Chapter Four
Lila
“Well, they were having some kind of intense talk.” The woman in front of me at the Winn Dixie checkout insisted on taking her sweet time, unloading her buggyful of groceries item by item.
With her insanely bleached blonde hair and heavy makeup, she was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her.
“She was crying and everything, and then he snatched his hand away from hers.”
“I thought he was dating someone from out of town. Think his mama said she was from Perry. I think that’s what she said, anyway.
” The clerk, about the same age as the middle-aged queen of gossip, waved an airy hand.
Her makeup was lighter and her hair was brassy red, but they resembled enough to be sisters. “Somewhere up there.”
“Well, he might be, but he looked mighty involved in their conversation. And then he jumped up, came to get his food to go and just left her there at the table, alone and all teared up . . .” She placed a jar of maraschino cherries on the belt.
I shifted my weight, curling my toes. The day had been long, my feet hurt, and I was stuck here listening to small town Days of Our Lives.
“You really think he’s stepping out on this other girl?” The cashier floated the cherries over the scanner. Her penciled brows came together in a doubtful frown. “He seems like a good boy.”
“So did his daddy until Stephanie found out about that woman in Valdosta.”
Stephanie? Woman in Valdosta? Realization sheared through me. She was talking about Dan’s mother . . . which meant she was talking about my Dan.
Having lunch with another woman?
That didn’t track at all. It couldn’t be Lydia, because this gossipy biddy would know her. Maybe it was EmmaLee. Sure, she’d had his dick in her mouth, but that was years ago. They laughed about it, and I’d seen them together. That college-freshman experimentation didn’t mean anything.
Setting my basket of items – she really could have let me go ahead of her – by my feet, I pulled out my phone. Who did you have lunch with since Chuck bailed?
I waited.
And waited.
Bubbles popped up and transformed almost instantly into a reply. Nicole sat down at my table for a few minutes.
Got my food and ate in my car.
I frowned over the texts. Was that defensive overexplaining or just Dan-style overexplaining? It read like Dan . . . but Nicole clearly wanted him and she’d been crying?
I reread Dan’s text.
Nicole sat down at my table for a few minutes.
Well, why did you let her, Dan?
We hadn’t talked about Nicole after Saturday night at the Millhouse. There’d seemed no point since I’d seen for myself she wasn’t on his radar.
His feelings for her weren’t a threat. He didn’t have any. I knew that.
But here was a very public narrative about her feelings for him.
And Dan was . . . naive.
I wasn’t just his first sexually. I was his first real relationship. He’d told me about crushes, some short term dating in college, but I was the first real thing.
Initially, that felt like a red flag. Who got to twenty-four without dating someone longterm? Especially someone as good-looking and down to earth as he was.
But I’d soon realized he was merely shy and focused. He hadn’t really wanted a relationship until me.
I’d picked the admission apart when he’d blurted it at dinner one night, only a few weeks after we’d started going out, before we’d slept together, before we were exclusive. Was that just another line? Could I trust him?
We’d gone slowly, and he turned out to be green flag after green flag and proved unfailingly honest, like one night when we’d been watching a movie on my couch. He’d kept running his palms down his thighs, and finally he’d blurted, “I gotta talk to you about EmmaLee.”
His cheeks had been red as fire when he brought up his sister’s best friend, and I’d known.
Sitting next to him, his leg pressed to mine, I decided I wouldn’t be jealous.
I mean, I’d hooked up with Ryan Godwin regularly my senior year of college as a form of stress relief with no batteries required, and we were still friends.
Dan had stumbled through an explanation of a gaming night in his dorm room when Lydia and EmmaLee had driven up to Athens so Lydia could meet up with a guy attending UGA. They’d talked about what they had and hadn’t done, who they had and hadn’t done it with, and why it had or hadn’t worked.
The conversation had led to experimentation on his dorm bed and great embarrassment on my couch.
While he talked, he’d stared at the television, where a really handsome guy from the Middle East and a really beautiful Italian woman sought to escape an alien invasion. The visual effects were awesome, and the suspense made reading subtitles worth it.
He was missing all of it, though, his jaw tight and a muscle flicking in his jaw. Red highlighted his cheekbones and flushed his neck.
“I wasn’t good at any of it.” He slumped deeper, shoulders sagging. “She told me her clit wasn’t a game controller.”
I wanted to laugh, not at him, but for EmmaLee – because who hadn’t had that experience? Instead, I laid a hand on his knee and rubbed my thumb over the groove by his kneecap. “Nobody knows what they’re doing at first. It takes practice.”
