Page 11 of Single Dad Panther's Best Friend Romance

The drive home is not normal. I berate myself out loud the whole way, but then I yell at him. “How could you not just tell me you were going? And what fucking flowers, man?!”

I pull into my driveway and there it is. A van with a florist logo on the side. I see the frustrated driver at my doorstep about to knock again. I hurry out of my car to take the large arrangement off his hands. “Wow, thank you!” I can’t stop staring at the size of it.

The guy hands me a card. “Yeah, sure.”

As the pissed off florist driver leaves, I set the arrangement down and read the card. Well, really, all I really see is the signature. Love, Preston.Love.

Only after my heart stops racing do I think to read the whole message. And he says every right thing.

Liz

Last night was the most wonderful thing to happen to me in a long while and maybe ever.

I hope there are no worries about it being awkward or it ruining things because all I want in the world right now is more of last night.

Love, Preston

I can’t believe it.

“Shit,” I laugh-cry at the day I’ve had. “And it’s only nine in the morning!”

And I love you, too,I think.

I love Preston, too.

Chapter Seven

Preston

The movie is actually exceptional. I don’t expect that in a cartoon designed for kids. Oh, I guess I have to allow for the very real possibility that all of my tastes have changed because of Joel. How could they not?

And because of Elizabeth.

If we were at war, I could describe the situation after a night of explosive sex as a truce.

Actually, that analogy doesn’t work at all. Well, I’m a panther, not an eagle, so I can’t be held accountable for screwing up literary devices.

If we were at war, the sex would be the fighting, right? Well, if that’s the case, then there’s no fucking truce at all. No pun intended. Except for those nights I sleep at the fire station, I don’t sleep alone anymore. She’s either at my place or I’m at hers. In fact, when I work late, she has Joel, and I just go “home” to her place.

When she works late at the theater on Friday and Saturday evenings, she comes “home” to my place.

We have one more place than we actually need.

Why the hell did I call it a truce?

Oh, I know why.

I called it a truce but it’s not about a war between Liz and me. It’s a war between me and me. Yeah, I know. Go ahead and proceed to make fun of me at your leisure.

If it’s any help, I just watched a movie about a couple of antelope ground squirrels trying to find their daughter who’d somehow been kidnapped by a group of roadrunners determined to take over a valley in the desert. I’m not necessarily in a high-critical-thinking frame of mind.

Anyway, the one thing we never talk about is our relationship. We essentially (and I can’t stress this enough) have the exact same relationship as always except we also make love. A lot. We make love a lot. But, really, apart from the fact that we do that, there’s really not a great deal different about when we hang out now.

Wow.

Okay, I realize how that sounds. So, let me try again.

Remove sex from the equation, and we have the same relationship. When we’re together watching a movie, we’re just like we were before except for a level of familiarity with each other’s body that we didn’t have. So, there’s cuddling that wouldn’t have been there. There are kisses. There might be a little bit of grab-ass and other teasing.

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