Page 76 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
“Don’t apologize.” I settle my forehead on hers. “How could you know she’d go nuts?”
“Because she acted insane on the phone?” she asks. “And because you told me about her. So, I’m sorry, honey. I?—”
The doorbell goes.
I start to pull back. “I should?—”
“Stay,” she says, one hand lifting, settling on my jaw. Flour still dusts her hair, like the universe is giving me proof that what just happened between us was real.
And God, I want that.
But there’s knocking and the doorbell going incessantly and every time I’ve tried to ignore Courtney into submission, she’s just gotten more determined, more insane, more nightmarish.
“Stay,” Faye says again, stepping close, her body going flush to mine. “Shower with me.”
There’s a thud and she jumps.
I start to pull back. “I need to take care of?—”
“Gray,” she says more firmly, perhaps even bordering on order territory.
“Red,” I warn.
She steps back, shimmies out of her tank top that was still bunched around her middle.
And fuck, the shimmy does all sorts of glorious things to her tits.
“Stay with me. Stay in this moment. I haven’t had too many good ones in the last few years and I’m thinking you haven’t either.” She takes my hand as I’m reeling from the truth of that, from what I’ve been too much of a coward to admit.
I’m lonely.
“Don’t let her take it from you. From us.”
And how can I possibly deny her that? Especially when I want it so badly.
So, I ignore the doorbell that’s still ringing and allow her to pull me toward the shower stall.
And I think…
Maybe it might be my best decision ever.
“Taste,” Faye murmurs much later in the day, the kitchen now filled with the smell of delicious banana bread and not burned loaves and spoiled milk and whatever nonsense I’d conjured up this morning.
It’s also clean.
Neat as a pin.
Something I insisted Faye didn’t have to help me with after I’d taken on the challenge of pleasuring her in the shower.
(And accomplishing that twice).
But she had helped me and together it hadn’t taken too long.
Then we used one of the recipes I found, one that Faye thought might be closest to her Nana’s recipe to bake up the batch she’s just pulled out of the oven.
“Taste,” she says again, holding the piece she’s sliced off up to my lips.
I snag her wrist, press a kiss to the inside of it and eat the proffered chunk.
