Page 55 of The Right Kind of Wrong

It bothered her, frankly, how fixated she was on Monroe and understanding Monroe’s attraction to women.

Obviously, women were attractive in a multitude of ways. That part made complete sense to her. Their softness. Their vibrancy. The way that they simply existed in the world when everything about the way it had been structured sought to cut them down.

They were better conversational partners, too. More intuitive. Had better social graces. Blake had always been able to connect with women in a way she hadn’t been able to with men.

Her relationship with Noah hadn’t helped. He’d looked at her like a prize to be won instead of a person to be loved.

And if she hadn’t had a husband, she would have been hard-pressed to find any reasons to spend time with men, except that they always came along with their wives to events, acting like they were being dragged to the guillotine unless it was something they had wanted to do.

So, yeah. In the abstract, it made a lot of sense to Blake.

A lot of sense, she thought dimly, a strange sensation skittering down her spine.

So what if she’d started to look forward to Monroe showing up at Gumby’s every day? It wasn’t going to last forever, and there was no reason not to enjoy it in the meantime.

No one in her life had ever been especially thoughtful, not the way Monroe had been since she’d dropped into Blake’s life like a firework, lighting everything up.

Blake wiped at her brow, sweat and water mingling together and threatening to drip into her eyes. She’d just finished spraying out the interior and was crawling into the bed to scrub it down when she heard the crunch of gravel.

She looked over, on her knees, as Monroe’s SUV backed up to the garage. Denny hopped out of the passenger’s side, his long, lanky arms swaying with him as he walked.

“Howdy,” he yelled when he noticed Blake in the bed of the truck.

Her nostrils flared, but she recovered quickly and pasted on a smile as she continued working. “Hey, Denny.”

“We got ice cream,” Maisie yelled, scampering down from where Denny had just let her out of her booster seat. She raced across the patch of grass between their driveways, the chocolatey signs of her truthful words smeared across her face. “Denny said he’s gonna play tag with me.”

Blake grumbled, even as she tried to hide it. Of course Denny was going to play with Maisie. Sweet, helpful Denny. Wasn’t he just always there when you needed him?

“That’s so great, Maisie,” she said, her face softening the slightest bit at the girl’s genuine excitement.

Only, her tension had to go somewhere. She didn’t realize she was squeezing the sponge like she wanted to strangle it until a stream of cold, soapy water hit her in the knees. She bit back a yelp and shifted her position.

What in the hell was wrong with her?

Denny was actually sweet and helpful and there when you needed him. Those were good things.

Except that she knew men.

Knew them better than herself, unfortunately. At least, that’s what it felt like most days.

Men usually didn’t do anything out of the goodness of their hearts, without the expectation of something in return. So maybe it was actually Denny, not Blake herself, who was having a hard time accepting that Monroe was a lesbian more than anyone else in the vicinity of the very sprayable water hose.

Yeah, that had to be it. That’s what was rankling her about Denny.

Once she solidified that in her mind, she was able to manage a real smile. Coincidentally, it was at the same time that Monroe was walking around her SUV, keys jangling in her hand.

Monroe’s own smile only seemed to grow when she saw Blake’s head poking above the edge of the pickup truck.

“Black isn’t exactly the ideal color for a Texas summer,” Blake noted as Monroe drew closer, which only seemed to make Blake scrub at the truck harder.

Monroe smiled self-effacingly, turning her focus away from Maisie, who’d just run off to play tag with Denny in the front yard. There was a flush wrapped around her chest, drawing Blake’s vision to the T-shirt that she plucked at, which was molded against her curvy frame. “I’d just been coming to the same conclusion.”

“Tonight should be better.” Blake sat up taller, on her knees, so that she didn’t look like Cinderella scrubbing the floors.

She watched as Monroe’s eyes scanned her face and then down lower, presumably clocking the sports bra she was wearing.

She didn’t get the sense that Monroe would be judgmental about what she decided to wear to wash her vehicle. That didn’t seem like the other woman’s style.