He cleared his throat, a rough, uncomfortable sound. “I haven’t really tried a lot since.”
Startled, I darted a look at him, finding him still staring straight ahead. The unhappy slant to his mouth hurt my heart, and suddenly so much made sense – how slowly we were moving, how reticent he was to take our kissing further, why his hands never wandered below my waist.
“I’ve been reading, though.” He turned his head, a sudden, sharp movement, so I stared into fierce navy eyes fringed by dark lashes. “Since I met you. I want to be good . . . to be better for you.”
I melted, then shifted sideways to face him better. “I love that.”
His shoulders rolled in an irritable shrug. “Makes me feel stupid. Like I should know this already.”
“You are one of the smartest people I know. And it makes me feel incredibly special that you’re researching because you want to please me.
” Leaning in, I slid my palm up his leg, stopping mid-thigh.
Muscles bunched under my touch, and his pulse jumped beneath his jaw.
I dropped my gaze to his lips. “We could practice together. You know, finesse your technique.”
He’d lunged to wrap an arm around me, face buried in my neck, and I did laugh then, joy burbling up in me because he was earnest and wonderful and why hadn’t some local girl already snatched him up?
We’d missed the rest of the movie, practicing on my couch, and I’d never had so much fun teaching someone something in my life.
He was an ace pupil.
My phone vibrated against my palm. Lydia and EmmaLee on their way. I’m cooking if you want to come over
I could hear the hesitancy in the invitation. He’d read somewhere how couples needed healthy space and didn’t want to come off clingy, although I wanted to be where he was all the time, buzzing about him like a bee.
I’d love that. What can I bring?
Just you
A wide smile hurt my cheeks, all my uncertainty fleeing. I’d talk with him about Nicole and everything would be fine.
Finally, I checked out and ran home to stash my purchases and swap my work clothes for jeans and a simple white tee under my favorite dark blue sweater. The drive from my home to his took only a few minutes.
His mother’s neat ranch home was one of the larger ones on the street, with a small separate apartment connected to the garage. Dan had claimed the space after graduating from UGA, letting him be around to help his mama while still having a modicum of privacy.
An older Honda sat under Nicole’s carport. I hadn’t looked Saturday night when we’d picked her up, but why was it parked here if it needed repairs?
I pressed my lips together.
That heifer.
I parked behind Dan’s truck, his patrol car to one side, leaving room for Lydia and EmmaLee and for his mama to be able to get in the garage once she returned home. She was a regional HR manager for a local chain of convenience stores, and sometimes her days ran late.
Sliding out of my SUV, I headed for the stairs to Dan’s, but he flung open the door before I got there. Grinning, he jogged down the steps to meet me. Faded jeans clung to his thighs, and a gray t-shirt hugged his chest and shoulders.
He flashed a grin. “Hey, baby.”
“Hi.” His authentic eagerness and happiness to see me centered me further. You couldn’t fake that. I stepped into him, his hands cupping my jaw to pull me into his kiss. Soap and sport deodorant filled my nose, my fingers brushing his damp hair, fresh from an end-of-shift shower.
“Missed you.” He nuzzled the end of his nose against mine. “Thought about you all day.”
I wrinkled my nose, pulling back slightly to meet his eyes. “Even at lunch?”
A disgusted sound rumbled in his throat, and he scowled before sending me up the stairs before him, his hands at my hips. “That was weird as fuck.”
Inside the door, I dropped my key fob on the Crisp County Power Plant commemorative plate that already held his. “What do you mean?”
With an irritable shrug, he strode to the kitchen that took up the back wall, an island separating the kitchen from the small living area. At the island, he picked up his knife and attacked a bunch of celery. My gaze lingered on the flex of muscles in his forearm.
He shook his head. “She got upset when I said we weren’t friends.”
“Upset.”
“Yeah.” He dumped the leafy ends of the celery in a large bowl. “Teared up and everything.”
“You said that? Told her you weren’t friends?”
“Well, yeah. We’re not. She’s just . . .” He waved his knife toward the window. I glanced that way. His windows offered a view into her backyard and the rear windows on her small ranch. “I don’t know, Nicole who lives next door. She’s not Chuck or Josh or EmmaLee.”
I smirked. “I don’t want you to be friends with her like you were with EmmaLee.”
He fixed me with a chiding look. “I was nineteen.”