“Maybe,” she mumbled under her breath.
“I—uh.” I cleared my throat, feeling the effects of my edible and debating if I should just put it all out there. “I really miss you, Pam.”
“I miss you, too,” she said without missing a beat.
I could hear the sadness in her voice. What started as a happy conversation went south within a matter of minutes. The distance, Pam’s fear of flying, everything hit us all at once.
We were both quiet, with nothing but Zeppelin filling the silence between us.
“I should probably get going. There’s snow in the forecast, and I wanna get this firewood in the house before it starts falling.” It was a bullshit excuse, but I needed a few minutes alone to process things.
“Oh, okay,” she said quietly. “Well, I’ll be around later if you want to video chat. I’d love to see that handsome face of yours.”
Fuck. I’d obviously upset her.
“I’d like to see you too, sweetheart. I’ll give you a call a little bit later, okay?” Lugging the wood inside the house and letting this edible settle in would give me the time I needed to think about this.
“Alright. Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
Motherfucker.
What was I doing with my life?
Oh right, I was falling for a woman who lived halfway across the country.
I rose from the couch with a groan and headed out to the garage. The whole long-distance thing was working for now, but the closer I got to Pam, the harder it was to do this. I wanted her in my life.
I wanted to be with her.
She was doing some soul searching. I guessed it was about time I did some, too.
FIFTEEN
PAM
I surround myself with loving people.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop dwelling on the conversation I had with Alistair the other day. Knitting, romance novels, yoga—none of it distracted me from the fact that the distance between us was a limiting factor in our relationship. Well, that and my fear of flying.
After sacrificing so much of myself during my marriage, was I wrong in committing to the first person I met after putting myself out there? Alistair and I had only been on one date. He was my first dip into the dating pool, and I jumped right into a relationship with him—and a long-distance one at that.
His dick and the multiple orgasms he gave me must have clouded my judgment—or at least influenced my decision.
“Ma!” Reece shouted, causing me to jump. “I asked you a question.”
I was at brunch with Reece and Cyrus this morning, but I was having a hard time being present.
I pushed my glasses up my nose and gave my son a polite smile. “Sorry, honey. What was the question, again?”
Reece sighed and I caught Cyrus giving him a look. “I just wanted to know how things were going with that Alistair guy. You’ve seemed kind of—I don’t know—absent. Sort of like right now.”
“What do you mean?” I tilted my head in confusion.
“Come on, squish. Help me out here,” Reece grumbled under his breath.
Cyrus cleared his throat, his tentacle wrapping around Reece’s forearm. “I think what Reece is trying to say is that you’ve been a little more withdrawn since you started to date Alistair. He—we—don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to us about him.”
