Epilogue
Emma
“So, how was it, New Guy?”
Emma turned from hanging her work smock over the little hook by the back door, Mitch printing the last of the day’s sales report from the cash register on the counter across from her. He held up a long finger, as if to put her Q & A on hold. Finally the sales report printed, as long as her PB & Cray apron but, to her newest summer employee, clearly a million times more important.
“Sorry,” he murmured distractedly, as he had all day, tongue out like a little boy learning how to finger paint. “Just wanted to get this part right.”
She chuckled playfully. “You’ve gotten everything right, New Guy. All day long. And even if you hadn’t, even if you ran out of paper, even if the printer jammed, we’d just ... print another one, okay?”
Mitch turned then, hair cut short for the summer, setting off his chiseled features and deep, sea green eyes. “I just want to do a good job for you, okay?” He held the daily report out to her like a little tyke offering Santa Claus his wish list.
She took it and folded it twice before setting it aside in the “In” bin for the next day’s opener. “You’ve done a better-than-good job, Mitch. You get that, right?”
He cocked his hip, crossing those long arms over his stiff new PB & Cray work t-shirt. “You’re not just saying that because you want to get laid tonight, are you?”
Emma snorted, giggling merrily as the old, flirty Mitch returned once more. “I’ve missed you, College Boy,” she murmured, opening her arms as he glanced around the cramped food truck as if they might get caught. “I’ve forgotten how damn sexy you can be.”
“You didn’t forget last night,” he teased, easing into her grip and lacing his fingers around the small of her back.
“Or this morning,” she purred against his throat, feeling smaller than ever now that Mitch was back, finally back, wrapping her in his arms and teasing her mercilessly.
“Mm,” he faux moaned in her ear, mimicking the way she’d come for him, over and over again, as the shower water danced across his back and the bathroom tiles dug into hers. “This morning.”
She pushed him away, surprised by her strength. Though she shouldn’t have been. After being without him for the last five weeks, she’d found strength she never knew she’d had before. Funny, that being without her boytoy lover could impact her in ways divorcing her ex hadn’t.
Not even close.
“I guess we were making up for lost time?” Emma offered, as if to understand the insatiable way she hadn’t been able to keep her hands off of Mitch ever since he’d pulled into her driveway the night before.
“Either that,” Mitch offered, leaning against the sales counter and raking his hungry eyes over her standard work uniform—faded PB & Cray t-shirt and army green capris. “Or you really, really like me?”
“Nope,” she teased, enjoying the innocent look on Mitch’s face as he waited on every word. “Must be making up for lost time!”
They chuckled easily, inching back into each other’s favor after being apart so very, very long. Emma had looked forward to his return, obviously. But hadn’t thought it all the way through. The sex part was easy. Acrobatic, sweaty, sticky, sometimes physically exhausting, but easy. This part, though? The hanging around? The talking? The connecting? After five years on her own, after five years of speaking in quick soundbites to her coworker and business partner alone, this was the hard part.
“Well...” Mitch peered down at his shoes, wriggling spanking new sneakers one over the other and back again.
“Well what, New Guy?”
He glanced up, smirking that sexy, crooked, thick-lipped smirk. “Which is it, Em? New Guy? Or College Boy?”
“Can’t you tell?” she explained patiently, as if she was still schooling him on how to evenly spread out the organic chunky peanut butter on the fresh-baked honey whole wheat bread. “You’re New Guy here, on Snack Street. And College Boy in my bed.”
He nodded, seeming to think on her reply for a second. Then he glanced back down at his feet, remembering why she’d called him one of those names in the first place. “Stop avoiding the question, Mitch .”
“Oh, I’m Mitch now? Am I in trouble?”
“Only if you keep avoiding the question, Mitch .” In between mock scolding her newest food truck employee, Emma reached into the glass cooler beside her to pull out two adult root beers, the perfect end to another long, hot summer day working inside the sweltering food truck. She cracked them open with a practiced ease and handed one over to Mitch, who took it gratefully.
They clinked bottles and drank long and hard of the rich, sweet, heady brew before sighing contentedly. “So?” she pressed. “What gives?”
“Nothing much,” Mitch sighed, setting the bottle down beside him. “I just...” He glanced away, peering at the rows of assorted gourmet peanut butter stocked on the shelf beside him as if not seeing a single one of them. “I’m not sure if you realize this, but ... there are about seven colleges within an hour’s drive of Flamingo Shores.”
“Nice.” Emma was still sipping her spiked root beer, nodding approvingly as she imagined her newest coworker without his clothes, sweaty and standing above her while she knelt between his legs, giving him the best welcome back present she could think of. “You mean, like graduate schools or...”
His delayed response finally got Emma’s attention. Make that, undivided attention. “No,” he murmured, softly, as if already apologizing for something. “I mean, for now. Soon. Next semester, in fact. Senior year.”
Emma’s questioning eyes narrowed as the words dawned on her. “But ... what about Coastal College?”
