The back of my neck becomes hot.
“No! That would be ridiculous,” I say and force out a laugh. I feel like I am undoing years of therapy with every word. My cheeks are burning red. “I...no. No. I wouldn’t think that.”
I’m regretting every step I’ve taken into this quicksand of a conversation, but I can’t seem to stop.
“But you’ve...dated, probably, since, uh. In the in-between of then and now, and—” I try to twist it over and over into something not accusatory, but all I manage is to make it not really a question. “Because that would be normal. And healthy.”
He nods, and I feel so incredibly transparent in that moment. My only hope is that Shawn’s reliably dense enough that he might just take me at my word and not read into my stammering.
He looks me up and down, considering. “What about you, did you date at all?”
I’m not prepared for him to turn the question back on me. I mean, when it comes up in therapy, I usually say it was good to have relationships where I didn’t feel like I was going crazy trying to get a straight answer out of a guy.
“I . . . yeah, I guess I did some dating after we divorced.”
I shrug as neutrally as I can manage. “Obviously none of them went the distance, but I feel like I had some good relationships.”
“Oh. That’s good. I’m glad. Happy for you,” he says, turning away at that moment, and I only just catch the hint of red clouding his cheek as he returns my cart to the corral a couple spots over. “I’m happy for you that you found that.”
“Thanks?”
What a diplomatic answer. And he said it twice.
We lapse into silence, the only sounds are the highway and the rattle of the empty cart on pavement, unable to look at each other. It stretches several moments, and I wonder if I should take this as a sign to leave.
He looks at the sky, and there’s something artful about the shape of his neck against the evening.
“I, uh...I tried, y’know. To date,” he starts to say, “but...I don’t know. I think I needed a lot more time away from myfamily before I could really be my own person. Deconstructing, and all that. Sometimes it would start to go somewhere, then I would remember you, and that would always sort of end the relationship.”
“I . . . what?”
I blink. There’s some terrible, possessive need to know specifics. Some small island of rationality in my brain knows it’ll hurt more to hear them.
Shawn’s eye holds on the distance for a moment, then catches mine. He seems to remember himself, or at least realize what he said, a hint of panic in his brow.
“Not that I was always thinking of you when I hooked up with someone else, that would beweird. And obsessive,” he says quickly, maybe a little too loudly.
Something in my heart softens. I cram my hands in my back pockets, trying to look casual, nothing so obvious as making heart eyes at him. “Yeah, you’ve never been weird or obsessive.”
Shawn cracks a bashful smile at that, actually laughs a little. He takes a step forward that borders on invading my personal space, reaching an arm up to grab my trunk door.
I’ve read the phrase “wolfish grin” before, I’ve spent too much time on my e-reader not to have. But I don’t know that I knew what that looked like before.
Somewhere between the flash of his teeth to the curve of his mouth, I forget where I am. I wonder how many times I’m going to get close enough to kiss him and watch the chance slip away.
“You keep that under your hat, alright?” he almost murmurs, and for a moment, feeling like we’re sharing a secret,I remember what it meant to be on the same side as him, to be a team, instead of feeling alone and against everything and everyone else.
He takes his other hand and mimes tugging on the hat I’m not wearing, and my god, he’s such a dork, he even hums a little sound effect along with it. Somewhere in the edges of my vision, he closes my car trunk.
He walks away at that, and I watch the way his shirt shifts with every step, the breadth of his shoulders, the way those goddamn gray sweatpants fit him. I am stupid horny for that dork. I can feel my clit pulsing alive like it was about to get some special attention.
I watch him reach into his pocket and toss a little balled up piece of paper into the trash, and that’s the sight that makes me get into my car.
Even after I go home, I feel like I have too much energy after that encounter. Just being around him is enough to get me hot and bothered. I can’t tell if it’s like an anxious sweat or he’s hot and maybe I’m ovulating a little early this month.
Because I’ve seen Shawn’s arms before, I swear, without contemplating dropping my panties. Is that just a side effect he had on me that I forgot about?
There’s nothing all that different about him now to justify it, either. I mean, maybe he seems a little more mature.
