33. Thirty-three
Thirty-three
Bo puts the groceries away while I take a quick shower and pack a bag. I grab clothes, enough for two nights—presumptuously—and start pulling things off my bathroom counter. At the small black notebook I keep in the bathroom, I pause, and anxiety starts to percolate in my belly as I thumb through the pages, filled with numbers.
I haven’t told Bo about this, mostly because I’m not sure what it means. What I want it to mean.
That’s a lie.
I know what I want it to mean; I’m just not ready to say it. I don’t think, I just grab it, slipping it into my bag along with everything else I’ll need before turning the lights off. Whatever I do or don’t do with it can be decided later.
Then we’re in his Jeep, with the dog, driving to his house. Somehow, I shove Veda’s situation out of my mind, because more than I should be sad or guilty, I want this. With Bo .
“So, I’m wondering, now that you’re weirdly in love with me or whatever,” I say, picking at my cuticles as I look out the window into the dark. “I have a home visit for Huck’s adoption in a couple weeks and, if you aren’t busy, maybe you’d like to, I don’t know, be there for it.”
His hand reaches across the center console in the darkness, fingers interlacing with mine. “I’d love to.”
I let out an exhale, my thumb rubbing across the slightest raise of a scar across his, and steal a look at him. The lights of the dash illuminate his face and chest. His hair hangs easily around his face, and the angle of his nose and forehead and curve of his lips look like they’ve been highlighted to perfection. With one hand on the steering wheel, his body casually leans toward me so his other can reach mine. I might not get to love Bo forever, but loving him right in this moment might be the most precious gift I’ve ever been given.
“I’m glad you love me, Bo,” I say. The words a freeing confession.
“Me too.”
The notebook shakes in my hands as I sit on the edge of Bo’s bed in an oversized Smoky Mountain National Park T-shirt. His bedroom—masculine and tasteful—is all exposed logs and dark furniture with a large cowhide rug on the floor. The lights aren’t on, but there are four simple beeswax candles lit on his dresser .
I’m terrified. Once I show him, I can’t take it back. Well, knowing Bo, I probably could take it back, but I know I won’t want to.
“I hope that’s a notebook from Mabel,” he says with a grin as he walks out of the bathroom, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it into a basket.
The sound from my lips is a nervous gargle of mhm.
He sits next to me, slides the notebook out of my hands, and thumbs through it. The numbers mean nothing to him. His eyebrows pinch. “What is all this?”
I clear my throat. “So there’s this natural method of birth control where you track certain markers in your cycle,” I say, pulse quickening with every word. “And you know I love lists.” I laugh softly. He thumbs through the pages again. “Anyway, what I mean is, I guess, that I started tracking everything when we met. Well, that’s not true. Of course, knowing me, I’ve always been tracking my cycle, but I started really tracking my cycle in case someday…someday.”
I look at him, chewing my lip, wondering how I’m fumbling this so terribly.
He closes the book, eyes searching mine. “What are you saying, Birdie?”
I blow out a long breath. “What we did the other night was great, but I know I need more with you, Bo. I need all of you. I want it. And so, this is my way of offering all of me on Birdie-friendly terms. It’s 99 percent effective when followed correctly at preventing pregnancy, and I just thought if you wanted, we could, you know, do it. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut before looking at him. Every morning when I take my temperature and record it, I’ve wondered how this conversation was going to go if the time ever came to have it. Now it’s happening, and I sound like a moron.
“‘ Do it ?’” he scrubs a hand across his face, failing to hide his laugh.
“That’s not what you’re supposed to focus on,” I huff. “What I mean is, if you want to have sex, I have a notebook with data-driven dates that I would be comfortable doing it . With protection. At least at first. Until I’m less anxious about it.” I pause, then, “If you want.”
I pull at a thread of my shirt like it’s a lifeline, my heart galloping through my chest like a herd of elephants.
Bo reaches across me to put the notebook on the nightstand. When the bare skin of his chest rubs against that of my arm, a tense kind of awareness envelops me.
“Is one of those acceptable dates tonight?” he asks, kissing a trail across my jaw until he reaches my earlobe where he stills, taking it in his mouth, sucking it with a gentle scraping of his teeth.
I shift in my seat, trying to hide how amazing I apparently find having my earlobe sucked on to be. “Umm,” I say, voice pinched, him working his mouth on the newly discovered g-spot that’s surprisingly attached to my face. “I think so, yes. I mean, sure. Yes.” I clear my throat, closing my eyes, adding, “Tonight is a yes. And tomorrow. Not that I’m assuming I’ll be here tomorrow. And Sunday…”
He makes some kind of moaning growl with my turned-on ear in his mouth as his hand slides up my thigh and stops, fingers digging into the skin. Close, but not close enough.
He pulls his mouth away from my ear—which, I can be honest with myself, is disappointing.
“Do you want this?” he asks. “You don’t have to do this for me, I need you to know that.”
He’s so serious, so sincere, I want to cry from the gravity of it.
“Bo, I want you. And this. Am I terrified? Yes. But I still want to do it. Scared. With you.”
I swallow down the ball of terror in my throat as he smiles.
Before he puts his lips on me again, it’s a mumbled, “Thank God.”