Chapter 9
This was exactly how one-night stands and potentially great love stories were ended before they even began: family interference.
Not that Amy thought she and Harrison were a great love story, but she really liked him, and she wanted to know him, and she was, surprisingly, very keen on kissing him. He was a handsome man. She was secretly thrilled to know that all her parts seemed to notice and perked up at the prospect.
So of course her family had interrupted at the worst possible moment.
Poor Ethan. She didn’t know what she’d done to produce such an anxious, sensitive kid, but there he was.
He’d called, very nearly in tears, because Jonah had erased the Minecraft world Ethan had built on Ryan’s computer.
Amy couldn’t even begin to understand the intricacies of Minecraft and the worlds they created, but when she asked Ethan why Jonah would do that, Ethan said he claimed it was an accident.
It probably was an accident. Jonah had never shown any desire to hurt Ethan, but he just happened to be at the clumsy, self-centered stage, where his inability to think beyond his nose resulted in poor decisions, and his big body was always knocking into something and breaking it.
She didn’t blame Jonah, she blamed Ryan.
Where was he in all this? Why did she have to field the distraught, I-lost-my-Minecraft-world call?
When Ethan paused to take a breath, Amy asked, “Hey, where’s your dad?”
Ethan sniffed. “He and Jonah went to get burgers.”
“Oh. You didn’t want to go?”
“No, Mom, I have to start over! Do you know how long it’s going to take me? I’ve been working on that world for years.”
“Well, look on the bright side,” she tried. “You can build an even better world now.”
Ethan sighed wearily. “You don’t get it.”
No, she didn’t get it. As Ethan went on about how hard it was to re-create a world, and how Jonah didn’t seem really sorry, Amy plotted Ryan’s death by a pack of jackals.
When Ethan seemed to have calmed, Amy eased off the phone, then looked at her watch.
It was a quarter after nine. She’d look desperate if she went rushing back to the living room to see if he was still there.
Even though she felt a little desperately eager, she knew from a few angsty occasions from her teenage years that she should not show it.
Anyway, that highly charged moment had been obliterated by the ring of her phone. It would be tough to re-create.
With a sigh, Amy hauled herself up and went into the bathroom to start a bath.
She’d brought an arsenal of bath bombs and selected Winter Wonderland.
She went back into the bedroom and heard a familiar thud on the other side of the bedroom door.
She opened it and watched Duchess smell her way inside, wobble to her dog bed, and circle several times before dropping into a perfect half-moon, down for the night.
Amy returned to her bath, disrobed, stepped into the delicious heat of water and fragrant winter scent, then sank down to her chin.
She thought about what had happened tonight.
How close she’d come to kissing a man other than her ex-husband.
How, amazingly, she’d been ready to go all in—she could feel her inhibitions evaporating like a summer fog. She really liked this guy, didn’t she?
But so what if she did? What could come of it?
Amy groaned and dunked her head under the water a moment.
What a stupid question to ask herself—she sounded like someone’s grandma.
When did she get so cautious? When she was twenty, she damn sure didn’t walk around wondering what could come from a hookup.
She was more into the experience, going in headfirst, lured by the physical sensations and staying for all the fantasies she’d create in her head.
But somewhere along the way, she’d built a wall of inhibitions.
What was it about being in her fifties that made her such a stick in the mud?
Well. Besides that niggly little fear of being hurt again. That pain was so dull now that she tended to forget about it. But the abstract still existed, and it scared her a little. What she hadn’t known at twenty was how bad love could hurt.
In addition, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit to herself that there were more practical considerations, too.
Like if she didn’t get hurt, and things sort of progressed, that didn’t mean she would be okay doing anyone’s laundry.
That’s where it always went, didn’t it? Meet a guy, fall in love, live for the honeymoon phase, and the next thing you know, you’re doing laundry and someone is asking what’s for dinner.
At least that’s the vibe she’d picked up from her two terrible Bumble matches.
She was beginning to annoy herself. Here she was with a golden opportunity, and her brain was working overtime to find ways to shut it down. If she was going to embrace the bohemian artist aesthetic, she ought to embrace it fully and stop worrying about all the what-ifs.
Once, she’d made the mistake of trying to talk to her brother about the whole dating-at-this-age thing.
She and Kevin were close in age and had similar experiences in failed relationships.
They’d been sitting on the back porch, her with a glass of wine, him with a beer, watching Jonah mow the lawn.
It was quite entertaining to watch the man-child try and negotiate a hill with a mower.
Amy brought the dating thing up, and after Kevin razzed her about finally coming to Don Juan for advice, he at least tried to take the topic seriously.
