CHAPTER NINE #2
“Do you not also agree that the definition of good is subjective?” Julian asked.
“I mean, what I think is good beer, you who run and own a brewery might say, is backwater swap juice. And that’s simply because your palate has become more selective, more discriminatory.
I like Budweiser. I know what I’m getting when I buy it.
It’s not the best beer, but it’s not the worst. It’s … acceptable.”
I loved having conversations with people about this kind of stuff.
Grinning at Julian, I set my bowl down on the coffee table and bobbed my head.
“I absolutely agree. Taste and preference are absolutely subjective. I just think it can be frustrating from a consumer standpoint. When you get to a liquor store, see the wall of wines and beers, and everything looks the same.”
“The same could be said for everything nowadays though,” Raina piped up.
“I mean, you go to a bookstore, and the covers of the same genre are all designed to market. How do I know which one is good when they all look so similar? I have to read reviews and go on recommendations, which is the same for beer and wine. But I typically buy with my eyes—a lot of people do.”
Glancing over at her, I gave her a small smile—just for her—and was rewarded with a flush of color to her cheeks.
“Well, let’s just agree that the wine and beer here today is not only free, but also very good. It gets my recommendation. And I don’t care what’s on the label, I care what’s in the bottle.” Bernie lifted his beer into the air and everyone else followed.
“I think that sentiment can be applied to all of life, Bern, my good man,” I said. “We’re not into the label, as long as what’s inside is good.”
“To loving what’s on the inside,” Effie echoed.
“Hear, hear,” we all chorused.
By three-thirty, all the grandparents were passed out in the living room.
Even Lenora softly snored in the over-stuffed chair next to the fire.
That left Raina and me to clean up. Which neither of us seemed to mind.
I stoked the fire while she tidied the dishes, then we stood at the kitchen sink, and I washed as she dried.
“You’re not as much of a jerk as I thought you were,” she said, picking up another bowl from the drying rack.
“No?” I slid her a sideways glance and tried to hide my smile. “Should I pick up the jerkiness so you’re not proven wrong?”
“Ha-ha!” She swatted me with the tea towel, but I had puma-like reflexes and snatched at it before she could do it a second time.
“Ouch!” I pretend moaned. “My tender bicep.”
She snorted and tried again, this time adding a very sweet little giggle as I jumped out of the way while she chased me around the island. I caught the towel mid-flick, but she didn’t let go and that meant I hauled her forward until her chest bumped into mine.
The air froze. Our bodies froze. Time froze.
Even the snoring people in the other room seemed to freeze or fade away until all that remained, as the wind and rain pummeled the outside of the house, was Raina and me and how there was no room between us now.
I felt every one of her inhales against my chest, and I know she felt mine.
Her gaze lifted, and she swallowed. I could count every freckle across her nose and cheeks, I’m sure she could count mine too.
Her tongue darted out, sliding between the seam of her lips, and her nostrils flared as I clutched the tea towel between us, my knuckles firmly against her breasts.
“Don’t up the jerkiness, Jagger. You’re not bad company when you’re not trying to piss me off.” Her words escaped in an exhaled whisper as she blinked those beautiful green eyes right up at mine.
I swallowed and released the tea towel, taking a step back. “Noted. You’re less of an icicle when you relax too.”
Her mouth tugged more to the left, but the smile never quite made it all the way before the spell between was severed and she retreated to the sink again.
The dirty dishes were all clean, and she just had a few more to dry.
So I went to check the fire again and make sure none of the other guests, or Lenora, had slid off the couch, or choked on their own vomit.
It’d been a while since I had to play sober nursemaid to anybody, let alone people old enough to be my parents or grandparents.
“I’m going to go bring in more wood,” I said, having slid into my still-slightly-damp Blundstones and stalking back through the kitchen into the mudroom. “I’ll be right back.”
I welcomed the rush of cold air and raindrops on my heated skin. Things between Raina and I were … weird. Hot, but weird.
A definite shift in our … relationship?—Temporary truce?
Friendship? Situation?—took place when she confided in me about her husband and how abusive he was.
I’m sure that was merely the tip of the iceberg.
Perhaps he had also hit her, or Marco? She just didn’t want to come across as a battered woman and chose to keep that part to herself.
However, abuse was abuse, whether it was done with fists, words, emotions, or actions.
