Johnny goes to the door and opens it a crack, grabbing the bags of food without exposing me to the delivery guy. He comes back over to me, dragging an end table over from the corner to put the food on. He looks down at me, still splayed out in the chair, legs still made of jelly, body still too floppy from the best orgasm of my life to stand.
“Let me help,” he says, kneeling in front of me again. Just as gently as he removed them, he slides my joggers back up my legs. It’s harder to get them up over my ass than it was to get them down, so he takes my hands and helps me stand up before pulling them up the rest of the way.
“Thanks,” I say, looking down.
“I’ll go wash up and then we’ll eat?”
I can only nod. He smiles, kisses me on the cheek, and turns to walk away. As soon as he’s out of sight, I start pacing the waiting room, chewing my thumbnail as I walk.
What the fuck did we just do?
This can’t happen.
Can it?
No.
We can’t do this again. Things would get way too complicated. We’re just friends. We need to stay just friends.
Why did I start that, anyway? Oh, right. His confession. He sounded like he really believes the women he tattoos are still beautiful with their scars. How could I not kiss him after that?
I wish someone thought the same thing about me. But I know better. Having scars over a large portion of your body is way different that having scars in a localized area. Especially when those localized scars are from something as fierce as kicking cancer’s ass.
I didn’t exactly kick that pot of soup’s ass. More like it kicked mine.
“So I was thinking—”
“Ahhh,” I squeal, nearly jumping out of my skin. I spin around to see Johnny right behind me. “Why are you sneaking up on me?”
Johnny chuckles. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
I take a seat near the end table and open up the food. I ordered tacos from my favourite Mexican restaurant. A girl can never have too many tacos. I open up one of the boxes and squeeze some lime onto the tacos. I pick one up, take a huge bite, and look at Johnny.
“Anyway, like I was saying,” he says, opening one of the other boxes. He pulls out a taco and fidgets with it, not adding anything to it, but also not biting. I’m finished with mine in just two more bites. “Umm, what we just did was great…”
Oh shit, here it comes. He’s letting me down gently. At least I can be glad he’s not taking my picture and calling me Freddy, I suppose.
“But we said we would just be friends? We probably shouldn’t do it again?” I fill in the blanks for him. “I’m glad you think so too.” I take another taco and stuff half of it in my mouth, so I don’t blurt out that he’s the only guy to ever make me come like that. It’s not like it’s ever happening again, so he doesn’t need the ego boost. “It’s too complicated, anyway,” I say, mouth half full of chewed taco. “Even if I didn’t have my one night rule, two of our best friends are in a relationship. Probably. If Alex can get over what happened last night. We need to be able to be around each other without any weirdness.”
“Exactly,” he agrees. “I’m so glad we can be cool about this. And I’m sorry if I pushed you, if I made you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, no. I’m pretty sure I started all—” I wave my napkin around in the air. “—that. Whatever it was.”
“Okay.” He puts his hand out to me. “So… friends?”
I place my hand in his and give it a firm shake. “Friends.”
He grins at me and takes a bite of his taco. “So friend, are we finishing up this tattoo today? Or should we work on it another day instead?”
“I’m good to keep going if you are.”
“Alright. Eat up and then we’ll keep going.”
