Chapter 29 #2
I didn’t eat on my couch. Not that there was anything wrong with that.
But wasn’t that why tables had been invented?
When I was in a hurry, I’d eat standing up over the sink.
But I didn’t take entrées with fucking marinara sauce into the living room where who the hell knows what might happen. At least I hadn’t until tonight.
“Couch and TV,” she said, giving my arm a tug and bouncing on her toes. “Come on!”
I paused to grab utensils and an entire roll of paper towels, then followed her past my perfectly good dining table and into the living room. Nana joined us and body-slammed herself onto the dog bed in front of the coffee table.
It felt like a dance back and forth between the intimacy we’d created through sex and actually getting to know each other. I was working backward with Zoey. Usually I knew things like what a woman’s goals were and what her favorite dessert was before we had sex.
“What’s your middle name?” I asked as we settled into spots on the couch.
“Berniece. After an aunt nobody liked.” She tucked her feet up under her and wriggled back against the cushions. “You need food pillows,” she observed with a frown.
“What the hell is a food pillow?”
“It’s a small pillow that fits in your lap. You put your plate on it.” She demonstrated with a beige cushion. “But it should be a dark color so the food stains don’t show.” I stared at her dumbly, and she grinned. “I am really breaking your brain right now, aren’t I?”
“I’m trying to open myself to new experiences,” I said evenly as I watched her Pyrex container list dangerously to the side.
“Well, you’re doing it wrong. First of all, you need to put your feet up.” Zoey deposited her dinner on the coffee table with only a few splatters escaping onto the wood. “Here.”
She grabbed one of the denser pillows and put it on top of the coffee table. Then she dragged it closer to the couch.
“Put your feet up here,” she said, patting the pillow.
I rolled my eyes but did as she instructed.
“Good. Now we just need to build you a little nest,” she said, stuffing pillows up against both of my sides and adding another one to my lap. “See? It’s like you’re being hugged by your couch.”
She wasn’t wrong. Had I been sitting on furniture incorrectly all this time? What else could this woman teach me?
She took a step back and observed before nodding her approval. “You need more throw pillows for this to work. And some blankets. I need a blanket for TV time.”
“If you’re cold, I can turn the heat up,” I offered as she handed me my dinner.
“Gage, Gage, Gage, you ridiculously practical sex god. Blankets aren’t about being cold. They’re about being cozy.”
“How silly of me.”
She returned to her corner of the couch and angled herself so that her legs stretched out in my direction. “That’s better. Now, how do we fight it out for remote control domination?”
“You’re the guest. You get control,” I said, handing her the remote.
“I was pretty sure you were going to say that, so we’re definitely watching New Girl reruns.”
“‘Reruns’ as in you’ve already watched it?”
“I can’t watch new TV when I eat. I need to focus on my food,” she said as if it were the most logical statement to make.
“Of course you do.”
She expertly scrolled through my TV apps and my lists. “Hmm, a lot of documentaries in here,” she noted. “What do you watch for fun?”
I gestured at the TV. “Documentaries.”
She swiveled her head in my direction and let out a heavy sigh. “We have so much work to do here. You can’t unwind after a long, emotional week with Greed Stricken: The Story of How an American Billionaire Destroyed Thousands.”
“It’s educational, okay?”
She gave me a thumbs-down and made a fart noise with her mouth that had the dog’s head poking up over the coffee table. “I’m starting to think you need me for more than just kick-ass sex.”
I was starting to think the same. But it was the weekend, and I would worry about that later.
We ate and watched her show, which was admittedly more entertaining than the docuseries on European pirates that had been my evening entertainment for the week.
Then she handed the remote back and demanded we watch something I liked to watch, so we sat through a new upload from a farm I followed on YouTube.
Zoey, to her credit, survived the twenty-eight minutes on tractor repair without complaint.
“Tell me something about you,” I said when the video ended.
She tapped her chin theatrically. “Well, I really enjoy your penis.”
I hit her in the chest with my food pillow. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“What do you want me to say? You already know a lot. You know what I do for a living, who my best friend is, what my favorite wine is, why I’m afraid of dogs.
