Chapter 17 A Retainer and My Sluttiest Pair of Shorts
A Retainer and My Sluttiest Pair of Shorts
Dating her husband had its advantages. The greatest being that there was no ill-defined “what are we?” period when they were with each other but also very possibly not. They were already legally committed. Now they were also otherwise committed.
In the mornings, Lainey woke to the feeling of Elliot’s lips pressed to her forehead as he rose out of bed for his morning run.
Her coffee materialized beside Elliot’s bed, not on the kitchen counter.
She no longer concerned herself with the length of her showers or timing of Elliot’s runs.
Now they orbited each other in an easy rhythm as they prepared for the start of busy season.
They had managed to finish the deck on Forest’s Bridge the day before their first booking for Memorial Day weekend. According to Elliot, the two of them had architecture internet all agog, which was great for business but had only increased the number of lookie-loos on their property.
“I can’t believe I’m dating the patron saint of Groff Reddit,” Lainey cooed as they sat out on the newly finished deck, enjoying the fruits of their labor before having to pass it off to strangers.
She had trouble referring to Elliot as her husband in earnest. She wasn’t sure why, but he never pushed it.
Elliot pulled her onto his lap with one hand while balancing his coffee in the other.
“You’re like a god on there. All they talk about is you.
And they speculate wildly about your grandmother.
There’s a whole thread dedicated to Vincent’s ambitious levels of infidelity.
He was not a good husband, by the way. Seriously, why do you always smell so good?
” he asked, bouncing from one thought to the next, breathing her in like a drug.
She laughed, feeling the sensation of his breath low in her belly. “It’s my good soap. You smell like it, too.”
He pressed his nose into her wall of red hair. “No, I don’t smell like this. It’s something about you.” He set his coffee down and lowered her back onto the deck. “Specifically.”
Her stomach tightened at the feel of his mouth trailing languidly down her neck and the scrape of his short stubble against her skin. His fingertips swept under the hem of her shirt. The warm breeze kissed her stomach.
When they were like this, she only ever saw Elliot’s confident side. His dominant side. He never touched her with nervous or tentative hands. He grabbed. He took.
His mouth ghosted down the length of her stomach, desire behind her eyelids.
Her attraction to him had its own gravity.
It pulled time and space inward, collapsing the universe to a single sensation.
She never wanted it to end, but, by design, their relationship had the shelf life of a package of Chips Ahoy.
She wished she felt less for Elliot. Less was simpler.
With her history, she knew to be wary of big feelings.
It terrified her, the way her heart careened in her chest whenever she thought of him.
But she couldn’t help how different it all felt with Elliot.
He asked her questions. He listened to her.
He paid attention. He was always looking for little ways to make her happy, and somehow, it didn’t make her want to pull away.
Instead, she was eager to do the same for him.
She couldn’t help but crave more of him.
Unfortunately for her, they weren’t, at present, in a place where she could have more.
“We can’t do this here,” she panted out.
He grinned up at her wolfishly. “Who’s going to stop us?”
She let out a breathy laugh. “You posted that the deck was finished,” she replied. He inhaled sharply, his head dropping onto her stomach. “We’ll have people wandering the grounds any second, and we have to leave now if we want to make your surprise.”
His frustrated groan vibrated against her skin.
“You’re right. Later,” he promised, putting her back together and walking her in the direction of her packed car.
“You’re really not going to tell me why I’m packing a retainer and my”—he cleared his throat to read her text from his phone—“ ‘sluttiest pair of shorts’?”
“You told me you can’t sleep without your retainer.”
She whistled for Waffle, who gave her legs a wet sniff and hopped into the tiny coupe through the only operational door. Elliot dropped himself into the passenger seat with practiced finesse, followed closely by Lainey in the driver’s seat.
“And what about the shorts?” he pressed a few minutes later.
“The shorts are need-to-know,” she explained, pulling up to the traffic signal in front of Norman’s Coffee and Meats Shop. “You really have no guesses?”
Lainey rubbed Waffle’s nose as she flicked her eyes to Elliot.
“I put literally nothing past you.”
Someone tapped at her windshield from the crosswalk.
She rolled down her window. “This isn’t how rideshares work, Larry. You request from the app,” she told the familiar nuisance who ran the local Vincent Groff tourism industry along with the high school spring musicale.
