11. Aftermath
Jason
The view from the top of the world was amazing.
My conversation with the COO of Big Dick Tools, Faduma Abdi, had been going on for about an hour, and just like Rose said, she’d seemed more interested in chatting with me and answering my questions than asking me any.
“I’m so glad you were able to come in, Jason,” Faduma said, brushing her braids back over her shoulder. “It was great getting to know you today.”
I smiled, nodding. “Absolutely! Thank you for having me.” I sat up straighter, more confident than ever that the gig was mine.
“We’d definitely like to offer you some paid ads with Big Dicks Tools, but talking with you today makes me feel like you’d be a better fit for our newest endeavor: StudFinders.”
I was smiling and nodding as Faduma sifted through some papers in the folder in front of her on the conference room table, but my heart rate had gone up as soon as my solid ground disappeared. Paid ads would be a great avenue of income, but they weren’t the big money like their email had mentioned.
“So StudFinders…” she handed me a glossy color paper with a logo and app screen mockups on it. “Is an app-based recommendation service for finding handypersons all over the country. Similar to Angie’s List, but with our own kooky spin, of course.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my beard, barely taking any information in from the paper except bright reds and yellows.
“And you would be perfect in our video and print ads. You already have a rabid fan base, and your single hottie on his own, ‘he could be yours but he’s not anybody’s’ mystique is perfect for our brand.”
Single hottie on his own?
Now Faduma was talking about a contract and the incredible sums they were willing to pay me to be the face of this new enterprise, which were even more than the email had mentioned. It was everything I could’ve dreamt of, but the details flowed through my brain and into the oh shit bucket where I kept information that overwhelmed me.
She wound down her sales pitch and looked at me expectantly. “So tell me, what are you thinking? What questions do you have?”
“Wow,” I chuckled. “Um, a lot. So…help me out. You said something about being single? Do you mean that I couldn’t have a girlfriend while I was under contract?”
“Of course you can. We can’t dictate that. But you’d have to keep the relationship under wraps to embody StudFinders’s branding. At least for the duration of the contract.”
Well, fuck. “I see. And…how long did you say the contract is for?”
“One year to start,” Faduma supplied, “negotiable for more if both parties agree. I’ll send you the contract to look over later today, but what do you think?” she asked, her brown eyes lit with excitement. “How would you like to be the face of StudFinders?”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. All I could think about was the amazing woman I spent last night with who was back at the condo waiting to hear how my meeting went. Who was probably going to bolt the moment she heard about this.
Faduma laughed. “Did I make you speechless, Jason? I know it’s a lot to take in, and I did pull a switcheroo on you.”
I laughed along. “Yeah, it’s definitely…a lot. Can I think about it?”
The corners of Faduma’s mouth turned down in what looked like puzzled surprise. She didn’t expect that. Shit. Would she rescind the offer?
“Yeah! For sure. I get that it’s a big ask for a young guy like yourself, and of course you haven’t even looked over the contract yet. I’ll email it to you this afternoon. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great.”
“Great!” Faduma stood up from her chair, and I followed suit. “I have to get to another meeting, but it was great meeting you. Let me walk you out.”
She scooped up the Deck Daddy shirt I’d brought her and herded me toward the door with promises of more information to come. I walked out with her and ended up on the sidewalk outside with little idea of how I got there. But the heavy dread in my chest suggested I’d messed the whole thing up. Maybe she wouldn’t send me the contract at all. Maybe people didn’t usually ask her can I think about it?
I looked up and down the street, oriented my feet toward my car, and obsessed over every detail of the meeting and every implication of the contract she wanted me to sign for the hour-long ride back to the condo.
Back to Rose.
When I got there, I went up to the condo with a black cloud trailing over my head. Rose opened the door just as I fit the key into the lock.
“Hey!” She threw her arms around my neck before pulling back, her face an excited question mark. “How did it go? Tell me everything .” She pulled me inside and shut the door.