And you’re one of, like, three people in the entire world who knows I’m on a new prescription that gives me hope for the first time in my life but also makes me feel like some kind of amateur drug dealer from a made-for-TV movie when I try to fill it. What more do you want?”
I searched my brain. “When do you fill your gas tank? And please don’t say after you run out.”
She laughed and kicked my thigh with her bare foot. I captured it with my hand and pressed my thumb into the arch. Her laugh turned to a purr.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I panic fill it when it hits three-quarters of a tank.
I went on this summer road trip with a few friends in college.
At the time, I was the only one with a driver’s license.
I ran out of gas three times because I kept forgetting to check the gauge.
By the time we made it to the Outer Banks, no one but Hazel was speaking to me. I was scarred for life.”
“Are all your stories so damn sad?” I asked.
She wriggled her toes in my grip. “They used to make me sad too. But now I know there was a reason for most of it, and that helps a lot. And no. They’re not all sad.
I once broke onto the Rockefeller Center ice rink at three o’clock in the morning and drank champagne straight from the bottle while skating. ”
“You can ice-skate?”
“Not well. But I was fast enough to evade the security guard. My turn to ask you something. You’re a lawyer and a contractor. You could work anywhere in either of those professions. Did you ever want to move away from here, have your own life?”
“I wish I could say yes, because that would be more interesting. But I loved this place from the first moment I saw it. I was pretty young when I came here. But one thing I do remember is pulling up to Bishop Farm on a spring evening with the sun setting over the fields. There was a bright red tractor sitting in front of the barn, and I asked the social worker if this was heaven.”
“Jeez, Gage,” she choked, fanning her hands in front of her misty eyes. “Now who’s the one with the emotional stories?”
I squeezed her foot and grinned. “I’ve loved Story Lake from the first second I saw it. It’s like I recognized it. One look, and I just knew it was home.”
“As you know, I had a very different first impression. Have you ever felt that way about anything else? Like you just see it and you know it’s meant for you?” she asked.
I thought back to that day, that roof, all those copper curls.
“Not sure,” I evaded. “What’s your favorite color?”
She screwed up her face in thought. “It would have to be purple. Like an amethyst. You?”
“Green.”
“Yeah but what kind of green? Puke green? Slime green? Mold green?”
“What shade of green would you say your eyes are?” I asked.
Those emerald eyes heated with fire, and then she was sliding her foot from my grasp and crawling across the couch to me.
“That was very, very smooth.” She said it like an accusation as she straddled my lap.
My hands found her hips as if they had a mind of their own. “We should probably…talk.”
She linked her hands behind my neck. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Sex. I mean, us. Having sex. More sex.” She was short-circuiting my brain, and I liked it.
“I’m happy to talk about us having sex.”
“What else are we doing? Besides sex, I mean.”
“Having dinner?” she offered. “Doing laundry?”
“I know you don’t want to date, Zo. And I respect that. But I also don’t want either of us to be doing this with other people right now.”
“Hmm, monogamous casual sex,” she mused wickedly. “I guess that would be convenient.”
She was shifting her hips, rocking against me in a slow, logic-destroying rhythm. “I’m all about convenience,” I said through gritted teeth.
She ceased her motions and grinned. “No, you’re not. You’re about plans, calculations, next steps. You have concerns. What are they?”
“How long are we doing this? Do we go out in public? Or do we sneak around? What do we tell people when they ask about us? Will you spend the night, or are you going to be sneaking out and breaking bones every time the sun comes up?”
“Have you ever once played anything by ear?” she teased.
Thinking with the warm, willing Zoey in my lap was nearly impossible. “Last week, I didn’t feel like eating the turkey burger I’d planned on so I made up an excuse to stop by my parents’ at dinnertime so they’d have to feed me,” I confessed.
“You’re adorable.”
I frowned as I tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “I don’t think that’s generally considered a compliment for men, Berniece.”
Her grin went through me like warm honey.
“I bet you’ll take great care of a wife someday,” she whispered.
“I’ll take great care of you right now,” I promised. And then her mouth was on mine, and every concern I had went right out of my mind.