Page 16 of Surfer Girl

Jessie nodded. “Keep doing that and forget home, I’m going straight to heaven!”

They both laughed, Sophie gently circling Jessie’s mound with her thumb, tenderly caressing every fold and wrinkle until it grew fragrant and moist yet again. “You can go anywhere you want, Jessie, as long as you keep coming back to me.”

Jessie began to tremble, nipples going hard and belly quivering as Sophie found just the right rhythm to tease her into submission without quite sending her over the edge.

Yet, anyway…

“Just try to get rid of me,” she murmured, before closing her eyes, leaning back, and giving herself to Sophie completely.

Chapter Eight

JESSIE

“You’re early today.”

Jessie glanced up from hanging her backpack on the handy hook in the entrance to the liquor closet, surprised by Brett’s good-natured tone. After their tense run-in the day before, she’d assumed he’d be more standoffish than usual.

“A little,” she murmured, still struggling to keep her emotions in check after waking up next to sweet, naked Sophie, only moments before. The vivid discord between heavenly debauchery and her G-rated, candy-coated, steel-drum-lilting workplace was as jarring as not giving her lover a good-morning kiss.

He gave her a flowery little chuckle, as if he might be talking to a guest. “A little? Your shift doesn’t start until ten.”

Sophie glanced at Brett, crisp and dignified as ever in his overstuffed dress shirt and trademark paisley tie. Though corporate didn’t insist on formal dress among their management team, she’d never seen Brett dressed in anything less than a shirt and tie. She favored what the other managers wore: a collared Beach Break golf shirt in either pink or sea foam colors, paired with a pair of khaki or off-white shorts.

Spiffy? No, but it beat a shirt and a tie any day. She wasn’t quite sure how Brett did it every day or, for that matter, why. Without anything to signify he was an employee of Beach Break on his person save for the earpiece each manager wore to communicate with each other, half the guests he approached didn’t even know he worked there.

They hadn’t spoken since her little blowup the day before at the hostess stand and now, so near the scene of the crime, Jessie wasn’t sure where they stood. Or, for that matter, how to proceed from here on out. She hated having beef with coworkers and, usually, would have been up half the night fretting about it and crafting carefully worded apologies for the next day. But she’d been thoroughly distracted by Sophie for the last twelve hours and, frankly, hadn’t given Brett a second thought until this very moment.

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep.” She waved the cup of convenience store coffee toward where he sat like some absurd Show and Tell display.

She expected a smart response, per usual. Or a quick lecture on the fact that, as a salaried employee now, Jessie wasn’t entitled to overtime. Instead, Brett simply cocked his head and asked, “Why?”

Jessie stood, red coffee cup in hand, dumbfounded. In all the years she’d known him, Brett had never asked her a personal question before. Sure, they talked about the weather and their weekend plans and what they got for Christmas, but never something that required an actual, nuanced, personal response.

“Not sure,” she blurted, about to drift deeper into the restaurant proper when Brett used his foot to gently slide the chair opposite him out a little further onto the dining room floor. It made an almost startling sound there in the desperately quiet room. Before she could question the motion, he nodded at it pointedly. Despite his forced smile and nonthreatening demeanor, Jessie recognized it as an order from boss to employee.

She sank into it dutifully, still keenly aware of their rank in the Beach Break pecking order. “Did you drink some of that too late in the day?” Brett asked, nodding at the cup in her hand.

She chuckled despite her apprehension. Brett was still shy of forty but acted like a senior citizen, ever warning of the dangers of drinking caffeine too late—and singing the praises of things like fiber pills, fresh vegetables, and Vitamin D. “What, you mean after noon?”

He offered a wry smile beneath heavy, world-weary eyes. If anything, Jessie mused, it looked like he was the one who had been up all night, crafting some kind of an apology. “Something like that,” he muttered quietly.

“No,” she murmured, none too eager to invite Brett’s already judgy tone by confessing she’d been up all night satisfying her new lover—and vice versa. Instead, she merely blushed and confessed, “I just…have a lot on my mind right now.”

That much, at least, was true. Despite Sophie’s insistence that the two were suddenly a couple, Jessie had heard such words a time or two before, only to be ghosted the moment she yanked up her jeans and walked out the door. She worried that Sophie might regret such pillow talk in the clear light of day. That was one of the reasons she’d slipped out of bed before Sophie awoke and snuck out, into the predawn light, before she could give her the bad news in person.

“Such as?” Brett pressed.

She clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes in protest. “Brett, honestly? You don’t want to know.”

Brett met her eyes coolly. “I’m early for my shift too, Jessie. I have all the time in the world and, you know me. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t…”

She nodded. That much was also true. Jessie took a quick slug of coffee, bitter with cheap convenience store vanilla creamer that tasted more like ice cream—and not in a good way. Sighing, she set the cup down on the table and clutched it in both hands so that she wouldn’t be tempted to wave them in the telling of the story. “I…met someone.”

He seemed surprised. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

He nodded at her indiscriminately. “That why your hair’s up in that messy bun?”

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