“It went great, I think.” The dryer hummed in the background, the plastic was back on the sofa, and Rose’s packed bags sat near the door. “Wait—we can go home?”
“Surprise! Power’s back on at your house! I’m finishing up washing our dirty sex sheets right now, but we can go whenever you’re ready and that’s done.” She sat on the sofa, and I sat beside her. “What happened? I’ve been dying over here. I thought you’d maybe call me when you were leaving.”
“I’m sorry.” I squeezed her hand. “I absolutely should have. She kind of dropped a bomb on me, and I wasn’t thinking.”
“How do you mean?”
I looked around the condo. I’d driven all this way, but I was antsy to get on the road and see what was going on back home. “You know what? Let me tell you while I pack up.”
An hour later we were cruising on the interstate toward home, and I’d told Rose all about my meeting. Well, almost all about it.
“Spokesmodel Jason!” She clapped her hands in excitement. “I knew they’d love you! You told her yes, right? It’s a fantastic opportunity.”
“And so much money. I could turn the community room into a frickin’ mansion with that kind of money.”
She raised her eyebrows and lowered her head, holding my gaze. “So…what did you tell her?”
I returned my eyes to the road, sighing. “I…asked her if I could think about it.”
“What? Why?”
I sighed as I took a fork in the interstate. “They have a stipulation in the contract I’m not crazy about and didn’t expect.” I glanced at her. Her face was neutral, waiting. I rushed it out. “They don’t want me to date anyone publicly for the duration of the contract.”
Her brows lowered in a frown. “They can actually dictate that?”
“Apparently. I haven’t seen the contract yet, so I’m not sure how it reads. I mean, she said I could date. They can’t dictate that. But if I dated someone, I’d have to keep it ‘under wraps.’” I took my right hand off the steering wheel to put the last two words in air quotes.
“For how long?” Her voice was soft. She was looking out the window now, her posture pulled back from her earlier in-my-space excitement.
My heart sank. I couldn’t bear to let this scare Rose off. “A year. More if they still want me and I still want to do it.” A deep breath in. “So…I asked to think about it to buy time.”
She nodded but said nothing. Long minutes went by.
“I’d give almost anything to know what you’re thinking over there,” I said.
She smiled, but her smile lost its steam. “Well, neither of us shut down rumors from the sewing video, so you’d have to do that. And…I don’t know.”
If she said we might not even be together a year from now I would be devastated. Surely we were both thinking it, but I didn’t want either of us to voice it.
The air conditioner blew her long hair back, and she fooled around with the vents for a minute. I’d want her in a year, I’d want her in thirty years. Maybe I was a complete and utter imbecile to feel this way so fast, but denying my feelings had gotten me into too many bad situations in the past. I wouldn’t do it again.
“Say the word, and I’ll say no,” I blurted.
Her head swiveled to me. “Jason! No way! I would never ask you to do that. That’s—no. We only slept together. A few times,” she conceded. “You can’t make life decisions based on how they affect me.”
Dread sank through my body into my feet leaving my stomach cold and nauseated. She thought all we were was one night of sex?
My heart raced. I swallowed hard, training my eyes on the road and willing myself not to get light-headed with anxiety. “I kinda thought…I was hoping we were more than a one-time thing. But if that’s not how you feel, I’ll—”
Her hand landed on my thigh in a squeeze. “No, no! That’s not what I meant at all. I don’t think we’re a one-time thing.”
I exhaled with relief and took her hand in mine. “Cool,” I blurted stupidly.
She smiled. “Cool. All I meant was that I think you have to make decisions that are right for your life. And if they want you to appear single…I don’t know.”
“We could…keep things under wraps.” I cringed as it came out of my mouth.
“You mean keep us a secret? From them, from social media, from the public?” She huffed a small laugh. “‘From the public,’ like we’re celebrities. I mean, you will be.” She squeezed my hand once and took hers away. “You kinda are already.”
She didn’t seem angry, but the sad look on her face hurt my heart.
