Page 8 of Possessive Cowboy

5

Raina

Abby wastesno time in bombarding me with questions when I get back to our little house.

“Let me have some coffee at least,” I groan, ducking around her when she greets me at the door to walk to the kitchen in the back.

This little house is falling apart, without question. It belonged to Abby’s mother before she passed away, and as the only child, Abby inherited the entire estate. A bit of cash, a drained retirement account, a rusty old pickup truck that doesn’t run, and…the house.

When we moved in, we intended to fix it up and restore it to its proper glory. A little farmhouse like this deserves it. But on our modest incomes as new college graduates, we soon found out that it’s expensive to maintain a house, even a house that we don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage on.

So we keep things in basic working order. The water runs, the toilet flushes, and the roof only slightly caved in last winter when we got some heavy snow.

It works…but it’s not pretty. That’s the best way to sum it up.

I open the creaky kitchen cabinet and pull down the bag of coffee grounds, measuring a few scoops out and dumping them into the coffeemaker. I can feel Abby behind me, watching me with narrowed green eyes.

“What?” I sigh, without looking back at her.

“You know what,” she says. “I want to hear all about you and the mysterious sex cowboy!”

“What do you want to know?” I ask.

I flip the switch on the coffeemaker and it begins to sputter to life, warming the water in the tank. Finally there’s nothing left to do except wait for the coffee, leaving me no choice but to turn around and face my best friend and her inquisitive eyes.

She stares at me when I turn back to her and then, after a moment, claps her hands together and smiles.

“Yep,” she says. “You’ve got it.”

“I’ve got what?”

“A post-orgasm glow,” she announces with satisfaction. “A good one, too. He must have given you the time of your life last night!”

She lets out a loud whoop.

“Calm down,” I sigh. “Yes, he did. But…”

“But what?”

I bite my lip.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I’m just not good at this sort of thing, but it felt…wrong, almost?”

“That’s the best,” Abby says dreamily. “When it feels so good that it’swrong.Kind of dirty, right, like a fantasy?”

“Not that kind of wrong,” I laugh a little. “I mean, it felt wrong to just…hook up with this complete stranger, I guess? I mean, that’s the entire point of the Hush app, obviously, but it still doesn’t make it natural to me to do that.”

“Did you have a drink like I told you to?”

“One drink,” I say. “A shot of tequila.”

“Good choice,” she says. “Tequila makes you brave.”

“Until you wake up the next morning to a perfect stranger and question your life choices,” I reply.

I turn back to the coffeemaker, grabbing my favorite purple mug and filling it with steaming hot caffeine. Abby follows my lead, filling a mug of her own, and we both go to the shabby kitchen table to continue our talk.

“So you regret it,” Abby says.

---