15. Impulsive
IMPULSIVE
WILSON PHILLIPS
EMORY
“What kind of detergent do you use?”
Why this is the first question I ask Jordan as I wake up curled against his bare, tattooed chest is beyond me.
I have yet to open my eyes but can’t help but smile when I feel the vibration of his chuckle against my face.
My bare cheek is touching Jordan’s bare skin, and it’s weird that it isn’t weird at all.
“Good morning, Red. How did you sleep?”
Best night of rest since our last sleepover, thank you very much.
“Oh, just fine… You talk in your sleep,” I lie, then take a long, investigative sniff of his pectoral. “It’s just that you smell like your detergent has seeped right into your pores.”
“Did you just smell me?” He laughs again, grabbing me tight and rolling us over so that I’m pinned beneath all of his glorious weight on the couch we fell asleep on.
“I’m concerned.” I shrug, covering my mouth so he can’t smell my morning breath. “And I need to know.”
“You have a vested interest in my detergent?” Jordan kisses my forehead. Again. Because he has, multiple times, since breaking the seal of affection last night.
My internal alarm—the one that’s been singing Destiny’s Child’s, “Independent Woman” for years—glitches. Now that girl’s in her Mariah Carey era, so deep in a daydream. But let me tell you, it is a sweet, sweet fantasy. Because I’m snuggling with Jordan Love.
Jordan Love who I’ve known for years but haven’t known for just as many.
The same man I’ve been bewildered but deeply hurt by.
Angry with, and yet, whom I’ve felt more like myself with.
I have a schoolgirl, can’t wait to hold his hand and write our names together in my notebook crush on Jordan Love, and I don’t understand it at all.
It’s sweet, but perplexing.
No matter. The feeling of that kiss on my skin remains, and I melt. Though I’m grateful Jordan hasn’t yet kissed my lips—and not just because I know my breath probably smells like Haven’s placenta soup.
I haven’t given a name to what’s happening between us, but cuddling on my couch until we fell asleep and forehead kisses at respectable intervals feels dangerously outside of friendship territory. Though, friendship does feel foundational in this instance.
Jordan knew the girl I was before being orphaned as a young adult.
He knew me well during the years after, marred by the dichotomy of grief and hope, before widowhood shaped me into someone completely new.
He was friends with the version of me that I hardly remember, and yet, he also sees me as I am now.
A little broken and bruised. Hiding emotions from the world that, for reasons I still don’t understand, I don’t feel as if I need to hide from him.
Jordan sees all of me, and he keeps showing up.
For me and for Molly. It’d be wholly foolish for me to pretend I don’t feel something for him.
Something beyond the relief of one old friend showing up for another.
Therefore, I plan to milk every second I get in Jordan’s arms before overthinking how good this all feels and whether or not it is, in fact, good and worthy of exploring. And, so help me, I will get to the bottom of how the man always seems to smell like a fresh field in summertime.
“I’m thinking of making a change, ya know?” I say, all nonchalance. If he doesn’t know how badly I want it, I bet he’ll give me the goods. “Right now, we use free and clear. No additives. Good stuff. So, so, so good. But… Molly loves the scent of fresh linen.”
I shrug, like, what can you do?
“Oh,” he smirks. The sun shines on his blonde hair, casting perfect light over his handsome face. Jordan is beautiful, and he smells like how it feels to sit in the sunshine on a freshly cut lawn. “So Molly loves the scent, huh?”
“Yeah.” I bite down on my smile, forgetting to cover my rancid breath, unbelievably happy with how this morning is playing out. If the girls were to ask me again what was the last thing I did for myself, this moment would be at the top. “Just call it market research.”
I thrust my face into his chest again, sniffing deeply and smiling like a loon against his skin. If I were braver and bolder than I am, I’d place a kiss there, too. Right where I feel his heart beating rapidly. Where the tattoo of a pair of aces lives.
“It’s for science,” I say instead. “And Molly.”
“Oh, for science and Molly…” He pins me down as his fingers slowly trail along my side.
I grow still, terrified and yet desperate for where this will lead, until Jordan’s fingers find my bare waist and dig in, tickling every spot there, up my torso, and under my arms, while I wiggle and jerk like a madwoman trying to escape, laughing louder and harder than I have in longer than I can remember.
“Tell me you think I smell delicious.”
“Never! I love linen, Jordan! Linen and nothing more.”
“Say it, Red!” His hands are everywhere, yet still manage to impede my squirming. “You think I smell amazing.”
“Clean sheets… Cotton…” I yell through breathless giggles. “Freshly. Laundered. Clothes… hanging on a line. That’s it!”
