Chapter 22 #2
“I was talking about the donkey,” she said.
“Oh. Right. Quick question. Can someone die from embarrassment?”
“Answering as a mother of three boys who decided to host a fart contest into the unattended microphone onstage before their sister’s elementary school choral concert? Unfortunately no.”
“Good to know. Ow.” I drew in a sharp breath between my teeth as a fresh wave of pain radiated up my arm.
Pepe let out an eardrum-rattling bray and tip-tapped in place on the asphalt.
“He’s worried about you,” Pep observed. “Donkey again. But also probably my son.”
“I didn’t mean to spend the night. I woke up and then did the least responsible thing possible as usual. I panicked.”
“Gage consistently puts the rest of us to shame by always doing the most responsible thing. It’s kind of nice to see he had a brush with fun for once,” Pep said.
The door opened behind me and a fully dressed Gage, looking annoyed enough to commit murder, clomped down the porch steps. He grimly shouldered my purse and held a hand out to me.
I thought about not taking it. Look what had happened when I allowed him to put his hands—and mouth and penis—all over me.
Then I thought about what a big baby I was being.
So we’d had sex. Awesome, amazing, mind-blowing, body-exhausting sex.
So what if I fell asleep and drooled all over his muscly chest?
It didn’t mean anything. I could touch the man’s hand, for Pete’s sake, and not sign up for a devastating breakup. Right?
“Do you want me to carry you to the car?” he asked when I didn’t move.
I took his hand and pointedly ignored the electrical current that went straight to my nipples while he pulled me to my feet.
“I’ll just go give Nana her breakfast and then take my wayward donkey home,” Pep said. “Let me know what Dr. Ace says, Zoey.”
I nodded.
“Thanks, Mom,” Gage said. “Here, put your arm through this.” He’d fashioned a necktie into a sling and used it to cradle my wrist to my chest.
We didn’t speak a word on the drive into town, except for Gage’s terse phone call to wake up the still sleeping doctor.
The morning sun was low in the sky, warring with the clouds for supremacy.
At least it was early enough I didn’t have to worry about the entire town witnessing my walk of shame into the clinic with my grumpy one-night stand.
The clinic was in a small, tidy building on Lake Drive, painfully close to the apartment I’d been attempting to escape to. Gage pulled to a stop at the curb.
“Isn’t there a parking lot in the back?” I asked, surveying the street for people with big mouths and a penchant for gossip.
Gage turned in his seat to look at me. “Zoey, you’re starting to make me think you regret last night.”
“I definitely do not regret the sex part,” I insisted.
“Then what the hell’s with the failed Houdini act?”
“There isn’t supposed to be this much conversation after a one-night stand.”
“Maybe you’ve been having one-night stands with assholes,” he pointed out.
I was saved from answering by a pajama-bottomed Dr. Ace unlocking the front door and waving to us.
“You don’t have to come in,” I said hastily as Gage opened his door.
“Stop being a baby,” he said as he got out.
Literally adding insult to injury, I got the seat belt tangled in my makeshift sling and needed Gage’s help extricating myself. On a long-suffering sigh, he put me on my feet on the sidewalk, and I scurried like a rat on trash night toward the building.
“I’m so sorry for bothering you, Dr. Ace. It’s probably nothing,” I insisted. The good doctor was wearing checkered pajama pants, a Howard sweatshirt, and suede house slippers.
“She fell down a short flight of stairs and landed on asphalt. I think she might have a sprain or a break,” Gage explained.
“It’s nothing,” I insisted again, then did absolutely nothing to help my cause by screeching when Dr. Ace’s cool fingers prodded my wrist.
“Hmm. It certainly sounds like something,” he said. “Come on back, and we’ll have a look-see.”
“I can’t believe I broke my wrist,” I muttered when we left the clinic.
“I can’t believe you broke your wrist trying to sneak out after having sex with me.” Gage said this cheerfully around the lollipop he’d pilfered from Dr. Ace’s front desk.
I hissed out a breath through my teeth. “When you say it like that, it sounds pathetic.”
“That’s what I was going for,” he said, slinging his arm around my shoulder. “If that brace doesn’t fit, my parents have an inventory of them at home. Between me and my siblings, we managed to break or sprain at least one of every body part growing up.”
