Page 75 of Smooth Sailing

She swung on behind him.

And this wasn’t a belt loops ride.

Tits flush to back and chin on his shoulder.

He’d been wrong, it wasn’t torture.

It was indication it might be time to climb that fucking mountain.

Because maybe, just maybe, against all the odds stacked against him since his conception…

There might be an oasis on the other side.

9

MOTIVATION

Hugger

Hugger woke feeling more than his usual morning rough.

Diana’s dark-blue couch looked good and was comfortable to sit on, but it wasn’t long enough for him. He couldn’t find a position that worked, which meant he woke up constantly in search of one.

He was also wearing his clothes, something he’d done every night, and that didn’t help with his comfort level.

But he didn’t want Suzette or Diana to run into him wearing his boxer briefs or sleep shorts.

Especially Suzette.

Hugger wanted her at all times to feel an extra layer of protection from him.

This meant he had three nights of shit sleep in a time he needed to keep his shit sharp.

So he’d just woken up, but he needed a nap.

It was still dark, just a little sun in the early dawn leaking through Diana’s many windows, but he knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep.

He pushed up to sitting on the couch, put his elbows on his knees, drove his fingers through his hair, digging the pads into his scalp, and left them at his neck, his fingers holding his hair back and still digging into the tense muscle there.

Hugger had never been a morning person. He’d always woken tough. Until he was old enough to introduce himself to coffee, that tough lasted awhile.

It did his ma’s head in.

On that thought, he remembered when he was eight, nine years old, slouching and grouching through his morning prep before school, and his mom grousing, “Should fill a bucket with ice water and douse you with it every morning to snap you out of it.”

From that day on, Hugger had still woken rough, but he’d done everything he could to stop slouching and grouching and get on with it so it didn’t bug his ma.

Feeling uneasy about this memory, mostly that it would unearth itself at all, he shoved it aside, pushed up from the couch and headed down the hall, noting Suzette’s door was firmly closed, but the door at the end, Diana’s, was open a couple of inches.

An indication to him he didn’t need to hold it if he had to use the john.

Damn, but she was a good woman.

Cute. Smart. Funny. Thoughtful. A little loony, but it was the good kind.

Still, when he got to her door, he grabbed the handle so it wouldn’t swing wider when he knocked softly so as not to wake her if she was asleep, or do the same with Suzette.

He heard nothing, so he knocked again, and only when she didn’t call out did he push in.

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