I briefly squeezed her thigh. “All I know is that I’m excited about us.”
She glanced at me and smiled. “Me too.”
“And I’m also terrified to find out how many trees came down on my house and how many thousands of dollars of damage I have that I can’t afford.”
“That you can’t afford yet ,” she said softly. She pulled out her tablet. “Let me know if you want to switch out. I don’t mind driving.”
“That’s okay. I’d go crazy sitting there with nothing to do.”
“You could design my mom’s dress for me. I’m sure she’d love to see your ideas.”
I huffed a laugh through my nose. “Yeah. That wouldn’t be a disaster at all.” I turned up the radio and applied all my thoughts to the road. Literally and metaphorically, I didn’t know what lay ahead.
It was almost 6:30 in the evening when we made it to New Orleans. The closer we got to home, the more torn-off roofs and stranded cars we encountered. Standing water blocked the interstate down to only the left lane at one point, and a detour onto Airline Highway bypassed the Pontchartrain Expressway, which was still underwater. And everywhere, downed trees.
I rubbed my beard, more nervous than ever when we got into our neighborhood. Everywhere, people were out cleaning up branches and leaves, throwing out wet carpet. Trees were uprooted on every street. “I don’t like this. I’m gonna find all five of those oak trees near the church, inside the church.”
Rose rubbed and squeezed my thigh. “Whatever we find, it’ll be okay. Nobody was hurt, and anything else can be fixed.”
“You’re right, but Rose?” I looked at her sideways through narrowed eyes. “How is turning me on supposed to help at this point?”
She laughed and slipped her hand under my shorts, rubbing her fingernails gently up my thigh. Higher. “Oh, this is turning you on? I had no idea it would do that.”
“Yeah, and I’ll show you how much later on.” I grabbed her hand and kissed it. “But right now we’re about to learn our fate.”
I made the final turn onto my street. Everywhere, people were picking up leaves, cutting up fallen trees. An Entergy truck was down the block, a man in a cherry-picker repairing something on a utility pole.
Then there was my property. Three trees had fallen over that I could see, their shallow, mud- and grass-covered roots perpendicular to the ground, tipped over from their bed in the lawn. One in the front yard, two in the parking lot, but none on the church. “Oh thank God.” I pulled as far as I could into the parking lot, inspecting the roofline. So many missing shingles. “Damnit, I’m gonna need that new roof sooner than later.”
We got out of the car and started walking toward the church.
Rose went around a branch I’d stepped over. “But insurance should help, right?” She gasped and grabbed my arm. “Jason.”
I followed her pointing finger. One of those goddamn water oaks had fallen on the rectory—right into Rose’s apartment. “Shit.”
The whole thing had tipped over like the others, its massive root circle taller than the roof, and the 60-, 70-foot trunk had fallen directly across the building.
I eyed the side of the house as I followed her to the kitchen door. “Damnit. Rose, that’s your bedroom. Fuck .”
The kitchen was eerily damp and covered with leaves as we made our way into the house. But one look down the hallway showed where the real damage was. The trunk had sliced through the roof and fallen to one side of Rose’s bedroom.
“Oh my God!” She stepped forward gingerly, but I reached out and grabbed her.
“Don’t go over there. We don’t know how secure that thing is.”
She pulled back, both hands over her mouth. “I can’t even—Jason, I’m so sorry this happened to your property.”
I pulled her into my arms and cupped her face, kissed her forehead. “My property? Thank God you evacuated with me. What if this happened in the middle of the night, and you were sleeping in your bed?” I pulled her tight against my chest. “You know what? Never mind, because I can’t think about that.”
She hugged me back, pressed a kiss to my neck. “But all of your beautiful, hard work in these rooms, your roof—oh jeez, thank you so much for making me put Becca’s dresses in the church. But all my stuff’s probably ruined. Maybe all my other dresses. And I don’t even have a place to sleep.”
