Page 34 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
“We didn’t fuck,” I say.
She narrows her eyebrows at me. “You did something, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
I flip my hair away from my neck. “I’m not saying we didn’t do anything, I’m saying we didn’t have sex.”
She frowns. “Intriguing. Go on.”
“We…messed around.”
“And? Why am I here? You wouldn’t call me to come over and talk if you didn’t have some sort of…I don’t know—conflict.”
I fill and turn on my electric kettle to make tea. “I guess I should give you the backstory. So, the pool party where I first met you guys—”
“I thought for sure you and James were gonna be a thing, like, as of that day.”
“Under different circumstances, we probably would have been. But we both have…issues.”
“James lost his wife in childbirth, so I get his hang up, but you’re little miss ‘I don’t talk about my past’, so I have no idea what your issue is.”
I laugh. “Funny thing is, I had a major panic attack about a week ago and showed up at Laurel’s house at three a.m., sobbing. And I told her my whole story. And the process of telling her my story I realized I have to quit planning Imogen and Jesse’s wedding, because of the aforementioned hang-up, which led me to having to tell her the story. Then I sort of told James some of the story when he was here quoting me on a remodel and we, um…yeah.”
“So basically everyone knows but me?”
I laugh. “Yep. You’re the last to know.” I shake my head. “No. Laurel and Imogen are the only ones who know the whole story.”
I give her a highlights version, and when I’m done, she’s staring at me with interest.
“So that’s why you’re such a bitch all the time,” she says, with a grin that tells me she’s kidding.
“Yeah, exactly,” I say, with another laugh. “I’m a bitch because life dealt me some shitty hands.”
“So you and James have that in common, then—having lost a partner.” She frowns. “I’d think that would bond you a little.”
“You’d think. But in reality, it just makes both of us reticent to trust anyone, and we feel guilty for doing anything with anyone. For enjoying anything, because it feels like betraying our dead lover.”
Audra winces. “Oh.”
I nod. “Yeah, oh.”
“So, is that what happened? You guys messed around and now you have survivor’s guilt or something?”
“Wish it was that simple or easy,” I say.
Audra waves a hand. “So? What the hell happened? Don’t keep a bitch waiting.”
“Back to the backstory, first,” I say. “The pool party. We clicked, you know? Like, instant chemistry. Attraction, sexual tension from the first glance, the whole shebang.”
“But.”
“We kissed,” I say, staring out the window. “And by kissed, I mean, he slammed me up against the refrigerator and kissed me absolutely stupid. Like, I’ve never been kissed that way by anyone, ever, not even by my dead boyfriend.” I pause, then. “And actually, that was my exact thought, verbatim—not even Craig ever kissed me this way. And I froze.”
“Oh,” Audra says, understanding dawning. “Oh boy.”
“And it turns out James had a similar thought. Except in his case, it wasn’t just a boyfriend, it was his high school sweetheart, the only woman he ever kissed, touched, dated, anything—not to mention the mother of his children and his wife of twenty years.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah, so kissing me, and feeling like it was that good, as good or better than kissing his wife? Grounds for feeling a little guilty, I’d say.”
“Must have been a hell of a kiss,” Audra notes.
I snort. “You have no idea.” I sigh dreamily. “Never in my life has a single kiss affected me that way—no touching anywhere except his hands on my face and mine on his shoulders. I seriously got wet from the kiss. If he’d touched me literally anywhere, I’d probably have spontaneously orgasmed.”
“Jesus,” Audra says, eyes widening.
“Yeah.” The kettle comes to a boil and turns off, and I pour myself a mug of green tea; I wiggle an empty mug at Audra as an offer, and she shrugs and nods, so I pour her some too. “So, after the kiss, and our individually motivated freak-outs, we agreed that maybe it was best for both of us if we just…ignored the thing between us and acted like nothing had ever happened.”
Audra nods. “Which is why things were so weird between you two for the last year.” She laughs. “It totally worked, too, I bet,” she says, her voice dripping sarcasm.
I sigh again. “I mean, yeah. It worked…until it didn’t.”
“Usually how that goes, in my experience.”
“Because you have SO much experience pretending you don’t feel sexually attracted to someone.”
She fake-glares at me. “For your information, I TOTALLY held out on sleeping with Franco for, like, DAYS, at least.”
“Wow,” I say, deadpan. “Such restraint.”
“Right? I know.” She goes serious, then. “So you and James pretended you didn’t have the hots for each other for over a year, and then…?”