“You haven’t called back about the tours,” he barked through the window.
Elliot leaned over her from the passenger seat. “Sorry, Larry. We can’t have people bothering the guests. Maybe we can try it in the offseason.”
The light changed. Lainey pressed on the gas, and in a surprising turn of events, Larry, ever persistent, ran alongside.
“What are you doing?” Lainey yelled.
“I have reason to believe that June twenty-first is when the bridge connects,” he explained, lumbering beside her window with surprising speed.
Damn, if that man wasn’t committed. “That’s when everyone wants to come!
It’s not just architecture buffs. This eclipse-chaser group caught wind of it, and now I have at least two dozen people begging to stay overnight at the site. ”
“Why would eclipse chasers care about a sunset?” Lainey asked.
Larry tilted his head to the side. “I may have slightly oversold the grandeur of the event.”
“We’re only permitted for four guests,” Elliot said, scrolling his phone. He was choosing the tactic of avoidance, a privileged position as the person not currently responsible for driving the car.
She waved at Larry apologetically, proceeding cautiously down the main drag, which was officially in busy season, with pedestrians ambling freely in front of traffic, crossing signals be damned. “Sorry, Lar.”
With a thud, his body slammed into the side of her car and his fingers gripped the driver’s-side window of her decidedly moving vehicle.
She screamed. “Larry!”
“What the—?”
In spite of the man clinging to her car, Lainey was, for some unfathomable reason, still driving, albeit slowly. Elliot was holding Waffle by the collar as he barked at the man who was mounting their door with the intent to climb inside, legs akimbo, like a getaway in a cartoon bank robbery.
“I can’t take no for an answer,” he shouted, supporting himself against the window in his labored jog along the side of the car.
“It’s fifteen thousand dollars!” the man panted out through heaving breaths.
His legs beat at the pavement, desperate to keep up with her seven-miles-per-hour pace.
His eyes bugged out, panic flickering with what she assumed were images of his life flashing before him.
He was the personification of the dog who caught the car, right down to the English bulldog–like wheezing.
“We’ll split it! I’ll take care of everything. You won’t even have to be there, just—”
Larry disappeared from the window.
“Oh my god, stop driving!” Elliot demanded, unbuckling his seat belt.
Lainey had to blink out of her daze before slamming on the brakes and throwing the car in park. “This was my first ‘hop-on,’ so forgive me if I didn’t immediately know how to handle a middle-aged man hitching a ride to my car like a human tractor trailer!”
“Okay, fair,” Elliot said, briefly acknowledging her while mid-tumble over the console to tend to the man slumped on the curb in front of Curly’s Motorcycles and Exotic Pets.
Elliot placed both of his arms under Larry’s and dragged him up, leaning his flank against the sign that read Hog Parking Only. All Others Will Live to Regret It.
Lainey assessed Larry’s palazzo pants and Guys and Dolls cast tee for damage. “You good, Lar? Did you hurt yourself?”
“You don’t need to put them up. They’ll bring tents. They just want to be there to celebrate the totality,” he implored, the rises and falls of chest finally beginning to slow. “Fifteen grand. We split it fifty-fifty. You want a bigger cut? Is that what this is about?”
“Oh, uh…” She kind of did. The first she’d heard of this money was ten seconds ago when she had a man clutching the side of her car like Tom Cruise in a Mission: Impossible movie, but now that she had a second to picture her life with that kind of money in her bank account, she didn’t want to imagine it without it.
“It’s not about the money,” Elliot answered for both of them. Lainey turned to look at him, her mouth open.
Larry fluttered his eyelids in irritation. “Fine. Sixty-forty.”
Lainey did the quick mental math—nine thousand dollars.
Larry was offering them nine thousand dollars.
That kind of money would take care of Gran for the rest of the summer.
Lainey wouldn’t have to spend every night of the busy season driving from vacation town to vacation town in search of enough riders to make ends meet.
She could spend the summer with Elliot, watching old movies, gazing at the sun setting over the lake, falling asleep on his chest to the beating of his heart.
It was a glimpse of the kind of summer she saw other people have.
The kind where her December wasn’t determined by how many boat lifts she repaired or docks she stained from May through September. She could relax.
Elliot shook his head. “We could lose our rental permit. It’s not worth the risk.”