Page 45 of Sheltered

Harlow

My last client before my lunch break had barely made it out the front door when my phone rang. I smiled, loving how literally my best friend took the words I sent to her in a text message this morning.

Abandoning the broom I’d been using to clean up from my client’s haircut, I made my way to the desk and picked up my phone. “Hello?”

“What is going on?” There was a sense of alarm and urgency in her tone.

“Are you okay?” I asked, wanting to be sure I hadn’t missed anything.

“I’m fine. I’ve only spent all morning over here trying to figure out what’s going on with you. You can’t send me a text like you did this morning, giving me just enough details to make me wonder, and expect I’m not going to drive myself crazy attempting to figure it out. I’ve come up with far too many plausible scenarios, so we’re not even going to entertain any of them. You just need to tell me whatever it is you need to tell me.”

Laughter spilled out of me. It hadn’t been my intention to send her spiraling all morning, but I could understand how it had happened. I’d sent her a text and essentially told her things had happened with Blaze, but now I needed her advice.

Recognizing I didn’t have a whole lot of time before my lunch break would be over and not wanting to torture Olive any longer, I made my way to the sink to wash my hands and said, “Blaze came over last night.”

“Ooh, what happened?” she pressed, excitement now laced through her tone.

So much had happened. So much I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about, and I loved every single second of it. Even the moments that had been difficult or tense for me had been wonderful.

“Well, he brought dinner over, and we had such a nice time eating and talking,” I started. “But no sooner did we finish eating, we were on the couch, kissing, and Blaze’s hands were everywhere.”

“Very nice,” she said proudly.

“I stopped us.”

“What?”

“I had to tell him the truth,” I explained. “I thought he should know what he was dealing with, because I didn’t want him to have the wrong expectations.”

“Wrong expectations?”

Nodding as I moved to grab my food out of the refrigerator, I clarified, “Maybe I meant to say any expectations. I don’t know. It had been on my mind for a while, but after he came in on Wednesday to get his haircut and things got pretty heated between us then, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I just thought it was important to let him know the truth before things went too far.”

“Wait, wait, wait. I’m curious to hear about last night, but before we get there, you need to tell me about this haircut. What happened when he came in for that?”

A shiver ran down my spine as I recalled that evening with Blaze.

Unfortunately, if there was any hope of me being able to get to the part of the conversation I needed to before my lunch break was over and my next client arrived, I couldn’t dwell on what my thoughts of Blaze made me feel.

So, I dove in and told her all about the night I gave him a haircut, doing it while I ate my lunch. Of course, I didn’t hide that there’d been some really nice kissing, but I focused more of my story on the words he’d said to me.

When I finished, Olive said, “Wow. I love that he said he couldn’t get enough of you.”

“I know. While I believed we were both enjoying spending time with one another up to that point, I had been worried I was the only one who seemed to want more time. Blaze proved that wasn’t the case, and it was the best feeling in the world.”

“Okay, so you two decided to have more time together and did that immediately,” she declared. “What happened when Blaze came to your place last night?”

“Well, like I said before, everything started off great,” I reminded her before I popped my last tortilla chip in my mouth. I went on to briefly recap dinner before I shared, “Ultimately, we wound up wrapped in each other’s arms while we kissed. As nice as it was, and Olive, I’m telling you, it was nice, there was something inside me that kept pulling me out of it. I needed to tell him the truth.”

“How did he react?”

I stared off into space for a moment, recalling the unexpected reaction I’d gotten from Blaze last night. Maybe it wasn’t entirely unexpected, though. He’d proven to be quite the guy, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Blaze responded to the news in a way I would have thought only existed in movies.

“He didn’t make me feel bad,” I finally blurted. “If anything, Blaze did everything he could to reassure me that I had nothing to be embarrassed about. He told me he had a feeling that was the news I needed to share with him since I hadn’t been on a date in at least ten years.”

There was a brief pause before Olive replied, “This all sounds wonderful, Harlow. The text you sent me indicated you were looking for some advice. How can I help you?”

Her response had me questioning myself. Was I crazy? Blaze was nothing short of a gentleman. Even if his hands had done a lot of roaming last night, he’d only done what he said he would, what I’d asked him to do. He never made me feel pressure to go beyond that, and he certainly never made it seem as though he was disappointed with what he did get from me.

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