Page 78 of My Almost Ex

After we get the four-wheeler back on the trailer, we stop and pick up wings and beer at Truth or Dare Brewery. Since we agreed we didn’t want to be stuck there, I ran in and picked up the order to go.

“I’m tempted to ask what I used to like, but I’m not going to.” Lucy bites into a buffalo-style wing and immediately pants like a dog, waving her hand.

“Want some milk?” I ask.

She shakes her head and sips her beer. “I’m good. But if I did like buffalo then, more power to the old Lucy.”

I laugh and hold out one of my honey barbeque wings. “Want to try mine?”

She nuzzles closer and her thigh lands against mine. We opted to change into our pajamas and veg in front of the television when we got home, which turned into a quickie on the stairs before we came up for air. I’ve been drooling over her tits in that threadbare T-shirt for weeks. A starved man can only hang on so long when there’s a juicy steak in front of him.

She leans forward and takes a bite of my wing. She looks up in the air and her head tilts right and left as though she’s a professional judge. “I like that one. Sweet but with a tang.”

I shake my head and hand her my box of wings, grabbing my beer from the table.

“No, they’re yours,” she says.

“Have them. I’m good with the medium ones too. Plus I ordered one of their quesadillas.”

“That does look good.” She stares at it while I pull out a triangle. The cheese pulls as though it doesn’t want to part with the remaining portion of the meal.

“Have some. It’s their specialty.”

“I’m not gonna keep stealing your food.” She hands me back the wings and studies the other wing flavors we grabbed.

Molly asked why I had so many flavors and I lied, telling her Cora and Toby were trying them out on Brody. She looked confused, but what does she know about kids anyway?

“This is our food.” I run my hands over the table. “Not mine or yours. Ours.”

“Still, you ordered that for yourself.”

I lean back on the couch, stretching my arm out along the back, facing her. “I have a request before we continue?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“I can’t handle any secrets. I promise to be an open book, but you have to promise the same, okay?”

“Yeah, of course.” She nods.

“Then tell me why you’re making a big deal about my wings and quesadillas?”

She sips her beer and stares at the wing selection again.

I lean forward, placing my finger under her chin and turning her face to mine. “What’s up, Lucy?”

Her teeth bite into her bottom lip and she shrugs. “I have this feeling that I used to get my way all the time. That I steamrolled you into doing what I wanted.”

A laugh leaves me, and I bend forward, shaking my head. “That’s every relationship. Do you think I was some doormat who let you dictate all my moves? That I starved myself so you got what you wanted?”

“More or less, yeah?” Her eyes don’t reach mine.

“I hate to break this to you, but if Nikki was next to me right now and she wanted my wings, I’d probably offer them to her too. That’s not specific to you, although I’d give you a lot more than I would my stepsister. It’s just me. It’s who I am. Who most men are with the women they love. I’ve been racking my brain for a way to show you that I didn’t sacrifice anything by being with you. I was exactly where I wanted to be.”

“Are you sure though?” She peeks up at me with the piercing blue eyes that drew me to her as soon as my hormones went crazy and noticed girls.

“I’m positive. Would I have been devastated when you left if you were such a horrible person? I don’t think so.”

She snuggles up to me and lays her head on my shoulder, her finger running over the words on my T-shirt. “I’m terrified you’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist anymore, but at the same time, I’m afraid I was a crappy wife you put on an undeserved pedestal.”

---