Page 60 of The Auction
“You know what’s really fucked up?” he said. “I like you a whole lot, Jules. I’d choose to be on this farm with you rather than Brigid any fucking day.”
Take that, Brigid.
At least it was something.
We pulledinto town and passed the hardware store, which I thought was our first stop. Hardware store, then grocery store, so the cold stuff we bought didn’t melt before we got home. People don’t realize how hard it is to buy and transport something as simple as ice cream when you lived an hour and a half away from the store.
Which is why growing up, I never had ice cream, but Creed liked it, so we got creative with buying a bunch of frozen vegetables so we could pack them together in order for the ice cream to survive the trip.
It was the little things like that, that made it hard to hate Creed.
Then I remembered the fact that he basically stole my legacy out from under me, which made it hard for me to even think about falling in love with him.
He told me he was a killer! He had episodes where he still might kill me in my sleep. I watched him knock a man unconscious in front of my eyes.
I was supposed to fall in love with this guy?
What the fuck did that even mean?
Besides, love, the real thing, was a two way street. Which meant if I loved him, he had to love me, and the sad truth was, I didn’t think he had it in him.
Creed was too practical. Maybe his mother loved him. Maybe his father loved him, but given that he’d left both lives for something completely different when he was eighteen told me that love didn’t register with him.
If he never believed he’d been loved, I didn’t see how it was possible he would even entertain the emotion for himself.
Him liking me over some phantom girl name Brigid was the best I could probably hope for.
That, and sex.
Although…the sex was kind of fun.
But it wasn’t. I didn’t even know how to explain it to myself. It was urgent and frustrating and awkward. It was touching things I’d never touched and experiencing sensations that I didn’t even know I liked until I thought about it afterward and it made my whole body hot and shivery.
Sometimes I thought about the future. Like, ten years from now.
I’ve sold the farm. I’m living as a…marketing analyst for an advertising firm? In Seattle. Because, always Seattle. I’m on a date at a restaurant with cloth napkins and five pieces of silverware lined up on either side of the fancy plates. The man across from me is a…lawyer? And we’re sharing our day over after dinner espressos, having just shared a tiramisu. He’s thinking about taking me back to his place and I’m thinking about going.
In that situation, it would be normal and healthy that I’d had a prior sex life. That I would feel comfortable getting naked, having him go down on me, going down on him. All of it. Two sexually mature adults who were just enjoying each other’s company and exploring if we wanted a committed relationship.
If I said I didn’t want to take my shirt off, because I was nervous about being naked, what would…Chad?...think?
Which is why it made sense to continue to explore sex with Creed. He got something out of it, obviously. I got something out of it, beyond just the short term orgasm. I was setting myself up for my future.
My sophisticated Seattle future where I dated lawyers, had dinner at fancy restaurants, ate fucking tiramisu…
“Jules,” Creed snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Jules? Are you hearing me?”
“I was dreaming about my future life,” I admitted to him. “There was espresso and tiramisu.”
“Snap out of it,” he said. “We’re here.”
He’d pulled up in front of the bank. Farmer’s State Bank. “Why are we here? Oh, let me guess. My father left me a secret trust that would be all mine once I turned twenty-one and you want me to sign it over to you before I’m of legal age.”
“How did you guess?” he asked, innocently. Then he popped open the driver’s side door and got out.
I admit to having a somewhat active imagination.
I hopped out of the truck and followed him inside our local branch. He said a few words to the guy behind the counter and then we were shown into the only office in the small building. It was empty and there were two chairs in front of the desk. We sat in them.
