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“Then you will be a gentleman and provide me your jacket.”
“All right.” He signals to change lanes, even though there are no cars anywhere nearby. I smile inwardly. Drew Daniels does everything by the book.
We exit the freeway and make a U-turn.
“Thought of a location?” I ask.
“Yep.”
No more details are forthcoming.
I don’t have long to wait. We exit again, and soon a park surrounds us. Wide expanses of green space end with a path along a small lake. Several people stroll under the streetlamps, mostly walking dogs. Drew finds a spot along the street and kills the car. “This work?”
“It looks beautiful.”
We walk along a broad path. The lake reflects the lights of the cityscape of downtown Atlanta. It’s breathtaking.
We haven’t walked very far when the chill bites into me. I hide it for a while, but as we cross a wooden bridge over the water, a gust of wind brushes my hair back, and I wind up hugging my arms over my body.
Drew takes off his suit jacket and wraps it around my shoulders, buttoning the front. My arms are still inside.
“Like a straitjacket?” I ask.
“Like a straitjacket.” His grin knocks me backward. It’s so rare, and it lights up his face. A girl could totally fall in love with a smile like that.
The jacket smells of him. I breathe it in. Sandalwood aftershave. I only know what it’s called because I used to rip cologne samples out of the magazines in the art teacher’s room. She had tons ofGlamourandCosmopolitan, and there were always ads with little folded pages that gave you the beautiful scent of some expensive bottle when you pulled the pieces apart.
She mostly censored the magazines before giving them to the students to make collages or use for tracings. But occasionally there would be a survey about how many times your man had stimulated your clitoris. Ronnie and I were known to fold these up in our pockets when we encountered them so we could pore over them later.
Unlike me, Ronnie had a mom growing up. So when she asked her how to stimulate her clitoris, her mother immediately took her to the clinic to get on the pill. It was years before she needed it, but I distinctly recall being jealous that she had someone who had her back like that, no questions asked. All because of a stolen page from an art teacher’s magazine.
I shouldn’t think of clitoris and Drew at the same time. The smell of him all around me is definitely taking me back to the night in the shed.
The walkway is well lit, and a woman with two gray puffs of hair tweaked into springy ponytails brushes past us with a white poodle sporting a matching hairstyle.
We both turn to watch them walk away and manage to withhold any laughter until she is well out of earshot.
“You could dye your hair white to match Sasha,” I say to Drew. My urge is to reach up and ruffle his hair, but my arms are imprisoned.
“It will happen soon enough.”
“Has your dad gone gray?”
His expression falters immediately, and I wish I could take the question back. Maybe Drew has an irrational fear of going gray. Eventually, he says, “He has.”
Note to self: don’t bring up going gray.
We pass a tree that branches out low to the ground. It would be an easy step up. I point it out. “If only mama cat had gone up a tree like that. I wouldn’t have had a problem.”
Drew assesses the branches. “But she could have gotten a lot higher. Why did she stop? Is that how you caught up to her?”
I nod. “She took off in a dead run, but a car went by and scared her into stopping. I almost scooped her up in the parking lot, but then she darted toward the building. Thankfully, she hesitated on that branch, so I could snatch her before she got any farther. Otherwise I would’ve lost her.”
“Did you know you had a fear of heights?”
“I don’t think I do. I used to climb trees all the time as a kid. It was something about not being able to hold on with both hands. And fear of losing the cat. It triggered something in me.”
“You did a great job. It’s not a situation that will happen often. We rarely have loose cats in the lobby, especially if dogs will be arriving.”
