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“I’m sorry, that was rude.”
“Go ahead, be rude,” he said, sinking back to tip beer into his mouth. “Don’t matter to me.”
On a smile, she appreciated him for his uncomplicated self. Danny was a guy without a care. Taking the world as it came. The simplicity of his existence was enviable. A fantasy for another day.
All good things had to end. She took another mouthful of beer and then set it on the counter to go retrieve her dress.
“Yo, you don’t need that.”
She bent down to step into it. Before Tess could straighten up, she was being scooped off the floor and carried back to the bed.
“Danny,” she said, laughing. “I have to go.”
“Little Red, Little Red,” he said, climbing onto the bed on his knees to dump her in the middle. “That was just the warm-up.”
“No, I’m through,” she said without moving. “I’ve had enough.”
“Cool, then the next time will be for me,” he said, lying against her side, his fingertips playing at her inner thigh.
Taking his hand away from its playground, she wrapped both of hers around it to stop him tormenting her. “You’re supposed to be easy.”
He exhaled a laugh. “Your seduction was showing me a condom. How much easier you want?”
Clasping his hand in her cleavage, she smiled. “Simple I mean.”
“A dumb grease monkey?”
Sucking in a breath, she winced. “Oh,” she said, bringing her knees up. “I’m not doing too good here.”
“You just keep the insults coming,” he said, freeing up his hand to reach for the beer he’d put on the windowsill behind them. “If it’s angry sex you want, you should be more explicit… I’m not that easily offended, but I can fake it.”
Resting a hand on his stomach while he drained the beer bottle, she appreciated how down-to-earth the guy was. So laid back he was literally horizontal, Tess couldn’t imagine him getting upset or reading too much into anything. That last thought led her to a question.
“Do you think paranoia can kill?” she murmured, tracing a fingertip around the ridges of his muscles.
“Sure,” he said like it wasn’t a crazy query. “You become too obsessed, anything can, right?”
The answer was quick, obviously his honest opinion. Danny wouldn’t put enough thought into anything to lie about it. What had she wanted him to say? If he’d said no, then she would just think her insanity level was rising. Yet agreeing with her didn’t make her feel great.
The bed was warm, the man willing and sturdy… Tess had to move. The prospect of just letting herself be his junkyard whore was too tempting. Life in that trailer was as straightforward as any. With no one else’s support, Tess faced the truth: she didn’t want to be alone. Her mother had raised her to be strong and independent. She believed herself capable of handling anything. Maybe she was, but that didn’t mean she wanted to do it alone.
Drawing in a long breath, Tess filled her lungs and held the oxygen inside while wriggling down the bed.
“Wrong answer?”
“No,” she said, standing up again.
Her dress was on the floor near the dinette opposite the sink.
“You think different?”
That made her smile as she bent down to pick up her dress. This time, he didn’t run after her or prevent her from guiding the straps to her shoulders.
“I don’t know what I think, Danny,” she said, picking up her beer as she muttered to herself. “I don’t know what I think about anything anymore.”
“I’m sorry you lost your mom,” he said. “Fuck with your head?”
Propping a hip on the sink, she looked up the trailer to where he lay on the bed in the same position as before. “That’s the understatement of the century,” she said and shook her head. “I don’t know. It was just the two of us… Never really occurred to me she wouldn’t be around forever.”
