surgeon, so he wasn’t joking. Not that he did much of that. Joke. Ever. Out of the four of us, he was the most serious. That said a lot since Mav wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Until he met Bridget, he was a workaholic. Silas worked beside him and wasn’t far behind, but at least he had some work/life boundaries. But in less than two weeks, Mav’s whole perspective changed. He had a different focus now. Bridget and her problems.
He’d told me his focus–probably besides satisfying her with as many orgasms as possible–was to nail the MIT professor who had screwed her over. Now, it was also to get their house back together. Both redirected his time away from James Corp. I had to wonder if Mav would ever go back to his corner office in Denver. He’d probably stay in Hunter Valley and run the James Inn that was under construction if I had my guess. Or retire and have lots of lumberjack-sized babies with nerdy glasses.
“No one was home,” I told him. The thought of Lindy being inside when that tree came down made me feel slightly panicky. That she chose to go to the grocery store then… “The house is in rough shape, but fixable.”
“Good. What’s this I hear about you and Bridget’s sister?”
“You don’t want to know about how they dismantled an entire tree from their house and shoved it all in a woodchipper? I think Mav took photos for the insurance company.”
“You won’t believe how dangerous those fuckers are,” he murmured. I could imagine him rubbing his brow and envisioning all the missing limbs.
“Do you analyze everything you see and hear based on some kind of life threat scale?” I wondered, getting up and heading into the kitchen for a drink. “I mean, how do you even get in a car or get near the shallow end of a pool? What about a hair dryer in a bathroom? Do you freak every time you see me in a pair of skates because those things are fucking sharp.”
“Fuck off, Dex.”
For some reason, his voice was more growl than grump. I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the faucet. “Whoa, dude. You need to get laid. Maude too busy looking at other men’s bunions to be hot for yours?”
His girlfriend was a podiatrist who worked at the same hospital. I’d met her once at a charity event he’d brought her to, but she hadn’t wowed me. That was being generous. She was beautiful in a frosty, stick up the ass kind of way. I had no idea what Theo saw in her besides a banging body and perhaps the ability for quickies in the doctor’s break room.
“Something like that.”
“Huh?” I asked, then took a big gulp.
“I found her foot fucking one of the colorectal residents.”
I almost spit the water out across the counter. “Foot fucking? I… I don’t even know what that means.”
