When my eyes meet hers, I feel a warmth flood through me— and it has nothing to do with the cum in my pants. Pen cups the side of my face, rubbing her thumb softly against my lips. “Don’t do that,” she whispers, repeating my words from earlier. Fuck, this woman is perfect.
“Pen, I?—”
A sharp knocking on the glass front door startles the shit out of us. “Oh crap,” Pen mumbles, stepping away from the shelf and out from under my arms. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Chloe at the front door, a bottle of wine in her hand, and a look of intrigue and confusion across her face. “I planned a girls’ night with Chloe and completely forgot.”
Pen looks back at me, sympathy in her eyes. “Go,” I grumble, bracing an arm against the bookshelf. “I’ll close up.” Not a fucking chance I’m turning around from this spot in front of Chloe, even if Pen will probably tell her all about it later.
It takes her two minutes to run to the back and grab her things. I don’t turn around, afraid to watch her walk out the door. Terrified that I just blew that fucking moment, literally.
But then she’s there, slipping under my arm and standing on her tiptoes, pressing her lips softly to mine, teasing me with her tongue. “This was the best night of my life.”
Smiling, she leaves me there, against the shelf, my heart pounding in my throat.
It’s several minutes after the bells tinkle, indicating I’m officially alone, before I’m able to breathe normally, close up, and go home for a long, hot shower.
NINE
may
PENELOPE
I am,without a doubt, completely, irrevocably in love with Dominic Miller. Or whatever the hell Bella said inTwilight. My crush on him when we were kids lay dormant for so long, but it had zero problem snapping into sizzling action upon his return.
I wasn’t lying to him when I said that that night— creating that display and the deliciously hot moment between us afterward— was the best night of my life. It may go without saying, but I don’t see a lot of action. In fact, the last guy that I hooked up with was Preston Donahue, who is exactly as pompous and narcissistic as his name sounds. The man never gave me an orgasm and would only fuck me in the dark because “I don’t want to see everything when we do it.”
Yes, I know, I’m worth more than that, blah blah blah. But my love life has been a very short series of hookups followed by years of nothing. Preston was four years ago now, and I haven’t been with anyone since then.
Dominic Miller dry humping me against the shelves in the bookstore was simply the hottest and most exciting thing to ever happen in my love life. Okay, sex life, let’s not get ahead ofourselves here. Chloe would not stop gushing about it that night; and, after two bottles of wine, we formulated a plan to seduce Dom.
But then he was gone. The next day, Gloria informed me that he had some business to attend to in Kentucky and he’d be away for a few days. While that disappointed me, I tried my best not to mope through his absence. A few days turned into a few weeks, and then I really started to feel depressed. Like I had been so close to tasting the forbidden fruit before it was snatched up, right from my hands.
To make matters worse, Gloria had to let the other two employees at the store go. This left me, Gloria, and Grace, which might have been painful, but then Gloria announced she was reducing store hours.
Needless to say, I went from feeling likeTwilightBella toNew MoonBella real fast.
“You haven’t heard from him at all?” Chloe asks for the third time.
“No,” I sigh, as if I wouldn’t have told Chloe the moment I heard from Dominic. The truth is, I don’t have his number and I’m too nervous to ask Gloria for it. So, suffering and waiting for him to return has become one of my favorite hobbies.
It’s an absolutely gorgeous spring day, with the sun shining and the temperature leveling out into a warm fifty-five degrees. Okay, that’s not typically warm, but in the Midwest, after a brutal winter? Anything above forty is cause for folks to break out their shorts and sandals. Though we’ve opted for leggings and sweatshirts, Chloe and I are taking Carl for a walk to soak up the beautiful day. It is the slowest walk imaginable, because Carl is old but mostly because he hasn’t been out in nice weather in forever, so it’s imperative that he stop and sniff every damn thing.
“Damn,” Chloe mumbles. “And he never said what he had going on back in Kentucky?”
“Nope. Not really any of my business, you know?”
Chloe laughs. “Come on, Pen. He left you high and dry after a scorching hot makeout session, and you’re not the least bit curious?”
We turn the corner onto my block. Carl has made our usual fifteen-minute walk into a forty-minute affair, and I’m looking forward to getting home and enjoying the rest of my day off.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t curious,” I reason. “It’s just… not my business. If he wants me to know, he’ll tell me.”
“Uh, Pen?”
Carl begins to pull on his leash, an unusual sign of excitement in my senior pup, before he turns to me and jumps up, paws flat on my chest. He barks twice, then twists around. I can’t help but laugh at his seemingly spontaneous exuberance. The leash is all tangled now as he continues to pull towards home.
“Pen?”
“Listen, Chloe,” I say as we reach my house and head up the front walkway. Carl barks again as I look back at my friend. “Maybe the reason I’m trying not to think about it so much is because I’m scared. Scared he realized he made a mistake, and is too nice to tell me to my face. Maybe he’s not as into me as I’m into him. Or you know what?”
