“Is this your mom? And... sister?” She gestured to Jess.
I stood to let Jess back in, but grabbed her before she could slide back in and kissed her cheek. Jessie laced her fingers with mine on her hips.
“Not my sister. This is my girlfriend, Jessie.”
The blonde looked Jess up and down with an expression like she was smelling a bad smell. “I thought you didn’t do girlfriends.”
“Yeah, well, the right one came along. Ain’t that right, hon?” I nestled my nose into her neck and planted a kiss there. Jessie leaned into me and giggled, pressing her hand to the side of myface.
“That tickles,” she sighed.
“More where that came from,” I mumbled in her ear. Her breath caught. Jesus, what was I doing?
My old friend was not amused. “Cute. Well, let me know if you change your mind and want somebody more your type. You have my number. Have a good night.” She disappeared in a flash of blonde hair.
Jess pasted on a smile, but I could tell she was uncomfortable. Like she was my actual girlfriend, I tried to smooth it over with an arm around her shoulder and a kiss to her temple. It was the kind of shit I saw Guy do to Kitty, so I figured that’s loving boyfriend stuff. Luckily, our food came right then.
“Actually, sir, could I get another margarita?” Jess said. Her voice was calm and sweet, but her eyes had absolute anguish in them. I turned to our food.
“Not going to Kitty’s after all?”
“What’s another marg?” she asked with a grimace of a smile, to Mom and Lori’s excited whoops.
“Dig in, everybody,” I said, desperate to shift the mood.
* * *
Jess didn’t talk while we got ready for bed. Pissed off radiated from her like a black cloud. She was in the white silk pajamas she wore when we first really met, with the tiny shorts that gave her the Sweet Cheeks name. I had to focus not to stare at her boobs, because that was not going to help my case.
As she put on maybe the fifteenth step in her skin care routine, I spoke.
“I’m sorry, Jessalyn.”
Her fingers stopped moving over her skin and she stared at me in the mirror for a second. Then she continued her meticulous skin care application. When she finished, she turned to face me,crossing her arms.
“What exactly do you think you’re sorry for, Ben?”
I wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold her hips while I spoke to her. But we were not actually dating, and that was also part of the problem. I looked very pointedly at her eyes as she rubbed some cream into the skin over her boobs, doing my best to have some decorum when I really wanted to bug out my eyes and pant like a dog.
“For upsetting you. For dragging you out to dinner. For making you uncomfortable.”
She studied me, blinking slowly as she took off the headband that held back her bangs. “Hmm. Okay.”
I was not sorry for touching her as much as I did, because goddammit, I liked it. And, she’d agreed to the fake girlfriend thing. Touching was part of it.
Why was I feeling defensive about the touching? Was it because I liked it so much and I wasn’t sure if she felt the same? I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable. I wanted her to want to touch me, too. Did she?
“Not sorry for not telling me my boyfriend was cheating on me?”
“Jessie, see it from my perspective. If I were in a relationship, and you thought I was being cheated on, would you have told me?”
Her mouth went into a narrow line. I had her there. She moved on to the next thing. “You’re not at all sorry that you didn’t defend your fake girlfriend in front of your old hockey whore? Is that the term? It’s something cutesy and demeaning like that, isn’t it?”
I slapped my hand over my face and croaked out a humiliated, “Puck bunny.”
“Ah yes! How could I forget?” she said sarcastically, heading into the bedroom. “Such a kind term for a woman giving you her body!”
“I don’t use it, Jess.”
