“She’s great, you’ll love her. And I love how she’s organized the store. This section here has all the sports romances, but this whole shelf is all hockey, and she has them organized from light at the top down to dark at the bottom.”
“Wait, there’s dark romance all about hockey?”
“Girl, those are some of my favorites. S. Massery writes some great dark stalker-y hockey romances. You want to start withBrutal Obsession,” she says, pointing to a book with a hot guy on the cover. “You’ll also want to look at SJ Sylvis and CR Jane. Oh, and Rina Kent is writing a series now too. We actually read a hockey romance as a group at our last meeting, the Agitators series.”
“I had no idea this was a thing,” I say, running my fingers along the spines as she talks. “Are there other dark books you would recommend? Like maybe some that involve BDSM?” I ask, nervously.
“I love BDSM romance. There’s this series that I love by Dakota Willink. The first book is calledHeart of Stone,and it’s billionaire, sex club, with BDSM. And the FMC is a virgin.”
“That sounds…” Oddly familiar. I’m unsure how to finish my thought worried that Becka will realize how on the nose that recommendation is, but luckily, she keeps going, mentioning more books as she flits between shelves motioning for me to follow her.
“What else do you like to read? I’m sure I could recommend dozens of books in that subgenre,” she says with an eager smile.
“Is it weird that we’re talking about this? I mean, I work foryou.” I shift on my feet as I look around the store noticing a woman moving chairs into a circle.
“Emma, you watch my daughter so I can fuck my husband. This is totally fine.” She flicks her wrist in a circle, and I laugh, recalling our first conversation when she shared way too much with me about the sexual rut she and her husband were in and how they needed time away to reconnect. “Reading romance helped save my marriage. It opened us up to new kinks, new positions, new ways to roleplay. I will never shy away from singing its praises. But if it makes you uncomfortable, we don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s not that,” I say nervously. “I’m just not as experienced in all this.”
“Reading romance?” I shake my head vigorously. “Oh.Oh! Gotcha. Are we talking thevirgintrope?”
I look at her, puzzled.
She smiles, placing a hand on my arm. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Your secret’s safe with me. And I can totally give you some recs for that trope if you’re interested.”
“That would be… great. I really hope this doesn’t make things weird between us.”
“Girl, everyone has sex. Oof. Insert foot in mouth. Maybe not everyone, but you know what I mean. It’s a normal part of life if you choose to do it. I’m definitely not judging you for your choices, and if you ever need someone to talk to about this stuff, I’ve always wanted a little sister. I’m the youngest, and let’s just say my older sister isn’t the best.”
“Thanks.”
She gestures to the circle of chairs, and we grab our spots as others fill in. “So how are summer classes going?”
“Good. Luckily all my professors are laid-back. Nothing like that A-hole I dealt with last year.”
“Ooh, tell me more about that. I feel like you’re just giving me breadcrumbs,” she says with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
“Like Hansel and Gretel?” I laugh at her turn of phrase.
“Exactly! I had to explain it to Bridget a couple times before she picked up what I was putting down. That one does not like puzzles.”
“I could see that. She seems very straightforward.”
“Oh, she is. But before she met your brother, she used to regale me with tales of all her hookups. We’d meet for coffee and she’d fill me in on all her wild nights.”
“If any of them involve my brother, you can skip ahead.”
She lets out a full-body laugh. “No worries, not going to share about that. Anyway, she’d give me highlights without filling in all the details. ‘He was tall, average dick, and had two moves, three out of ten,’” she says doing a spot-on impression of my brother’s girlfriend. “I was like, ‘girl, I am an old married woman who isn’t getting enough action and is living vicariously through you, Imma need more than that!’”
“Seems on brand for her. Straight to the point.”
“Straight to the dick!” Becka throws her head back in laughter, and I can’t help but join her. “So tell me all about the A-hole. Wait, that sounds dirtier than I meant it.”
“Ugh, I’m so glad I’m done with his classes. He’s just so frustrating. Always pushing me. Calling on me more than anyone else in class and asking me really difficult questions, so I either look like a total know-it-all or an idiot if I don’t know the answer. And one time someone teased me for getting his obscure question right, and he got all alpha and threw the guy out of class.”
Becka raises an eyebrow.
I shake my head. “Nope. I know what that face is, and I can tell you with certainty that he did not like me. He was hot and cold and wildly inconsistent. One minute he was picking apart my papers with ridiculous precision, and the following semester he pushed me so hard emotionally in a scene that I nearly had a panic attack in class, recovering a traumatic memory I’d buried from my childhood. And shortly after that,the guy I’d been seeing broke up with me and I cried to Bridget about it and she introduced us and here we are.”
