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Those would’ve been Brianna’s words. Not Penny’s.
I press the cloth into my temples. I was upset and not thinking clearly. I must’ve misunderstood her or been thinking that if Bri were here, how devastated she’d be.
“You’re still wearing your wet jeans,” she says.
I let her derail my thoughts because my head hurts too much to overthink anything right now. “I’m too fucking tired to move.”
The mattress lifts as she stands. With the cloth over my face, I can’t see what she’s doing, but I hear her open and close my dresser drawer.
“Maybe you should put your sweats on.” I wonder how she knew exactly where my clothes were. “So you don’t fall asleep in wet clothes.”
I pull the cloth off my face and glance up at her in the dark.
“Will you let me do something for you?” she asks gently.
“I can undress myself.”
“That’s not what I was going to do. I’m going to go get something from my room.” She pauses, and an odd shift in the air fills that brief silence. “As long as it’s okay if I come back?”
The word no creeps up my throat and sits on my tongue. Because that’s the right answer. My daughter’s best friend shouldn’t be in my room at one a.m., no matter how sad and emotionally fucked up we both are.
“Sure,” comes out of my mouth.
Cursing myself under my breath, I change my pants while she’s gone, then fall back on the bed. My back, arms, and hands are killing me from digging a four-by-four hole in the near-frozen ground for my poor, sweet dog.
Minutes later, Penny returns holding a small black ceramic jar.
“What’s that?”
She lights a match and holds it to a wick in the center of the jar. Soon the corner of my bedroom is glowing.
Her long hair is rumpled, and her eyes are swollen. I don’t think she’s gotten any rest tonight, either. Despite that, I catch her faint smile in the dim, flickering glow. “You’ll see.”
At this point, I’m too depressed and sore to care what it is, but the scent of it—almond and lavender—is nice. I close my eye and try not to keep seeing Cherry in a box. I try to remember her when she was a puppy—just a tiny ball of wiggling fuzz—and how Brianna would laugh over every little thing Cherry did. This house used to be such a happy place.
I want it to be filled with smiles again.
I don’t move or say a word when Penny pulls the bandages off my hands. Intrigued, I watch as she carefully pours the warmed wax from the jar into her palm. She takes my hand between hers and slowly massages the warm liquid into my hand.
And it feels fucking amazing.
“Damn…” I breathe out.
“It’s a special wax that liquefies into a lotion. It has oils in it for soothing and healing,” she says, pouring more of the wax directly onto my other palm, then gently spreading it to the tops of my hands, over my cracked knuckles.
The intimate touch makes my pulse race, banishing the chill from my bones, leaving my body heated in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time.
“It’s nice,” I push the words past the tightness in my throat.
Her fingers languidly slide between mine, fusing our hands together, drenched in the hot, creamy lotion. It’s one of the most sensual things I’ve ever felt in my fucking life. My cock agrees.
I clear my throat. “You don’t have to do this—”
“Alex, please let me do something nice for you,” she pleads, continuing to glide her hands over mine, from my wrists to my fingertips. Her hands are warm, incredibly soft, and slippery, slathered in the wax. “You did so many nice things for me when I was younger. You let me come over here all the time. You taught me all about art. You stocked your fridge with juice boxes for me. You believed in all my strange little quirks.” She’s completely clueless that her touch is driving me wild. “You took such good care of Cherry—carrying her up and down the stairs, wheeling her around in the wagon. You saved money for eighteen years for Lily to have a college fund, even though you were told over and over that you weren’t good enough for her. You deserve to have someone do nice things for you, too.”
Maybe so. But what I don’t need is an epic hard-on from an eighteen-year-old girl.
“Doesn’t it feel amazing?” she asks with complete innocence.
Fuck.
I swallow hard. “Yeah. It feels great.”
“It should help your blisters heal.”
The blisters are the last thing on my mind. But I gotta give her credit; she’s doing a good job distracting me from this day of hell.
Silence falls between us as our hands caress each other, slower and slower, fingers intertwining, palms molding together. The warmth and gentleness of her touch slowly lull me to a place I ache to go but can’t, not with her.