“Here’s the deal,” she said. “I don’t know how to get back into the world.”
“The world? The whole world?”
“Yes, the whole world,” Amy said. “The world past the fence here. I don’t know how to, like, date. I have all this baggage.”
Kevin had looked confused. “What do you mean, you have all this baggage?”
“You know,” Amy had said. “A divorce under my belt? Two kids? You must understand—you have baggage, too.”
“Me?” Her brother had seemed stunned that she would lump him in with the other baggage handlers. “What baggage do I have?”
“Well, for starters, you live with your sister.”
“Only for a little while,” he said defensively, pointing the neck of his bottle at her. “That’s not baggage, that’s a sudden change of plans.”
Amy had stared in disbelief at him, wondering if he really believed that or was just an idiot. “You’ve been here four months and counting, Kev.”
“I know, I just…I thought we were going to talk about your bad Bumble dates. What was the matter with them?”
Amy chewed her lip a moment as she thought about it. “I don’t know, exactly. They just weren’t my type.”
Kevin sighed. He took a swig of his beer. “I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this, but what is your type?”
“Well, I like funny. And smart.” She paused. “And he should probably be from Texas. I’m just thinking of logistics here. But not the part of Texas that’s ultraconservative. More toward the cities.”
Kevin stared at her.
“What?”
“Logistics is not a type. You’re really going to start with geography? Come on, Amy, everyone has a type.”
“Do you?”
“Absolutely.”
“What is it?”
“Female.”
“Very funny. What else?”
“I like blondes. And frankly, I like big butts, I cannot lie,” he said, mimicking the rap song. He grinned.
Amy glared at him. “Gross. And for the record, body parts are not a type.”
“Beg to differ. What’s so gross about it? I can’t help what I like.”
“Well, A, I didn’t need to know that about my baby brother, and B, why are men so fixated on bodies? Like that’s all that matters. And now I can’t even be in the same room with you and other people without hearing you say you like big butts.”
“Whatever,” he said with a flick of his wrist. “Are you telling me that women aren’t attracted to the physical? Because if you are, I call bullshit.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Okay, I told you what I like. Now you tell me.”
She pondered it and said, “Shoulders. Arms.”
“Told you,” he muttered before he drank more beer.
She liked shoulders a little broader than average. Muscular arms. A nice smile. “But the difference is that the best of shoulders look terrible if the guy is an ass. I don’t think you care what sort of woman she is if she meets your other requirements.”
“Not true,” Kevin said. “If she’s a nag, it doesn’t matter how big her butt is. What makes a guy an ass, according to you?”
“You know,” she said. “Interest in only one thing, for starters. Thinking he is the expert on any topic by virtue of being male.” She visibly shuddered.
Kevin laughed at her.
“You think I’m kidding. There’s a man at work, he heads up the production side of things.
Recently, we hired a woman to do the invoicing.
She came with experience, knew exactly what she was doing.
But this guy, who has never done invoicing, kept stopping by her desk to explain invoicing to her.
So I called him into my office, and explained to him that he was mansplaining, and that he needed to stop. ”
“And?” Kevin asked.
Amy couldn’t help but laugh. “He took the opportunity to explain to me what mansplaining was. He said I had the definition wrong, because what I was describing was his wanting to help. He is a prime example of a man who could have the most perfect shoulders in the world and still be an ass.”
“Okay,” Kevin said, nodding. “What if the mansplainer was filthy rich?”
Amy glared at him. “Do you really think your sister is that shallow?”
Kevin’s eyes narrowed right back at her. “I’ll rephrase the question. What if a filthy rich man thinks he knows how to do invoicing? Would you listen?”
“Honestly, Kevin!” Amy glanced away. “That would of course help a lot.”
Kevin had laughed, and their talk had drifted from dating to how badly Jonah was mowing the lawn, then rating Jonah’s complaints about having to mow the lawn on a scale of one to ten. They mutually agreed that the grass tickling him between his toes was the best complaint of the night.
The water in Amy’s bath was getting cold.
She reluctantly got out, wrapped herself in a bath sheet, and sat at the vanity.
She was disappointed that a kiss hadn’t happened, but also a little relieved.
As lame as her anxiety was about what came next, even lamer was the niggling doubt that maybe she was no good at it.
Damn, when had sex gotten so difficult? When had she turned into such a wimp?
Where had her twenty-year-old self, the artist who was happy to take lovers, gone?
Amy shook her head as she went out of the bathroom. That girl had gotten buried under too many loads of laundry. Maybe it was time she dug her out.