Nobody should ever treat another person the way Josiah treated Raina.
No wonder she was gun-shy about relationships again.
As I loaded wood into the wheelbarrow, I ran through the nature of my relationship with the youngest Vino Vixen over the past few years, and how antagonistic we were toward each other.
Did I give off abuser vibes ? When she saw me at the café that first time, did she see me as a carbon copy of her husband?
Maybe I looked like him and she got triggered?
That wasn’t anything I could control, but it was certainly something I could address.
Just because people looked similar didn’t mean they acted similar.
Labels, versus what was inside and all that.
While the wind still tossed the treetops around like they were no more than rag dolls, the rain seemed to have died down a bit, though it came at me sideways, soaking one side of my hoodie as I steered the wheelbarrow to the back of the mudroom.
Raina was there to greet me, and I passed off the wood to her, neither of us saying anything or making eye contact.
After I returned the wheelbarrow, I joined her at the dining room table, choosing to hang my hoodie up over the woodstove so it would dry.
She let out a noise like she was choking on a chicken bone.
“What?”
“Why are you shirtless?”
I glanced down at my bellybutton. “Because my hoodie got soaked and I want to dry it. It’s warm enough in here. What’s the problem? You’ve seen me without a shirt on before. Am I really that hideous to you?”
“I … stop fishing for compliments, McEvoy. Can you please put a shirt on?”
“I don’t have a shirt.”
Her growl was real this time as she shoved her seat away and stood up, stalking to the sitting room, only to return a moment later, carrying the shirt I wore earlier—the one that chafed me under the arms. “Here. It’s mostly dry.”
I accepted the shirt with a pout. “It’s too small.”
“All the better to showcase your biceps, my dear,” she said dryly, reclaiming her seat at the table as I reluctantly tugged the shirt back over my head. “Why’d you buy one too small anyway?”
“I didn’t know it was too small. It’s XL, like I normally buy. But every manufacturer sizes things differently, and these guys don’t cater to burly lumber-snacks like me.”
She snorted just as I poked my head through the neck hole, still grinning.
“You have one very healthy ego, McEvoy. I’ll give you that.” Shaking her head, she focused on the puzzle, and we worked together in silence for about an hour.
The odd cough, rumble, wheeze, or snort flitted toward us from the snooze crew in the living room, but everyone appeared to still be alive.
Even though things between us seemed mostly resolved, and as easy-breezy as I think we’d ever achieve, we didn’t talk much either.
She was as deeply lost in her own thoughts as I was.
It wasn’t until the darkness outside shrouded us, making the candles and lanterns necessary to get around, that I finally broke the silence.
“You know … it’s not normal the way your husband treated you in bed. Yes, sex is fundamentally, scientifically about procreation, but it’s also about intimacy. About connecting with someone. About pleasure. And the fact that he denied you yours … not all men are like that.”
Her head stayed down, but she did glance at me for a moment.
“Do I look like him?”
“Like who?”
“Your husband. Was seeing me in the café a trigger for you? Do you get …” I swallowed, attempting to dislodge the thick, spiky ball of nerves at the back of my throat. She lifted her gaze back to me. “Do you get abuser vibes from me?”
My fingers crossed themselves under the table before my brain even registered that they were doing it. I didn’t uncross them.
Slowly, enough to make me thoroughly sweat in my too tight shirt, she lifted her head, her focus on me.
“No. You don’t look like Josiah. You also do not give off ‘abuser vibes . ’ If you did, I’d have risked hypothermia and slept in my car last night.
As much as you drive me batshit bananas, I know you’re not a bad guy, Jagger. Josiah was a bad guy.”
I uncrossed my fingers, and my chest deflated as I exhaled the air I’d unconsciously trapped in my lungs waiting for her answer. “Thank you.”
She didn’t smile, but simply pressed her lips together and nodded, putting her head back down.
“As long as the people involved are consenting adults, we shouldn’t judge others for their sexual proclivities. Denying a person pleasure is only fun if you’ve both agreed on it ahead of time. If orgasm deprivation is part of the scene.”
Her cheeks grew pink.
“I, for one, get pleasure from giving pleasure. I enjoy—and get one hell of an ego rub—knowing I was able to please the person I’m with. I like going down on a woman.”
The scoff that came next surprised me.
My brows flew to my hairline. “You don’t believe me?”
