Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
SATURDAY MORNING, I’M CHATTING WITH Millie on speakerphone while I wolf down a bowl of cereal before Alex gets here.
“A road trip?” she squeals.
“Calm down,” I say around a mouthful of Fruity Pebbles.
“Don’t you get it? A road trip is like throwing lighter fluid on a campfire.”
I pause mid-bite. “How so?”
“Well, besides being glued together for hours—”
“Which may be awful,” I interject.
“—there’s the vibrations from the car against your … nether regions …” she continues without missing a beat. “Remember our trip to Vegas last year?” she asks smugly.
I run my hand down my face. “Why would you bring that up?”
“To jog your memory in case you forgot. Road trips make you hornier than college students at spring break.”
Damn. She’s right. As soon as we checked into our room, Millie was kind enough to leave so I could have twenty minutes of alone time.
This is bad. Really, really bad.
“I say lean into it.” Her voice crackles through the speaker, and I roll my eyes.
“How? We’re literally driving straight through to Cain and then flipping a U turn and heading back.
We’re not going to be horny, we’re going to be exhausted and bitchy.
” I stab the spoon into my cereal bowl. “Plus, why would I hook up with him? It’s not like I’d be able to finish.
It would just leave me with even more extreme blue balls all the way home. ”
“I’d be willing to bet my entire wedding fund that the reason you’ve never gotten off with anyone has been user error. Theirs, not yours,” she clarifies. I’m about to protest, but it’s hard to argue when she’s stating facts. “Let’s see, there was Drew …”
I chuckle at that. I met Drew at a faculty mixer last year. He thought he was God’s gift to women, when in reality, he was anything but. He used to finger me like a woodpecker.
“Jason …” She gags dramatically.
“Yeah, Jason sucked.” A short-lived grad school mistake.
He gave me the nickname Skittles. Not because of my love of the fruity candy, but because the night I was finally ready to have sex with him, I was wearing a camisole with no bra.
He said I was so flat-chested, it looked like someone had dropped two Skittles down my shirt.
He tried to recover by telling me he couldn’t wait to taste my rainbow. I’m still pissed that I let him.
“And let’s not forget Kevin …”
Kevin. My college boyfriend. He had that All-American boyish charm. We dated a whole year before I was finally ready to let him deflower me. According to him, that was the equivalent of eternity in college years. “Kevin wasn’t so bad.”
“Yes he was,” she snaps. “He wouldn’t even buy you tampons. What was it he said?” There’s tapping on the other end of the phone, and then she lowers her voice, doing her impression of him, “Babe, I can’t risk getting caught buying those. The guys would never let me live it down.”
“I forgot about that,” I grumble. “Okay, but he was also barely twenty-one.”
“I bet Alex would’ve bought you tampons in a heartbeat,” she says slyly. “Even at twenty-one.”
A long sigh escapes me. She doesn’t know the half of it. Reflexively, I grasp my bare arms, almost able to feel the soft fabric of his fleecy hoodie engulfing me. “Do you need … stuff?” He was ready to get me a tampon that very moment.
“I really think it would be different with Alex,” she says, and I can picture her brown eyes scheming with delight. “You’ve been in love with him since high school.”
“Millie …” I draw her name out in exasperation. “First of all, that was infatuation, not love. And you say it like it’s been continuous, which it has not. Second—”
“Bullshit,” she says easily.
“What?” I set my bowl in the sink and add a squirt of dish soap, then turn on the faucet, letting the suds build.
“I said, bullshit,” she repeats, drawing out the word to make sure I hear it. “As much as you want to pretend you’ve been over him, we both know it’s bullshit.”
I stifle my scream, jamming the dish brush into my bowl and scrubbing way too vigorously. “Why do you keep harping on this?”
“Because what if the real reason you can’t come with anyone is because you’ve been hung up on Alex?”
I let out an annoyed huff. “That doesn’t make sense in any capacity.”
“Think about it. You grew up with all these … rules,” she says with disgust. “After you lost your virginity junior year, you cried for days, saying Jesus hated you.”
A full body shudder ripples through me. As much as I’ve tried to banish that memory from existence, Millie was there and witnessed it firsthand.
“‘Do you think the Lord will ever forgive me?’” she says in an overexaggerated whine.
“Okay …” I’d love to tell her it wasn’t that bad, but it most definitely was.
“Look how far you’ve come. You’re not that pathetic girl anymore.”
Pathetic? Thanks, Mil. Something resembling a growl leaves my throat.
“You know what I mean. You are a kick-ass sex professor, for fuck’s sake! How many students have you empowered?”
I sigh.
“Come on, how many?” she prods.
In spite of everything, a swell of pride fills my chest. “A lot.”
“More than a lot. A shit ton,” she boasts. “It’s time you let go of the guilt.”
“I have,” I say assuredly. “Really.” I grasp my necklace—an Art Deco uterus with My body, My choice engraved on the back. A gift from Millie when I agreed to intern with her at the campus health center senior year. The experience that propelled me from a meek, naive girl to the woman I am now.
There’s shuffling on her end of the line, and I can picture her settling into her fluffy couch.
The one she took with her when she moved out.
“Look, you owe it to yourself to indulge in this fantasy you’ve had since high school.
Do it for fifteen-year-old June. She was probably just as horny as you are now. ”
I snort. She was. And she only had eyes for Alex.
And so does thirty-two-year-old June.
Ugh.
I drag my hand down my face. “What am I supposed to do, tell him to pull over and fuck him in the car? We both know that would be a disaster.”
Three knocks sound at the door.
My breath escapes me in a horrified gasp. Or maybe that’s my soul leaving my body.
“I gotta go. He’s here,” I choke out, ending the call.
Dear god, did he hear me?
I pace the kitchen, my throat constricting further with each step. What the fuck is he doing here? He was supposed to text me when he pulled up so I could meet him at the car.
The car I will most definitely not be fucking him in.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Wait. I’ve got it.
I tiptoe to the bedroom as fast and as quietly as possible, then stomp back out to the living room.
“Be right there, just gotta turn off the TV,” I call through the door.
Wow, June. That was unbelievable. Someone call the Academy and get this lady an Oscar.
With a deep exhale, I plaster on a smile and swing the door open.
But my jaw slackens at the sight of Alex.
He’s not wearing his academic clothes or his athletic gear.
This outfit actually makes my brain glitch.
The hunter green sweater draws out the flecks of emerald in his hazel eyes, and all I want to do is run my fingers over the soft knit fabric—along his shoulders, down his arms, over his wrists.
I guess sweater weather is officially here after all.
A voice inside me screams eyes up, and I snap my gaze to his. He gives me a playful grin and my heart stutters. But when his eyebrows lift in question, I break out of my trance and step aside so he can enter the apartment.
“I hardly recognize it in here without all the posters.” Alex glances at the glass table. “Or His Majesty.”
A lighthearted chuckle breaks out of my chest. “You remembered.”
“How could I forget? Tina Jeffries practically rammed it down my throat that day.”
I face-palm. “Sorry about that. She’s really … passionate.”
He leans against the wall, crossing one leg over the other. Voice husky, he says, “I think I proved I could handle myself.”
Holy shit. Is he … flirting?
Heat engulfs me, and before I can stop it, a horrible, high-pitched laugh lurches up my throat. Oh, god. How on earth am I going to get through the next six hours? I think back to what Millie said about my nether regions, and my body does an involuntary Kegel.
One thing is certain. I’m in deep shit.