Page 40 of Bending The Rules

I was pretty certain that wasn’t the only rule of ours we’d broken – ones about being on the same page about sex with your partner, using protection,smartrules that had been sprinkled into our list during our college years. But Rule #5 – that was the one making the alarm in my head chime the loudest.

And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

Even though a storm had sprung up, and it was pouring rain outside, I found Toni on the big screened porch that led to the backyard. The open door from the kitchen had led me in this direction – maybe her way of letting me know where she was. I stood in that open door, waiting for her to say something –anything– from her seat on the bench swing, with her legs tucked underneath her.

I waited what felt like a long time, and she said nothing.

“You know,” I started, turning my gaze out to the rain beating down on the huge weeping willow in the backyard. “It’s messing with me a little bit to think about not being able to come sit out on this porch with you anymore, once the house is sold. We used to sit out here and roast each other—”

“And Jay’s water-head ass,” Toni added, laughing. “Mama would pop us for making him cry.”

I nodded. “And you would get mad at me for bringing my baby brother with meall the time.”

Toni turned around, eyes bright, grinning. “Remember when you caught me back here making out with Danny Hall?”

“Afteryou blasted me – talkedso. Much. Shit. –about me fooling around with Sonia. You were a damn hypocrite. Fast ass.”

Toni broke into giggles, then shook her head before she turned around again. I moved from my position in the door, and went to sit down beside her.

“We have such an expansive history, Jus. All this, and we haven’t even revisited the college years yet.”

“Yeah, we do.” I looked at her, but she was looking out at the rain. “All those years of friendship, and then… a glitch. Record skipped, and now here we are.”

She ran a hand through her short curls. “Yeah. Here we are. Making new memories that we’ll look back on in a few years, and…”

“And…what?” I asked. “Laugh? Cry? Regret?”

She shrugged. “That depends on how we react to it.”

“And how are we reacting to it?”

“Is this a groupthink project or something motherfucker? I don’t know.”

I chuckled at her reaction, then shook my head. “I don’t either.”

There was silence between us for a few seconds, and then she nudged my arm, prompting me to glance up. I’d looked Toni in the face a million times. So much that her features were cataloged in my memory – only now, that memory had shifted, because I’d seen those same features do new things.

Lips parted to gasp in pleasure, nostrils flared to breathe through an orgasm, eyes half-lidded in bliss. Even now, she was still bathed in the afterglow of good sex.

Ihad done that to her.

“Hey,” she said, looking me right in the eyes. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that I hope we didn’t jack this up,” I answered immediately. “We’ve been back on good terms for what… two weeks? Three? And we go and do… this.”

She nodded. “Yeah. That was…” Instead of immediately finishing her statement, she pulled her legs closer together, and covered her chest with her arm. “Something. That we obviously both wanted.”

“Right, but that’s not…us,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know where the hell it came from, but we never… that’s not…”

“I know that.” She sighed.

“But we can’t un-ring that bell. Not when it was so…”

She dragged her lip between her teeth. “Something?”

“Right. But, I don’t think either of us thinks a thing between us could work.”

“A thing?” she asked. “What kind of thing?”

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