Another shifty eye glance slid my way. “No, I don’t.”
“Why not? Because Josiah , the selfish lover, told you so? Newsflash, you little cactus, not all men are the same. And it sounds like your dead husband was wrong about a lot . Not only how to treat a woman, let alone his wife, but also about sex, pleasure, and probably a million other things. Was he a flat-earther too?”
That broke her hard veneer, and her lip twitched—just barely—but I saw it. “He was, actually.”
“Fucking hell.” I rolled my head backward before giving it a shake. “You sure knew how to pick ’em.”
“Didn’t exactly pick him,” she murmured. “Fine, you’re not lying.”
The woman did not look convinced. Leaning forward, so the cute drunks in the sitting room didn’t hear me, I brought my voice down. “Do I need to show you?”
Her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
“Do I need to prove to you that not all men are like your worm-food of a husband, and a lot of us actually like getting our beards soaked as you come all over our faces?”
Her mouth couldn’t drop open any more, even though it looked like she was trying. “I don’t think … this is not …” She glanced toward the sitting room where nothing but snoring echoed toward us. Then she sat back in her seat and moved her knee away from mine under the table. “No, thank you.”
I sat back in my seat as well, shrugged and picked up two puzzle pieces that matched. “No worries. Just offering.”
“Fine. And I’m just declining. Thank you, but no.”
“And I’m just saying, all right then, and no worries.”
We fell back into a tension-filled silence. Her gaze would slide to me, then mine would slide to her, and so the ping-pong eyeball game of sexy chicken was born.
Twenty minutes passed, with my cock hard as a rock against the seam of my sweatpants, before I couldn’t take it any longer.
“You’re thinking about it,” I teased. Even in the low light of the candles and lantern, I could tell all of her visible skin was flushed bright pink.
I wanted to push my face into her neck, feel that pretty heat all over me.
We were close enough that I could even see the pebbles of gooseflesh rising across her upper arms and across her chest. It was all I could do, in that moment, to keep myself from leaning over and curling my tongue over those tiny raised hairs.
“So are you,” she shot back, catapulting me out of my debased thoughts. She couldn’t look at me.
I cleared my throat and tossed on one of my token grins. “Of course I am. Duh.”
Her smirk just had my dick getting thicker and those filthy thoughts returning.
I swallowed and was about to say something—I don’t actually know what—when voices in the living room saved the day.
“It’s dark,” came a gravelly old man’s voice.
“Shit,” came another.
“My head hurts,” said Effie, or maybe it was Cynthia.
“What time is it?” asked Julian, his soft Southern accent setting him apart from the rest.
Raina and I both pushed out of our seats at the same time, catching each other’s gaze before we focused ahead and made our way to the sitting room. “Well, good morning, sleepyheads,” I greeted all the slowly rousing grandparents. “How are we feeling?”
“Like I just licked the bottom of a fish tank,” said Effie, smacking her lips together.
“I’ll get you all some water,” Raina offered, ducking off to the kitchen.
“Did we all pass out?” Lenora asked. “Oh my god! How unprofessional of me.” She fixed her curls, then pulled off her purple-rimmed cat eye glasses to give the lens a wipe on the hem of her blouse.
I shook my head and gave her boney shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It’s all good. We held down the fort. You needed to let your hair down and destress a bit.”
“Well, we certainly did that,” Bernie chimed in right before burping. “Tastes like chili.”
Raina returned a moment later with a tray of water glasses. “How are we all feeling?”
“Ready for round two,” Julian said, reaching forward and pouring more wine into his glass. “Hair of the dog that bit you and all that.” He met Raina’s gaze. “You wouldn’t happen to have any more of that delicious fried bread, would you, dear?”
Raina grinned. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Then she was gone back to the kitchen, leaving me with the yawning crew of hungover guests, and Julian, who was ready for round two.
Would Raina take me up on my offer?
That’s when I remembered my boner and quickly turned away from the crowd. Fuck. Could they see it in the dark? Was it that noticeable in my pajama pants?
Raina Aaronson had me flustered, and I didn’t get flustered.
I didn’t like the feeling. I was the person who flustered others, not the other way around.
And yet, when she returned five minutes later, with the cast-iron skillet and a big blob of bread dough, I’d give anything for her to fluster me again.
And again.
And again.
And never stop.