“You lost all that, and your first words were worrying about my hard work.” I kissed the top of her head again. “Sweet Rose. Maybe your stuff will be okay. But look on the bright side. You can sleep with me.” I released her but kept my arm around her. I couldn’t begin to think of the repercussions of that invitation. “I don’t even know where to start. Let’s just go back to the beach.” I turned her around with me and started walking.
Her laugh cajoled a smile from me. “So tempting. But maybe you should take pictures for the insurance adjuster while it’s still light. I’ll throw away all the spoiled food from the fridge.”
“Yeah, that’s probably more productive. Then let’s see what we can get out of your room.”
It took us till nearly 10 o’clock to take photos, move everything we could get to of Rose’s belongings into the church, and clean out our fridge. I was going to have to move that into the community room tomorrow where there was a tiny, outdated kitchen area we could use temporarily. Thankfully most of her fabrics and all of her sewing machines and tools had been in the workroom and were unharmed. But the tree was completely blocking access to her room. I jimmied open the bathroom window to see what I could reach from there, but all I could get to was her packed bag of clothes that I hadn’t taken with us, two cardboard wardrobe boxes, and a plastic bin of shoes. So much of her stuff was trapped under the tree, and it didn’t look safe to go closer.
With all the grocery stores in the same boat as our fridge, I braved the super-long line at Lee’s Hamburgers, one of the only food places open for business. After dinner, I sat at the dining room table in the church as Rose washed all her clothes she could salvage—thank God I’d moved the washer and dryer into the main building last spring. I’d called in all the favors I knew to get that damn tree off the roof, but I’d still come up empty.
“Alright, Ryan. I appreciate you trying. Take care. Bye.” I hung up and rubbed my eyes.
“No luck?” Rose asked, sitting a laundry basket full of her clothes on the floor by the table.
“Nope. He didn’t know anybody either.”
She stopped and stared at me as if there was some obvious truth I wasn’t seeing. “I’m a dumbass. Let me call Heather. Her dad owns Aucoin Construction. I bet he can get us somebody to help.”
“Really? That would be amazing.”
“I’ll send her the pictures I took of it. If anybody can make the impossible happen, it’s Heather.”
I pulled her to sit in my lap, wrapping my arms around her and leaning my head on her shoulder as she texted. She hadn’t complained once today, working hard right alongside me.
Helping me tarp the roof, carting her things out of her living space, reassuring me when I got too overwhelmed by the damages. She hadn’t batted an eye when I told her my idea to set up a temporary shower for us with hoses in the old community room bathroom. We worked smoothly together in a way I’ve never experienced, as if she was really my partner.
It thrilled me to find yet another way, especially back from the cocoon that Florida had been, that we were so well suited for each other. She was my rock today, and just having her in my arms calmed me.
“Were you able to salvage a lot of your clothes and your dresses?”
“Kind of. The box of my wedding designs was so moldy, I didn’t think anything survived. I somehow only lost four of the twelve dresses in it, but then I lost over half of my favorite things. Like, the clothes I actually wear.” Her outgoing text swooshed, and she laid her phone down on the table, wrapping her arms over mine and leaning back against me.
“I’m so sorry, Rose. This is all my fault. I’ll bring you shopping and pay to replace everything.”
She turned in my lap to face me. “What are you talking about? The hurricane was in no way your fault.”
“I should’ve prioritized taking down all those water oaks. If I had, none of your things would’ve been ruined.”
“As my old therapist used to say, ‘don’t should on yourself.’ The trunk was humongous. It was an old tree that withstood decades of hurricanes. Who would’ve thought it’d come down with this one?”
“Me,” I insisted. “I’ve been worried about it since I bought the place. I’m so sorry about your stuff and your apartment. What if you’d been—”
She took my face in her hands and pressed her forehead against mine, looking into my eyes like a sexy cyclops. “This. Was not. Your fault.” A kiss to punctuate.
“If you say so. But look.” I slipped my hand up her shirt to rub her back. “If you don’t have enough clothes, and you need to walk around naked, I won’t stop you.”
