Page 39 of The Woman in the Garage

“Let’s get that shit out of your car, yeah?” he asked, shooting me a smile that said he knew exactly what he’d done to me, how he’d overwhelmed my body and scrambled my brain.

But he reached for my hand, pulling me along on numb legs and an even more useless head.

I didn’t even grab a box when we made it back to the car; I just leaned against it, giving my weak legs a little break.

Santo smiled over at me, reading me too well. With boxes in his arm, he leaned down, kissing me hard and deep, but way too short.

“How about you hang here?” he suggested, as if moving was even possible right then.

I just stayed there, leaning against my car, watching Santo make trip after trip to my unit, not even breaking a sweat. But, yeah, I was imagining him all sweaty, his glorious body stripped bare, his muscles contracting as he thrust into me over and over again…

“Keep looking at me like that and we’re gonna be giving that lovely old couple a show,” Santo said, his smile wicked as he nodded, making me suddenly aware that we weren’t alone. “That was the last of it,” he added, slamming my trunk.

“Oh, wait… I don’t have a lock.”

“Luckily, there’s a little hardware store just down the road. Are you worried about all that crap? You want me to stay here while you run? Or vice versa?”

“I’m not worried about it.” The storage unit was serving as temporary trash storage anyway. “We can go together.”

So what if I was sounding needy?

The fact of the matter was I was.

In more ways than he could know.

Needy for protection, for connection, for friendship, for—well—something a lot less PG than all of that.

As he drove, Santo’s hand went to my thigh, grabbing it and staying put until we had to climb out to grab the lock.

When we got back to the unit and locked my door, slipping my new key onto my ring with dozens of others, I was suddenly disappointed that we’d taken both our cars.

There was no reason for us not to go our separate ways from there. There were no other excuses to keep me away from work, from the realities of my life.

“Thanks for this,” I said lamely as he held my car door open for me. “For, you know, this, but also just… lunch and conversation. I needed that more than you know.”

“I’m always down for lunch, conversation, or… this,” he said, waving back toward the building, the insinuation nearly making my knees weak. So it was lucky I was sliding into my seat.

It wasn’t until I was pulling out of the lot that I realized… there was no way I could call him up for lunch, conversation, or sweaty fun times.

I still didn’t have his damn phone number.

When we turned in opposite directions, I had myself convinced that it was deliberate on his part, that he had just been casually blowing me off.

The anxiety spiral after that went off in a million—increasingly ridiculous—directions until I found myself in the shower crying over made-up scenarios in my head.

It wasn’t until I was all cried out, sitting in bed with a cup of tea because the pink couch made me think too much of Santo, that I was finally able to think of other things.

Like the new lock on my unit.

I’d had too strong a case of orgasm-brain earlier to go to the office and report it, to demand to see the footage.

But that had to move pretty high up on my list of things for the following day.

Because, really, what the hell?

What wasinthose totes?

Why was it worth breaking laws and pushing a woman onto her ass to get them?

---