Page 88 of The Good Love Collection

But don’t worry. It’s just a friends-with-benefits thing. No one’s heart is going to get broken. We wouldn’t do that to each other. We need each other too much.

We need each other to hold on to you. There are too many memories to carry in one brain. One heart.

I miss you so much, my soul sister. I wish you were here to give me your blessing. I wish you were here . . . period.

Missing you and loving you and always will,

Ruby

I finish the letter and sit back in my desk chair, tears stinging my eyes.

But I don’t cry. I let the wave of sadness and anger wash through me.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to think of Claire without getting pissed off that so much of her life was stolen from her, from me, from everyone who loved her.

Then, I let the melancholy flow away.

I hold on to the love I feel when I remember the way Claire and I were together. The way we shared everything. Deep down, I know she wouldn’t mind me sharing the details about her brother with her, though she would absolutely insist I kept all the smutty information to myself.

Smutty . . .

With a grin reserved for girl time and girl talk, I reach for a framed photo of the two of us. A cell phone shot, naturally, the two of us peering into our room at the allegedly haunted bed-and-breakfast. We both have our eyebrows raised, looking skeptical, giving our best no way are there ghosts here look at the creepy room.

Sometimes looking at this photo makes me ache. Tonight, I choose to smile.

Because I have the memories of that friendship. True, I never expected I’d be writing letters to Claire that she’d never get to read.

But then, life can be unexpected.

Tonight was unexpected too.

Well, liking the mushrooms was unexpected. That I enjoyed kissing Jesse was all kinds of expected.

And in the very near future, I might well have smutty memories to cherish featuring Jesse Hendrix and me.

A giddy grin stretches across my face as I fold the letter. I slip it into the drawer where I keep all my letters to Claire and reach for a fresh piece of watercolor paper and my favorite ink pen.

I’m too keyed up to sleep, and art is the only thing that has a chance of calming me down.

Of course, it would help if I could stop sketching loose images of a man in sexy, ass-flattering jeans, who looks so much like Jesse it’s clear his body is already burned into my brain.

Jump-start, indeed.

I’m not usually good at drawing from my imagination—I need a reference photo or a model in front of me—but tonight I don’t have a bit of trouble.

I draw Jesse in jeans and then . . . out of jeans, my cheeks heating as I mix the perfect shade of golden tan for his skin and add faint touches of pink to the places I’d like to make his blood rush for me.

By the time I’m done, I’m even more keyed up than I was before, and I’m in possession of the most sexually explicit artwork I’ve ever created. I’m usually a cute-cartoon-pie-and-dancing-fork-drawing kind of girl.

Or, in my free time, a creator of snarky illustrated cards I sell on my Etsy store. Congratulations on your breakup: we hated him and Adulthood is straight up the worst hood I’ve ever lived in are my bestsellers, but Remember to get your titties squeezed this year, ’cause you’re old now! and Tequila: because the chandelier isn’t going to swing from itself are gaining ground.

I’ve been working on a new design—a soup can with a jagged open top with I’ll cut a bitch written in calligraphy underneath—but I’m not in the mood to fuss with it tonight.

Instead, I find myself brainstorming what kind of card I’d send to Jesse. Perhaps, I like you for your personality, but those fuck-me eyes are a nice bonus.

Or maybe, I like you for your personality, but those lips are a nice bonus.

Or possibly something even naughtier, because I’m pretty sure sex with Jesse is going to be the best bonus ever.

Sex. I’m going to have sex again. Finally.

I mean, I think we are.

What did he say, exactly?

We should sleep on it?

Maybe he meant sleep with me.

Why yes, Jesse, you may sleep with me, pleasure me, and bestow life-affirming orgasms upon me to the tune of . . . hmmm . . . how about, say, more than I can count?

Ding, ding, ding!

That ought to be a card.

A thank-you card.

Thanks for the orgasms. How about another?

Besides, isn’t that a thing we should thank people for?

Maybe I can send Jesse that card . . . tomorrow?

Unable to contain my excitement any longer, I grab my cell and text Gigi.

Ruby: Are you still awake?

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