She laughed and looked down. “Jason, we’re really…new. If you feel weird about me staying with you, I can probably stay with Heather and Abby until I have a roof again.”
My stomach fluttered, and I dropped my hand to her waist. “But I thought you didn’t want to move in with your friends.”
“Yeah, but that was when I was looking for a place to live live. Staying for a few weeks is different. I could do that.”
Maybe she was trying to give me an out, but I didn’t want one. “But I’d miss you.” Unless she wanted an out?
“I’d miss you, too.”
Her steady smile reassured me, and I wet my lips. “I know we’ve only been together a few days. And under normal circumstances I would never ask you to move in with me this fast. But…I got spoiled in Florida, having you around all the time. I want you to stay with me.” I twisted a finger in one of her curls. “I’ll make a place for you to sew in the church. You can sleep with me upstairs in the choir loft.” I cupped her face, moving in for a kiss. “I could make it worth your while.”
She kissed me then studied my face for a long minute. “Okay. I can try that. You know, in the car earlier you promised to show me later how much I was turning you on. Is it later yet?”
“I’m bone tired.” I pulled her hips closer to my arousal. “But I’m desperate to get you into my bed.”
She laughed and squirmed out of my arms, jogging toward the choir stairs. I took off after her, letting her get ahead of me until she was in my bedroom. I caught her around the middle, and she threw her arms back over my neck, laughing.
“You don’t need this shirt,” I muttered, pulling it off over her head. “You definitely don’t need this bra.” I snapped it open in record time and pulled her back to me, filling my hands with her breasts, gently pinching her nipples. She ground back against me. I skimmed my hand down her stomach and slipped my fingers into her panties and into the velvet wetness waiting for me, circling her clit with the softest touch. She sagged in my arms, moaning.
“Is this what you want?” I murmured against her neck.
“Yes,” she breathed, squirming her ass against my cock. I think I growled as I flipped her onto her back on my bed and stalked over her, pressing her body down as I kissed her luscious mouth. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and her hands tangled in my hair before moving down and scratching my back.
“What are you gonna do to me, Deck Daddy?”
I kissed my way to her ear. “I’m craving the taste of your pussy.” She whimpered as I ground my cock against her shorts.
“You like it?” she panted.
“I want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Fskfsk she sputtered, shimmying out of her shorts and panties. “Jason, I’m open twenty-four-seven for your convenience.”
“I love your hours.”
“I love your mouth.” She gasped when I suckled her breast, teasing my tongue around the peak of her nipple. Threading her fingers through my hair, she thrust her hips against me.
I pulled off my shirt and settled my chest against the divine heat of her core. “Grind that hot pussy on me, baby.” And oh god, she did, spreading her legs wider, whimpering and writhing her wetness against my chest until I couldn’t wait any longer to taste her.
I dragged my tongue between her breasts, straight down the center of her belly, and pushed her thighs apart. She watched me, her eyes dark and her lips parted.
I feasted my eyes on the soft folds between her legs—the perfect pink, glistening, just for me. “Christ, Rose, look at you.” I pulled her ass to the edge of the bed then knelt before her like the queen she was. I licked a hard line from her opening up to her clit and latched my whole mouth to her, sucking the sweet, transcendent fucking taste that was all her. She cried out my name and her hips went wild, but I hadn’t had my fill. I pulled her tight against my face, almost drowning in her nectar. Lapped my tongue in circles around the sweet bud of her clit.
Leisurely, I savored the feel of her sex in my mouth. The hot as fuck noises she made as I pleasured her made me so fucking hard I could cry. The desperate way she moved her hips and whimpered my name. Her eyes were closed, her curls tossing across my sheets. Goddamn I loved overwhelming her with pleasure in my bed. One of her hands caressed my head, holding me deeper against her, and her other grasped her own breast, teasing herself. My cock throbbed with need. I reached up to gently roll her nipple with my fingers. She cried out my name, begged me not to stop.
So I slipped my fingers inside and went in for the prize.