“Every body part? Really? How about your penis?”
He sighed. “No, Zoey, I never sprained my penis.”
“Sorry. I’m trying not to spiral into feeling sorry for myself. What am I going to do? I need my hand for stuff.” I waved the bulky brace in his face.
“Get in the bush.”
“Excuse me?” I was sure I heard him wrong.
But Gage was pushing me behind the large shrub outside Dr. Ace’s front door.
“What are you—”
But he was looking past me. “Mornin’, Ms. Patsy.”
I peered through the foliage to spy a lady in a matching sweat suit with her white hair piled on top of her head in an impressive beehive style. She tilted her huge wraparound sunglasses down her nose and scanned Gage.
“You’re out and about early today,” she noted, squinting at him.
“You know what they say about early birds and worms, Ms. Patsy. You heading to the workout at the lake?” he asked.
She held up her hot-pink wrist weights. “You know it!”
I shook my head in the shrubbery. Of course the man knew what random townsfolk did with their Sunday mornings.
“Well, you have fun doing whatever it is you’re doing,” Ms. Patsy said pointedly.
“Will do. You have yourself a good day,” Gage said, sending her off with a wave.
I waited until Ms. Patsy disappeared. “Can I come out of the bush now?”
Gage helped me out of the greenery. “Sorry. She’s just got the biggest mouth in the tri-county area. Thankfully, she’s also got the worst vision. If she’d seen you, the rumors about us would already be flying.”
“You pushed me in a bush.”
“To save your reputation.”
I scoffed as I brushed leaves and twigs off me. “Mine or yours?”
He opened the truck door for me with a charming grin. “Does it really matter?”
I sighed as I climbed onto the seat. “Not really.”
Gage slid in behind the wheel. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get some breakfast.”
“I don’t know what kind of one-night stands you’re used to, but you don’t typically go out to breakfast together the next morning,” I pointed out.
“I’m willing to bet most one-night stands don’t involve chauffeuring your partner to the doctor. But since you’re my first, you can explain the rules to me over breakfast.”
Great. I’d taken the one-night-stand virginity of the man. He was definitely going to be a problem.
“I don’t want breakfast,” I said, pouting. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and list all the ways I’d screwed up last night…and this morning.
“Tough shit, sweetheart. Because I’m behind the wheel, and I could use about a gallon of coffee and a platter of bacon.”
“I guess bacon doesn’t sound awful,” I admitted.
“We’ll talk over bacon,” he said cheerfully.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I said defensively.
Instead of answering me, he cranked up the radio to a peppy country song and steered us out of town.
I was full-blown starving twenty minutes later when he pulled into the parking lot of what looked like a 1950s diner on the side of the highway.
Gage was already out of the truck when I started digging through my purse with my good hand, looking for a hair tie and my lip gloss. I flipped the sun visor down and took a peek in the mirror.
I winced. Yep. I looked exactly like I’d spent the whole night having wild sex only to wake up, fall down, and fracture a goddamn bone. My curls were a snarled mess. Last night’s eye makeup was smudged around my lash line. And if I wasn’t mistaken, that was a hickey where my neck met my shoulder.
I was classy AF.
My door opened.
“I’m almost done,” I said, hastily smearing lip gloss over my mouth.
“Take your time. I’m only wasting away here since you made me burn all my calories last night.”
“I can’t go in there with sex hair,” I said, pointing to my unruly crown.
Wordlessly, he handed me a Bishop Brothers Construction hat.
I wanted to be annoyed at his ability to predict and meet my needs. But it had sure worked out in my favor last night. I jammed it down on my head, wishing I had more time to compose myself.
“You need another minute, or are you good to go?” he asked, reading my mind.
“How did you—what makes you think I need more time?”
“That thing we talked about last night. You know, before we got naked and started trading orgasms?”
“Oh, that thing.” Forgetting I’d been diagnosed with ADHD was probably a hallmark for ADHD.
“Bingo,” he said, tugging the bill of my cap. “People with ADHD can struggle with transitions like getting out of the car.”
“I knew that,” I lied.
“Come on. I’m starving.” He took my good hand, and I followed him into the diner like a hungry little puppy.
To the credit of the hot guy who’d spent hours making me scream his name, Gage waited until our food arrived before ambushing me with “the talk.”
