“It’s called My Bed.”
“I like that movie.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“No. But I caught a great preview of it today.”
“Maybe we could turn it into a drive-in viewing. You know, under the stars?” Something in him had cracked, too—the way he shifted and held his body was more intimate. She stretched up and kissed his lips lightly.
He blinked hard, then jumped a bit. Reaching into his pocket, he checked his phone. “A patient.”
“It’s your day off!” she protested.
“VBAC. She really wants to make this happen, and I promised I’d come in…” He raked his hair with one hand. “Damn it.”
“I get it.” Exhaustion she’d been ignoring asserted itself at the opportunity, reminding her that she really needed some rest, and a shower, and to eat something. And she wanted to spend five hours on the phone with Laura, squeeing about Dr. Perfect. Dr. Air Fucking Perfect, now.
“What are you doing Tuesday?”
“I’m off.”
“Then come…over.”
He was five steps toward the front doors to the hospital when he ran back, grabbed her, and held her, a nice, comfortable kiss planted on her lips.
“I’ll come. And so will you.”
Chapter Eight
In the handful of days since Jillian’s birth, the only place that seemed to give Josie comfort was Jeddy’s. And she resented it. The coffee was terrible, the companionship was awful. But the service was really great and, as much as Madge could be a sourpuss, at least she was Josie’s sourpuss. So now, every morning around 6 a.m., she got a coffee and some kind of reasonable pastry breakfast and settled in a booth, wishing for the life that had unraveled over the past few days as Laura had moved on.
Now, if Josie had said those words to Laura, “You’ve moved on,” she would have heard a torrent of all the reasons why that wasn’t true. Followed, probably, by lots of tears and an extra order of coconut shrimp or a hot fudge sundae. The protests, though, would come from Laura’s understanding, deep down, that Josie was right. Laura had moved on, finding the true love—true loves?—that eluded Josie.
Sex had always been no problem for her, at least. Even before her recent encounters with Alex. Men found her appealing enough to proposition…but not worthy enough to stay. The few relationships she’d had that had lasted longer than one condom had been fraught with jealousy and anger and accusations of condescension on both parts, typically ending in a “fuck you” phone call. And then a regretful booty call a few days later. And then—silence.
When Laura had first met Dylan and Mike and had learned about the threesome life that they embraced, Josie had told, for the first time ever, about her own threesome experience. It hadn’t been intentional by any stretch, and it hadn’t even been good. It had, however, triggered a sense of curiosity in her. By pushing her own moral boundaries, she’d discovered that she was still herself the next day, she still interacted with other human beings the same way. She hadn’t grown horns or weeping sores in the palms of her hands; there was no trauma, no self-destructiveness to it.
It had just been an option. She had taken advantage of the opportunity, lived the experience and woken up the next day alive, fine, and normal. Needing to pee, and eat, and shower, and wash her clothes, like any other day. With the minor additional need to decide what it had meant to violate a social norm and sleep with two men at once. Back then, in college, it had been a coup of sorts, some kind of quiet, dark mark as if she had joined an amoral club that no one knew existed and whose members all kept their mouths shut. If they were female.
A rumor had spread about what Josie had done with those two guys, but it had fizzled fast. She was this boyish, petite thing who had a motormouth; most people dismissed her as un-fuckable. So the coup really was hers; her internal scorekeeper knew that un-fuckable Josie had managed to find two guys to sleep with her at the same time. Even the most attractive woman at their small college couldn’t stake that claim. Not out in public, anyway. Being open about it would have brought her ruin. One hell of a Catch-22, right?
Two guys, though, right now…that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was one man, twice over…or to double her over. Alex filled her visual memory: the lines of his pecs, the narrow taper of his waist, the intensity in his eyes in the on-call room. How he had watched her with such steady power, her body on fire just from his look. Picking at the remnants of her croissant, Josie let herself revel in that memory for a few moments before sheepishly admitting a tinge of guilt. Laura had been just a few doors down, as desperate to push something out of her vagina as Josie had been eager to get something in hers.
Thinking of what he’d done to her by the river was also problematic. It was enough to make her come right here, on the nasty vinyl booth seat, willing an orgasm from the memory of his hands on her, his c**k hammering her ass into the stone wall, and all that came with coming outdoors.
She snapped back to reality when Madge zipped over, dumped a refill into her coffee mug, and moved on.
She was such a chickenshit, worried every second of every day since she saw him that this wasn’t real, struggling to accept the idea that he would want her. Instead, she’d tried to convince herself that resigning herself to the reality that it would never work would be much less painful than trying to build something, only to have it fall apart. A part of her knew that that was a big load of shit, and if Laura were more available right now, she would be sitting at this table right now, snarfing down a platter of fried green tomatoes, telling her so. “That’s bullshit,” she would say, her finger pointed in Josie’s face, happy to be on the giving end of angsty love life advice.
But Laura wasn’t here. All Josie had right now was her own imagination, her own inner divining rod, and it was saying guys like Alex don’t want girls like her for the long haul—they want them for the quick and dirty. Josie could do quick and dirty. She could do quick and dirty real good. But spending enough time with Laura, Mike, and Dylan, and now baby Jill, had changed something deep inside her. It made her see a possibility that turned all the other options into pale imitations of life and love. What if that possibility were out there somewhere for her?
Laura’s voice popped into her mind. What if Alex is that possibility?
Josie took a sip of her coffee. It was hotter than she’d expected and burned a bit, shocking her. She drank some water to cool her mouth and then sat with the pain, knowing that she was sitting with a much more intense pain that no glass of water could alleviate.