“You’d better be.” Then she stood and led him by a belt loop to the bedroom.
The next day he learned that Mabel was as warm and pliant in his arms first thing in the morning as he’d always imagined. He moved poor Tybalt off the bed and made love to her slowly, languishing attention on every millimeter of her body.
Afterward, he tucked her against his side, but thoughts of work that day, and all the days moving forward, crowded his brain and pushed aside the post-sex glow.
“What gives?” She stroked a hand lightly over this chest. “You’re supposed to be basking.”
“Oh, I am.” He pressed a kiss into the top of her hair, relishing the warm weight of her against him. “It’s just work. I think… I’ve used it as an excuse over the years.”
She looked up at him with a frown that matched his own, so he elaborated.
“Nobody asks questions if you say your long hours are the reason you’re not going home with that girl from the bar. ‘Sorry, my dick’s just not interested’ is a much longer conversation, and it’s not one that most women appreciate having. People expect men to always be up for it, and if they’re not, it becomes an issue. It’s exhausting.” He sighed. “And sometimes it was easier to tellmyselfthat work was more important than investing time in…”
He didn’t finish his thought, and Mabel reached out to twine her fingers around his.
“Time in yourself?” she asked softly. “In finding a person to care about?”
He nodded and squeezed her hand.
“I do it too,” she said after a moment of silence.
“Yeah?” He faced her again, some of the bleakness draining from his heart to be talking this easily about the things that had made sex and love so complicated for him for years.
“Yeah.” She kept her eyes on their hands as she spoke. “I lost my first radio job when things went south with the boss’s son, and I haven’t seriously dated anybody since. For my own protection, and for Dave’s, right? Except…”
He rolled over and wrapped his free hand around their entwined fingers, pressing tight so she’d know he was listening and he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Except I was terrified of getting hurt again. Of trusting anybody again. And then you came along.”
He raised their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m so glad you took a chance on me.”
When she looked at him, tears danced along her lashes. “I’m so glad you took a chance onme.” Then she smiled and tossed her hair over her shoulder with a flourish. “So are we going public with this or what?”
“Hey, I already let you parade me around the food carts downtown like a piece of meat. How much worse can it get?”
She huffed out a laugh. “Well, there’s somebody who’s been rooting for you this whole time, so if we’re letting people know…”
She reached over him to snag her phone off the table on his side of the bed. It put her in the perfect position for him to suck one of her rosy nipples into his mouth, which of course he took advantage of, which of course distracted them both for longer than they expected. When they came back up for air, he pointed to her phone.
“Got plans for that?”
“Hmmm,” she said dreamily, then snapped out of it. “Oh yeah. Something tasteful.”
She turned the phone toward them and snapped a photo of their grinning, tousled heads sharing one pillow.
“I may as well let Dave know that his lobbying on your behalf finally paid off.” She hit Send on the picture only, with no explanatory text added, and her phone immediately buzzed with Dave’s typically understated reply:About time.
Jake kissed her temple, thrilled that she’d told her best friend about them. “Tell him I owe him a beer.”
“One beer? That’s all I’m worth to you?”
Jake kissed along her neck as he amended his offer. “A six-pack. A case. A keg. A lifetime supply.”
She shivered. “Lifetime, huh? I’ll let him know.”
“He can wait.” Jake grabbed her phone and dropped it on the bedside table. “Now get over here and make your case for why I should buy him something fancier than PBR.”
Laughing, she pushed him back on the bed and did just that.