“What about them?” Mitch practically scoffed. “I mean, other than they have a pretty rad Continuing Education Department. You know, the kind that helps you transfer your credits so that you don’t actually lose any when you ... you know?”
“Transfer?” Emma’s interest was piqued. “To where, exactly?”
Mitch smirked, looking warm and hot under his PB & Cray t-shirt collar. “Well, that all depends on how long I can work here.”
“As long as you want, silly.”
“Long enough to earn my degree at ... Flamingo Shores State?”
Emma heard the words, even saw Mitch’s lips moving as he said them, but something about the combination had her suffering through a seven-second delay. “You mean, that campus out near the stadium?”
“You mean ... their stadium? For their team? The Flamingo Shores State ... Flamingos?”
“Is that what they’re called?”
“Jesus, Emma.”
“Well, I mean...” Her voice trailed off, eyes focusing on Mitch’s shy but prideful smile. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you? Transferred, I mean?”
“Are you mad?” Mitch replied, answering her question with one of his own. As if to seal the deal, he scrunched up his pretty, suntanned face and really turned on those soft, quiet, puppy dog eyes for good measure.
“Mad isn’t quite the word I’d use,” she murmured, holding off her true emotions for as long as she could.
He must have sensed a reason for Emma’s crooked grin, inching closer so that she could smell the manly musk of his sweat in the small, cramped food truck. “What is the word you’d use then, Emma?” He was close enough to tease her pigtails, tugging each one gently, but not unpleasantly. He drew himself closer, a hand drifting down to either side of her waist.
“Excited,” she insisted. “Elated? Nervous? Eager...”
“Eager for what?” Mitch murmured, nuzzling her ear even as his big hands reached for the hem of her work tee. When his big, young hand slid gently underneath, pressing familiarly against her own damp skin, the gasp of sheer, unadulterated desire made it clear just what her answer was.
She turned her head, almost breathless with want, and need, with longing and so much more. They kissed, eagerly, hungrily, the way they’d wanted to all during the long, hot, simmering workday. Bumping into each other here, sneaking looks at each other there, until now, Mitch couldn’t tear her stupid faded t-shirt off fast enough.
“Eager for this ,” Emma moaned aloud, not caring if what they were about to do broke about seventeen health codes, several laws, or even if it shook the damn food truck off its very foundations. “You, me, together, every night, for ... for...”
“For what, baby?” Mitch had her shirt over her head, tugging it free in seconds flat, her pigtails swishing across each shoulder the way she craved his fingers might.
“Forever,” she croaked despite her best intentions to play hard to get.
“Lucky you,” he grunted, hands drizzling down her sides until she shivered in delight, almost not hearing the “pop” of her top pants button over the sound of her delicious panting. “Because forever’s exactly what you’re getting. Starting tonight.”
She beamed, warm inside and out as he paused to admire her bare, glistening chest. “And lucky me,” he growled, lapping at her sweaty flesh, bare and braless and already straining to reach his greedy little tongue with the tips of her taut, ripe nipples. “Have you been like this all day?”
“Fuck, yes,” she grunted, fingers trilling through his newly short hair as he bent to make her aching breasts heave and pant and glisten from more than just food truck sweat. “Waiting for this very moment, Mitch.”
“So I had to spend fifty bucks on nonskid shoes, but you could go braless all day?” he teased between nipple sucking and areola nibbling her half to death. “I guess health code violations mean nothing to you, huh?”
Mitch chuckled, hot puffs of breath on her wet, stiff nipples as his fingers fumbled with her calf-length shorts. “Would I let you help me up onto this counter and take me any way you desire if they did?”
Mitch’s eyes widened as he did just that, her shorts tumbling free over her own work sneakers as he hoisted her onto the small but serviceable countertop, clad in only her damp work panties, pink and cotton and all but dripping onto the floor at their feet.
He stood between her thighs, smooth and trembling with anticipation. She sat back, head against the spice rack she knew she’d get there an hour before opening the next day just to disinfect, along with the rest of the food truck. That is, if it was still standing after he was through with her!
“This is going to be so great,” he teased, fingertips marching up each thigh like her own personal army of Feel Good Finger Fuckers.
“It always is, baby,” she cooed, wriggling with pent-up desire.
Mitch frowned, fingers pausing just beneath the hemline of her sensible cotton panties, the half-dollar size stain of damp, sticky moisture spreading with every desperate pant and wriggle she spent waiting for him to hurry. The fuck. Up! “I meant, life. You. Me. Together. From now on.”
“I know exactly what you meant, Mitch,” she murmured, dragging him in for a kiss, if only to drag him ever closer to her crotch. “And the sooner you touch me, the sooner forever can start. One kiss at a time...”
He did just that, touching her gently, kissing her sweetly, until their love became a promise and their lust the key that unlocked a future together. One neither could have expected that first time they met, but that neither could deny now that they’d turned forever into spring break, and the rest of their lives into a vacation just for two.
The End