Raff - 7 days
She came to the clubhouse and simply… didn’t leave.
I damn sure wasn’t complaining, but I was surprised. But I guess the clubhouse was definitely a step up from the motel for her.
She was treated to one of Colter’s lavish gift baskets with clothes and bath products to get her through her the first day. Then on a morning walk, she casually went in the direction of the motel, where we stopped to gather several bags of her clothes, toiletries, and electronics. The same thing happened the next day. And the next. Until the motel room was empty and my room was starting to look more lived-in.
I was worried that the partying would bother her. But she worked late at The Bog and came back to drag me up to the room, enjoying the noise downstairs because it meant she could be as loud as she wanted to.
Then we would watch a movie and pass out, wake up hungry for each other, do our morning walk, then decide which adventure we were going to partake in that day. Often, it was the search for some really good, obscure restaurants neither of us had tried before. But one day I dropped her at the salon while I grabbed her some books about business and real estate development.
But this was a new one.
“You want to go to Tessa’s office supply store?” I asked, not sure I heard her right.
“Yeah. I need notebooks and pens and planners and maybe a whole new computer set-up. I don’t want anything I am currently doing, work-wise, to cross over with these new potential plans.”
I’d caught her poring over the books I got her while cross-referencing things on her laptop when I’d come home from grabbing some take-out the night before.
It seemed she really was going to try to figure out how to pull it off. A whole real estate development empire. With a side of money laundering to get it started.
“I love me some pens,” I said, walking over to slip into my shoes. “Let’s go on a stationary adventure.”
The thing was… it was that. An adventure. Everything with Lula felt that way. Like something new and exciting.
It was like someone flipped off a switch for all the other things I used to find fun: drinking, partying, random hookups.
Now, I’d much rather go debate highlighter and sticky note colors with Lula.
And that was the thing I’d always envied about my club brothers when they finally found the right woman—how even the most mundane things became exciting. How everything else seemed to get just a little bit duller.
I’d wanted that.
But I’d always known that I could only have it with the one woman who had resisted me every step of the way. So I clung desperately to the other shit, looking for even a small hint of what I knew I would find with her.
Now that I had her, I wasn’t wasting any chances to soak up all that joy.
“This got a little out of hand,” Lula said as she looked at the mound of products sitting on the desk to get checked out.
“Big plans require lots of supplies.”
“I don’t even have anywhere to put it.”
“Well, I have a solution for that.”
“Buy a desk…”
“Casually mention to Coach that you need one.”
She shot me a sweet smile.
“I really like your friends.”
“They’re your friends now too,” I told her, watching as her lips parted and her brows lowered. Because the concept of friends had simply never really occurred to her. She’d had coworkers, neighbors, family, and acquaintances, but never friends.
Until now.
I was happy to share mine with her.