“You tried to run out on me this morning,” he said conversationally as I shoved the first flaky bite of waffle into my mouth.
“Mmmph.”
“Did I do something that made you feel like you needed to escape like a recently freed hostage?”
“Of course not,” I said, grimacing at the thought. “You were a perfect gentleman even when you weren’t.”
He cut a neat and tidy bite of his vegetable-stuffed omelet. “Good. Now that that’s settled, what the fuck, Zoey? You’d rather throw yourself down a flight of stairs than sleep with me?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You broke a bone trying to get away from me.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic,” I complained, dumping a pint of syrup over my remaining waffles.
“Disco,” he said.
“Oh, come on.”
“Either you admit it, or I’ll tell you what I think happened,” he warned.
“This should be good. Be my guest.” I snagged a strip of crispy bacon and prepared to tell him what a big dumb idiot he was.
“I think you woke up feeling vulnerable, and that scared you. So the first thing that popped into your mind was escape.”
The bacon stuck in my throat, so I washed it down with what I hoped looked like a nonchalant hit of coffee.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he said.
“You’re wrong,” I squeaked unconvincingly.
He took a smug bite of his stupid wheat toast.
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. Fine. I don’t spend the night. Ever. It’s too…”
“Intimate?” he guessed.
“I was going to say inconvenient, but whatever.”
“You’ve never spent the night with a man?”
“Not since my college boyfriend, who ripped my still-beating heart out of my chest and stomped on it. He was the first and last.”
“Zoey, I’m not out to hurt you. I had a great time last night. I understand that you’re not looking for anything serious. And I’m up for you using me for sex again if and when you decide you can handle it.”
“First of all, I can handle using you for sex,” I insisted.
“Yeah, because that was so obvious this morning when you were writhing around in pain on my driveway.”
“It was the damn donkey’s fault!”
He gave me one of his charming, amused half smiles that made me want to punch him in the face.
I glued my eyes to my plate and tried to figure out how to carve my waffle stack into bite-size pieces with only one hand. “So you didn’t hate having casual sex?”
Gage took my plate and utensils from me. “No, Zoey. I didn’t hate having casual sex with you. As evidenced by the fact that I wasn’t the one who woke up hysterical,” he pointed out as he cut my breakfast into bite-size pieces for me.
“I woke up disoriented. I’m allowed to indulge in a moment of panic.”
He slid the plate back to me. “If I were less of a gentleman and someone who was more concerned with being right than being kind, I’d point out that it sounds like you were catching feelings and you panicked.”
I threw a packet of Splenda at him with my good hand. “You wish. I am the queen of casual sex. I’m allergic to feelings,” I announced haughtily.
“Well, speaking as one of your loyal subjects, thank you for introducing me to the joys of casual sex. It was exactly what I needed last night. You were exactly what I needed.”
I pointed my fork at him. “That doesn’t sound very casual.”
“This is the lightest I’ve felt in a while. And I wouldn’t mind feeling it a little longer. If you’re up for it.”
“Are you suggesting a ‘landlord-tenant with benefits’ arrangement?” I teased.
“The lawyer in me doesn’t like the sound of that. I’m suggesting we continue to provide stress relief for each other with no additional strings or expectations.”
I did my best to chew while telegraphing my suspicion with my face. “How do I know you didn’t fall in love with me somewhere around orgasm number three and are now plotting to keep me all to yourself?”
“Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
“Seriously, Gage,” I said, pointing my fork at him. “This whole new ‘I just wanna have fun’ leaf you’ve turned over isn’t sustainable. Not for someone who organizes his socks by color and pattern.”
He was going to get hurt. Dabbling in this kind of casual fun never went well for serious people.
“When were you in my sock drawer?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Look, I’m not saying Fun Me is here to stay. But it’s what I need right now. I’m not gonna push you into something you can’t handle. So think about it and let me know.”
I took another bite of waffle and wondered if somehow sex had resulted in a Freaky Friday situation where I was now the responsible one and Gage was the impulsive troublemaker.
Hazel: Will you come over early before my virtual interview to tell me my top half looks nice?
Me: Of course. Let’s make a breakfast out of it because I have some…news.
Hazel: What kind of news? Tell me now!
Me: It’s more in-person news. There are visual aids.