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Arlo saw my look and remembered. “Sorry, okay, yeah, your mom was a little different.”
Even he knew about my mom. She was infamous. She popped back in town every year or every few months or so, wanting money or a place to stay when she didn’t have a man to support her. She’d latch onto one and be gone again, without more than a wave goodbye. The last time I got a text.
“Right.” I smiled, a fork in my hand. “Okay, um. How can I know if Daniel likes me? I threw up on him so I think that ended things. Not that there was anything to end,” I clarified.
“Did he specifically say he was into you?” he asked, lifting his eyes from his work to meet mine. I’d skipped my contacts since they’d been in all night and wore my glasses. I pushed them up my nose.
“There wereveryspecific words about what he wanted to do with me,” I elaborated carefully. If I was going to talk with Arlo, I might as well just do it. Band Aid ripping off and all that. Yet I wasn’t going to tell him Daniel was confident his dick would fit in me. Or any of the other hot and really filthy things he said. “He said he wants to… with me. You know.”
I flushed. He nodded as he fished out more cherries from the big jar.
“You okay with that? With him talking to you like that? I mean, if the wrong guy says that stuff, you should throat punch him. If the right guy says it and you like the idea, then… maybe you let him.”
“Yes. I mean, no.” I rolled the silverware in a napkin then set it in the pile. “I didn’t want to throat punch him.” I wanted to climb him like a tree.
He gave a curt nod. “Good. A guy ever says shit to you you don’t like, let me know.” He pointed the spoon at me and a drop of pink syrup landed on the counter.
“Thanks. I will.” I made another roll of silverware. “I understand all that. A guy’s into me, I’m into him, we have some fun. I’m not that clueless,” I said, although I was. Totally clueless. I stopped my progress on a roll and stared at him. “I threw up on him, Arlo. He had to do my laundry. And his. I have no idea where to go from here. Who wants to do dirty things with Throw Up Girl? I mean, there’s dirty and then there’sdirty.”
The cherry section was full so he screwed the lid back on the jar and turned to put it in the fridge.
“Remember last night I said guys are idiots?” he asked when he faced me again, wiping his hands on a white dishcloth.
I nodded.
“They’re also very focused. If Daniel Pearson says he wants to do dirty things with you, he still does. Throw up is not going to change that.”
“I should just go up to him and” –I snapped my fingers– “say let’s go?”
“You know he’s leaving town? Going to Scotland for a few months and then… well, I don’t think he even knows.”
I nodded. Was this why I shouldn’t call him again and tell him to fuck me or because I should? This was casual. Just as casual as what my mother had planned for me back when I was eighteen. Just sleep with a guy and have some fun. It wasn’t a big deal. Just sex and pleasure for a little while. Then move on. Another guy after Daniel was gone would come along. I could do it all over again with him too. Then the next, then the next.
I wasn’t interested in anyone else. I was hung up, completely and totally, on Daniel. And his magical fingers.
Was that how my mother got started? A talented man in the back room of a bar?
Oh my God, maybe it was.
He rubbed his chin, considering. “Daniel or another guy, I have a feeling that if you went up to any and said ‘let’s go’ you’d have a one hundred percent success rate.”
And that was the problem. Was it because it was me, my free-spirited mother’s daughter? This was the exact reason why I tried to hide myself.
I pulled my lips to the side. “This is Daniel Pearson though. Big lumberjack? Beard? Growly?”
One vet visit and he saw me.Saw. Me.He’d gotten me off. I hadn’t even seen his dick. He was an unselfish lover. If he was like Creepy Carl, then I’d be unsatisfied and used. With Daniel, it was the other way around.
Arlo looked me over, then grinned. “The way he was looking at you? Doesn’t stand a chance. The biggest trees fall the hardest.”
15
DANIEL
Seeingher in my flannel had been close. Too close. I’d liked the look of her in it too fucking much. What the hell was I doing messing around with her?
I was counting the days until I left town. I didn’t even have a return ticket. Melly was a virgin. She’d told me. Sure, it hadn’t been intentional, but I knew.
I couldn’t have sex with her and then leave the country.