“Dirty.” He shifts quickly, flipping me over, sitting on my butt, and reaching down to grab my feet.
“Jordan. No.” I wriggle to no avail.
“Little.” One sock slips off. The other quickly follows. “Liar.”
“Fine!” I relent. Only because my bladder is weak and I fear if this continues, I’ll have an accident from which I’ll never recover. He pauses, and I thank Jesus I do my kegels at every red light.
“Say it,” he whispers playfully.
“You smell… decent.” His fingers shift back to my feet. “Fine-uh! You smell amazing, okay? It’s a mystery that has to be solved, and I’d like to take a bath in whatever that scent is.”
Pressing a soft kiss to my cheek, a new piece of skin previously untouched, he says, sexier than the sentence should ever be, “I use free and clear, too.”
So that scent—his scent—is entirely Jordan. Perfect.
Cool. Cool. Cool.
Before I know what’s happening, I’ve been flipped to my back again and Jordan’s tickling me into oblivion, only stopping when he can’t hold me down any longer because of his own laughter. It’s then that we hear a throat clear.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Dinah’s voice chimes across what should be my empty living room.
I panic, rapidly pushing Jordan off of my body. Nothing more than a teenager caught horizontal with a half-naked boy. He falls comically to the floor at the feet of Jack, Dinah, and Molly, who throws herself onto him and yells, “Ace!” as she squeezes his waist.
“I missed you! I didn’t know you were having another slumber party!”
“I missed you, kiddo. So much.” He hugs her like he hasn’t seen her in years but then quickly grabs the shirt he tossed onto the floor in the middle of the night and slips it onto his body. It’s a necessary evil, but I swear, all that skin being covered up is a crying shame.
Dinah whines. “Awww, I was just starting to see them all.”
Jack growls and grinds through his clenched jaw, “Polly. Cinnamon Twists. Lola kisses.”
I’m glad he’s holding Lola right now, because he looks as if he’s dreaming of other, less tender actions to take with his hands.
Paying little attention to my brother-in-law or sister, Jordan only has eyes for the girl sitting on his lap, spewing rapid fire information like she’s afraid he’ll disappear before she can get it all out.
He doesn’t rush Molly or attempt to dismantle her body from his but listens raptly, absentmindedly playing with the ends of her strawberry blonde hair, and responding only when he can get a word in edgewise.
They’re in their own little bubble, hardly aware the rest of us are still here.
A club of two that feels like a privilege to witness.
Jordan asks all the right questions, when time permits. Then when I think my heart can’t take much more, he whispers something in Molly’s ear, earning a wide-eyed, full smile from my girl and another hug, that I feel emphatically wrapping around my soul.
“How about I make us all some breakfast,” Jordan finally says when he and Molly have reached an agreed upon stopping point in their chat.
“Can we have breakfast pockets again?” she asks.
“I think breakfast pockets are a must,” he agrees. “Jack, Dinah, you guys want to eat breakfast with us?”
With us.
He says the simple phrase with so much normalcy, goosebumps race down my arms. Because it fits. He fits. In the kitchen. On my couch. In this house. In Molly’s and my life. And I want that breakfast together.
Dinah wiggles her eyebrows and holds up a giant Knotty & Nice bag. “Oh, we’re not goin’ anywhere. And we also brought y’all Bacon bites. You’ve gotta be extra hungry after—”
“Chores!” I interrupt my sister, jumping up, snatching the bag from her grasp and pressing my foot on her toe for good measure. “We did so many farm chores. We. Are. Starving.”
“So that’s what we’re calling it these days.” Jack is an angry dad, just biding his time for when he can shine his rifle in front of my new beau.
I choose to show grace and not remind him of the time he made out with my sister in front of all of Honey Hill on the pretzel shop’s counter… a few days after Dinah innocently fell asleep in Jack’s bed after taking care of him.
“Thank you… both,” I snip, before kissing her cheek and rushing to the back door in my custom-made Bastian Duke pajamas.
The ones I printed for Chloe’s bachelorette party that have “Ahoy, Matey” printed on the rear.
I slip on my work boots, shovel three dough bites into my mouth, and escape the inquisition for the farm chores I definitely have not done this morning.
After a respectable time, completing initial feedings and waterings of the animals, letting the girls and our only male alpaca, Dwight, out to pasture, and a quick shower, I prance into the kitchen clean, fully clothed, covered in fresh mosquito bites, and wrapped in a new sense of confidence.
Somewhere between last night’s meltdown and the tiny shower spiral I just climbed my way out of, I had a few realizations.