“This is what you picked up for dinner?” I turn to Jim, ushering with the bottle.
He nods once, eyes fixated on the black bottle in my hand as his brows pull together. “Have you had it before?”
Before my sister’s accident, and even more before Jackson was born, I dated a lot.
And I meana lot.
I loved to play the part of an alluring, yet fragile woman, determined to pique the interest of any wealthy, pompous asshole I came across.
I lived for the moment the flirty banter turned into a date. For that moment when they couldn’t get enough of me and had to plan a weekend getaway. Every self-absorbed, and often boring, man I met had one thing that I desperately wanted to obtain—confidence. I thrived on the attention, feasted on their puppy dog stares and sexual innuendos. I’d spend days starving myself, hiding from my friends so they wouldn’t see my diet of carrots and weight-loss tea, only to squeeze myself into a dress I didn’t like to spend a night with a man I wasn’t truly interested in.
I’d laugh at jokes that weren’t funny, bite my tongue at their condescending remarks, all with the hopes that at the end of the night I’d be filled with something more than self-hatred. If I could pretend to be their dream girl for just one night, maybe I’d feel like I had earned something. For once, I could be more than the abandoned foster girl turned bitchy redhead.
I lived for the moment they’d snap their fingers to usher the waiter to the table. The waiter would present the wine, and my lifeless date would nod in approval. I’d take that first sip, savoring every drop as my award for the evening. All of that time, I hid who I truly was to earn the same stupid bottle of wine that Jim thought to bring to a casual Wednesday night dinner.
“I love it,” I finally answer, swallowing the lump in my throat as I hand the bottle over to him. With his gaze locked on mine, he coolly uncorks the bottle, pours a glass, and hands it over to me before pouring one for himself.
“I’m glad.”
I take a long, luxurious sip, basking in the familiar notes of spicy black cherry.
His eyes fall to my mouth, gaze lingering as I dart my tongue out to lick my bottom lip.
“You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“The pasta should be ready in about a half hour, I can whip up the salads if you’re famished.”
He nods once, bringing his glass up for another sip of wine. His gaze roams my body, focusing on my breasts as he answers, “I said I was starving, but I wasn’t talking about pasta.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Should I start with the funny, or the exciting?”
Jim stretches out on the couch, pulling my feet into his lap as he starts massaging the arches with his thumbs.
I groan at the touch, his hands doing more for me than the two glasses of wine I had with dinner. “Funny first. Last time we started with exciting.”
“Right.” He nods. “Well yesterday,” he says, dropping my left foot and immediately picking up my right. “When I was walking into work at the crack of dawn, a patient was walking out wearing a head-to-toe Chewbacca costume.”
I slap a hand over my mouth to stifle the laugh so as to not wake Jackson. “No, he wasn’t!”
Jim nods, smiling so wide his cheek dimple pops. “He sure was. Still had his registration band over his wrist. The moment we crossed paths he abruptly stopped, raised his hand to his head in a military salute, nodded once, then was on his way.”
“That’s beautiful, honestly. What was he doing in the costume? And why was he in the ER?”
Jim leans forward to grab his glass of water off the coffee table, downing nearly half of it in one sip. “I didn’t ask about the costume, and didn’t need to really ask around as to why hewas in the ER. Let’s just say whenever someone comes in with something ‘stuck’ in a certain part of them, word travels fast.”
I sit up, pulling my legs from Jim’s lap and curling them under me. “You mean…something had to be removed…from his…”
“From his Wookie.”
I grab the nearest throw pillow and smother myself with it, wanting to kick and scream at how much I love this story. “I couldn’t even imagine what I would have done in your position. At that time in the morning I don’t want to talk to a single soul, let alone try to wrap my mind around a grown man…was it a man?”
Jim nods.
“A grown man in a Chewbacca costume giving a military salute as he leaves the ER after having a personal item removed from his Wookie is probably the greatest story I have ever heard.”
