Page 24 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

I lay there basking in Bobby Jo’s warmth thinking about how I’d build sex up for years in my head.

You can cross this off your bucket list, I felt myself smiling.

Here I was, laying in a farmhouse out on Miller Creek Road feeling like I’d been doing it for years, and that was the part that scared me.

"You okay?" His voice was rough with sleep.

"I thought I'd feel different."

His arm tightened around me, like he was scared I was gonna leap from the bed. "That bad?"

"No." I turned my head on the pillow. "I just thought something that big would change me into somebody else. And I'm still me. I'm still going to get up tomorrow and think about lesson plans and feel guilty about missing Sunday school."

"Except now you're you that had sex with Bobby Jo Maddox."

"That is not what I said."

"Sounds like an upgrade to me."

I hit him with a pillow. He took it without opening his eyes, and I lay there in his bed with his dog snoring and his arm across me. I’d never in my life been that comfortable anywhere.

My phone went off at eight forty the next morning while Bobby Jo was in the shower.

"Good morning," I said, and I heard how it came out, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Regina was quiet for exactly one second.

"You did it."

"Good morning to you too."

"Rue."

"Regina Mae."

"YOU DID!"

"Could you please stop yelling?"

"Are you at his house right now?"

I glanced toward the bathroom door, where the water had just shut off. "Maybe."

"OH MY FUCKING GOD!"

I was still trying to get her to lower her voice when the door opened and Bobby Jo came out with a towel around his waist and water running down the tattoos on his shoulder, and I forgot several important words in the English language.

He looked at the phone, then at my face, and he grinned like a man who had won something.

"Tell Regina I said good morning."

I wanted to be buried in the yard.

Regina called back after I got in my car, once Bobby Jo had fed me eggs I didn’t ask for and walked me out with his hand on the small of my back.

"Okay," she said. "The screaming portion is over. How do you feel?"

I had the engine running and my hand on the gearshift, and through the kitchen window I could see him standing at the counter in a gray T-shirt, pouring coffee into a mug, saying something to the dog. Perfectly ordinary. Like I had been waking up there for years and would be again tomorrow.