Page 41 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
I feel chastised. “Yes, James. I can handle a party with mutual friends.”
“So you’ll be there? It’s this Saturday. I plan on firing up the grill around four, but everyone is welcome whenever till whenever. I’ll text you my address.”
“I’ll be there.” I eye Laurel. “The more the merrier, you say?”
“Yes ma’am. Bring something, or just bring yourself. There’ll be plenty of food and drink, and some to spare.”
“I may bring a friend. We’ll see. Either way, I’ll be there. Thank you for inviting me.”
“Course. See you Saturday.”
I stuff my phone back in my purse—it dings a few seconds later with James’s address, but I ignore that. I glance at Laurel. “You busy Saturday?”
She brightens. “Actually, I’m free. My mom is taking Nate for the weekend to celebrate his birthday. I take him out the weekend of his actual birthday, and then Mom takes him that whole following weekend. It’s fun for him, and gives me a weekend free. What’s going on?”
“A barbecue at a friend’s place.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Just a barbecue, huh?”
I shrug, endeavoring to look innocent. “Yep. And, sure, there may be at least two single, good-looking, successful men there, and you may just be coming off a breakup, but that’s purely ancillary. I just want to invite you to the party. We lost touch after you fired me, and I feel like we should stay in contact this time.”
She huffs. “I didn’t fire you, I just didn’t need a personal trainer anymore.”
I laugh, elbowing her. “I know, I know—I’m teasing. I do want you at the party, though. The guy I had the weird thing with, Franco—he’ll be there, and I’ll need all the moral support I can get.”
“Single, good-looking, and successful?” she asks, rightfully skeptical.
“They’re contractors—builders. Decent, nice, salt-of-the-earth, sort of guys. And yes, seriously good-looking.”
“Names and descriptions?”
I smirk. “You’ll have to come to find out.”
She sighs. “Fine.”
“Send me your address and I’ll pick you up on the way.”
“Sounds good,” she says.
After that, we hang out at the bar and talk until much later, much later than I should stay out, considering my first client is at seven thirty in the morning. But Laurel is fun to talk to—it’s past midnight by the time we say our goodbyes. I walk home since it’s only a block down and around the corner from my condo, and Laurel takes a Lyft home.
Laurel’s words ring in my head as I trudge into my condo and flop face first onto my bed. Despite the hours of conversation in between, all I hear is her saying: Sex with feelings? There’s nothing like it. The emotions, the connection, the belonging? There’s nothing like it.
Dammit.
That’s it exactly—she pinpointed the emotion I couldn’t name, the thing that’s stuck with me the most strongly in the months since Franco and I slept together.
Belonging.
In those moments in his arms, I belonged. It was fleeting, and foreign, but amazing. I just…fit.
I groan, and push off the bed. I strip, brush my teeth, use the bathroom, and flop into bed again, hearing Laurel’s voice on a loop. Belonging.
It was a fluke, though, wasn’t it? It had to have been a fluke.
It was a fluke. A one-time-only performance, unrepeatable—with him or anyone else. I just have to accept that.
Don’t I?
Chapter 8
It’s Saturday, a little past four in the afternoon, and I’m lounging with my feet in the cool water of the beautiful in-ground pool in James Bod’s backyard. Sipping a sugar-free mojito made by Ryder, I’m listening to an absolute darling nine- or ten-year-old-girl with beautiful nut-brown hair in frizzy, braided pigtails. She is telling me everything there is to know about a series of books called Ever After High. We’ve been sitting together for fifteen minutes, and I thought I’d be bored when she sat down and started talking, but I’m not. I haven’t gotten a word in edgewise, and we haven’t even exchanged names.
I’m amused and bemused.
“…And then—and then Raven wouldn’t sign the book! I just knew it!” She pauses to take a breath.
A deep, bear-like voice booms from far overhead. “Nina.”
I look up, and so does the girl beside me. James, his massive frame blocking out the sun, Oakleys, as usual, perched on his nose, a can of some local IPA looking tiny in his gargantuan paw is speaking.
“Yes, Papa?”
Papa? I frown up at him.
He waggles a finger at the girl—Nina, it seems her name is—and then at me. “Are you talking at her, or with her?”
Nina wiggles uncomfortably. “At her.”
“A conversation is…”
“A mutual discourse between two people.”
“And a monologue is…”
“Something nobody outside of a theater ever wants to hear,” Nina replies in a way that indicates this is a commonly repeated lesson.
Nina kicks her feet in the water, watching as James—her father—ambles away across the yard again. “I tend to go off into monologues a lot and not let anyone else get a word in edgewise. Papa says I need to learn to listen more and talk less.”
