An immediate hard-on pushed against the fabric of my jeans, even after I noticed that June’s other hand was delivering another spoon of ice cream into her mouth.
She moaned again, lingering on that spoonful.
I quietly retreated, leaving her to succumb to my carton of butter pecan ice cream. I had a hard-on to quench.
Cazzo, this woman … If this was what ice cream made her sound like … And to think she wasted it all on sprouts and leaves, and legumes and berries for dessert.
Maybe a good dose of sugar and cream would make her more amenable to speaking to me rather than jumping down my throat.
Downstairs, I sat on the wooden Fender stool, one leg on the floor, the other on the footrest, my knee supporting an acoustic guitar. I chafed my hand over the slick maple body then resumed playing.
I was in the middle of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” when I heard June’s sneakers on the stairs. Just from the way she pounded her feet down the staircase, I could imagine the glare in her eyes and the annoyed blush on her neck. So the impurity of ice cream hadn’t helped. Maybe if it were me in her mouth instead …
She emerged from the stairwell, clad in her running clothes, her body in them causing the subsiding hard-on I hid behind the guitar to throb again. Her hair was tied up, the fringes of it caressing her nape and making me wonder how long I’d be able to stop myself from sweeping my fingers over her skin until she moaned like I now knew she could.
“At this hour?” I asked, pointing my chin at her outfit. I played softly so I could hear her.
“I missed two mornings this week.” She put one earbud in. “You wanted to talk. We can talk when I’m back.”
“Why not now?” I locked my eyes on her, trying to hold her gaze. I watched as her eyes kept slipping from my face down my chest to my fingers on the strings then up again.
“Okay. We’ll talk now. Showing up at the shop today—that cannot happen again. I don’t show up at your place of business.”
“You’re actually in it right now.”
She was seething. Even that vein in her neck was acting up again.
I made a smooth shift between the chords of “Harvest Moon” to a song I hoped she’d recognize. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you, June?” I asked, my eyes on the strings I was strumming.
“I told you this morning and now.”
She had, but her words were a smokescreen.
I peeked at her. She spoke, but her eyes lost focus as she was beginning to discern the song.
“If it makes you happy, it can’t be that baaaaad,” I sang quietly and ramblingly, as if I randomly stumbled on this song. “If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?”
I raised my eyes.
June glowered at me. She couldn’t possibly know that I had heard her sing or moan, but she guessed I knew something.
She shoved the other earbud into place, strutted toward the back door, and left through it.
I remained sitting there, feeling like the biggest son of a bitch this side of the Pacific.
Yes, I was riling her up. But, in my defense, June Raine was gifted with the unique capability of enraging someone as aloof as I usually was and giving me a raging hard-onas well asa racing heart. And that was a combination I didn’t have sheet music for.
Besides, I suspected that the only way to get through to her was fighting thorn with thorn.
So, after five minutes of sitting there, brewing in anger, frustration, and an agonizing need to blow away the smokescreen and get beneath the thorns and the veneer she smothered her life with, I left the guitar laying in its open case, locked the door behind me, and got into my car.
Driving along Ocean Avenue, which was now a familiar friend with its Mean Bean café, Books & More shop, Breading Dreams bakery, and Sarah’s pharmacy, I pulled over at the same spot. Leaning against the hood, I waited. The sun had set, and the sky was indigo blue. The sea devoured the shore as it did everywhere in the world.
A few minutes later, I saw her coming, a commercial for healthy living.
Before reaching me, she descended the path toward the beach. There was enough light coming from the line of houses on the other side of the road, and from the streetlamps, for me to see that her gaze was on the ocean, distant, detached.
In a few long steps, I reached her and jogged next to her.
