I look over in her general direction. “You might be the horniest person I’ve ever met.”
“I can hear you clutching your pearls.”
“But I think I’d want strings attached. That’s the problem. I think I’ve moved past the one-night stand stage of my life. The product of my last one just turned five in June. But I also don’t know that I’d have any real time or energy to dedicate to strings attached. It all has to go to Frankie. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you.” The more and more I think or say this, however, the less and less true it seems to become.
“Me.”
“You.”
She digests this.
“But I digress. What I really want is a really foamy, cold beer.”
“In a plastic cup,” she agrees, voice dreamy.
Frankie opens the door to the closet. “You aren’t even trying anymore,” she tells us in a grumpy voice, and I realize Lina and I have been chatting at a regular volume in a dark closet like two totally normal adults.
“I honestly forgot we were playing hide and seek,” I whisper to Lina on our climb out of the closet.
“Worst game of Seven Minutes in Heaven ever,” she grumbles.
“Forty-Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
* * *
“Where can we get a cold, foamy beer?” I demand of Oliver.
“In a plastic cup,” Lina makes sure to add on.
“There’s a bar a bit of a walk down the beach,” he says. “We could all go there for dinner and a foamy beer in a plastic cup.”
“Do they have oysters?” Georgia asks, her eyes almost basically closed.
“Yes.”
“Do they have really crusty bread?” Lina wants to know.
“Uh…”
“How about grapes?”
“There are grapes in the fridge, Daddy.”
“It’s so far,” I whisper.
“It’s closer than the bar,” Oliver says unhelpfully.
“Okay,” I declare, making the decision. I don’t run several companies for nothin’. “Let’s all walk down to the bar, but stop at the fridge for grapes on the way there.”
“I think Ben and I are going to stay here,” Tita Gloria chimes in. “I don’t think Ben’s arthritis will agree with a walk down the beach. But we can keep Frankie here and feed her dinner and watchMoana?”
Frankie screams. “Yes!Please Daddy, I don’t want to go to abar.”
“You guys go,” Tito Ben says. “Have an adult night out.”
My brain scrambles because I’m trying so hard to remember the last time I had an adult night out, and I genuinely can’t remember. A bar? For fun? And not an elementary school related social event? I look at my tiny Frankie, who is looking at me angrily, like she already expects me to say no.
But then I look at Lina, who is looking at me with those golden honey eyes, a tempting mix of dirty hunger and self-indulgent yet potentially responsible choices.
