Page 2 of Hazel and Elijah Find Out: First They F*cked Around

I hadn’t planned on having this conversation, but as he started explaining that he’d gotten a remote research opportunity to evaluate the migration patterns of salmon for the next six months, it became clear where the conversation was going. I’d been internally processing the email I’d read from the Grand Ridge Greater Area Humane Society, and brainstorming ways to correct the bind I was in. But now my mental energy was going in a completely different direction.

“We can still be friends.” I leaned over the table, lowering my voice. “We can keep sleeping together until you leave.”

“Uh…I don’t know.” His shoulders hunched as he scratched his pant leg. “Now it feels like I like you more than you like me.”

The role reversal was startling. I sat back in my chair, blinking. “Dennis, you werejustbreaking up with me.”

“I know.”

“So clearly, you don’t like methatmuch.”

“I kinda do… I didn’twantto break up with you.”

“I am so confused right now.”

“Yeah.”

“If you didn’t want to break up with me, then why were you?”

He sighed, puffing his cheeks out. “It seemed like the right thing to do. I’m gonna be gone for six months with a heavy workload.”

“Don’t you thinkaskingme what I wanted would have been the right thing?”

“That’s a good point. I guess I should have. What would you like?”

There was the root of my issue with Dennis. He was kind, handsome, and the second best lay I’d ever had, but he was not a deep thinker. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, and if I wasn’t pining for someone who wasn’t even around—and whose number had gone unused in my phone for over a year, I might be more interested in the possibilities of Dennis.

I brushed the loose strands of my French braid from my face and stared at the pinks and golds reflecting on the surface of Grand Ridge Lake across the street. Behind me, two car doors opened and closed. I’d set myself up to be asked a question that I didn’t have an answer to. The longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable it grew.

“Dennis,” I began, but Banjo growled and barked, surprising me quiet. I had just enough time to glance down and see him dart through the fenced area.

Dennis snatched at the leash dragging on the cement, but missed it by less than an inch. His chair clashed to the ground as he jumped the fence to chase after his dog. I took a beat to roll my eyes before chasing after them.

If he won’t take obedience classes, could he at least hang on to Banjo’s leash better?

“Mom,” a man’s voice warned from a few feet behind me.

Banjo barked.

The man moved to place himself between a woman with reddish brown hair until the beagle charged past her, and directly for the man.

I exited through the gate. The woman pressed her hand to her mouth, Dennis raced after an incensed Banjo.

Realizing the dog’s path was headed right for him, the man turned on his heel. He was strong, and lean, and took hold of the top of the eight-foot retaining wall and pulled his entire body up it. The sweatshirt he wore concealed the flex of lithe muscles, but his jeans were more transparent about what was inside—his thighs strained against the denim and fabric clung to his ass. It only took seconds for him to place his tennis shoe on the grass and leverage the rest of his weight to stand safely above us.

Banjo barked and clawed at the wall.

The man’s chest heaved as he took a few deep breaths, his hands resting on his hips. And I was transported to the middle of the night in a cabin on Lake Michigan’s shore. His naked body above mine, his chestnut curls plastered to his sweat-slicked forehead. His whispered words as he sank inside me again,“I can’t get enough of you.”

The memory was so vivid, I could practically smell him on my skin.

My heart drummed in my ears, drowning out the chaotic noises around me, a persistent beat.Elijah.

My unattainable high school crush, and the estranged son of my former mentor, and the most beautiful man on earth. The one I had an incredible one-night stand with the summer before. The one whose phone number I’d had for the past fifteen months. The one I hadn’t called or texted because of my deep-seated anxiety about just howhimhe was, while I was just nerdy ol’ me.

“Eli,” the woman called, “are you okay?”

Holding out a grass- and dirt-covered palm, he answered, “I’m fine, Mom.”

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