Page 3 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

"Maddox Concrete. Driveways, foundations, sidewalks, whatever people need poured." He rubbed the back of his neck. "What about you?"

I meant to answer with one polite sentence, but the words English teacher opened a door in me, and suddenly I was telling him about my students, and the sophomore who cried when he finished Of Mice and Men and then demanded to know why nobody had warned him.

"Me and Hamilton was just talking about that the other day. Ain't nothing better than doing work you're good at."

My eye twitched.

He grinned. "Was that your eye?"

"It's a condition."

"A grammar condition?"

"You did that on purpose."

"Maybe a little." His grin softened into something warmer. "You keep pushing your glasses up."

"I do not."

"You always do that when you're nervous?"

My hand dropped from my face before I realized it had been there. His mouth twitched. "I'm not nervous…”

"Course not,” he replied with ease.

I ordered a second glass of wine, and later, because he was so easy to talk to, a third.

By the time our food arrived, I had learned that Hamilton once stepped into a fresh pour outside the courthouse and stood there so long his boots had to be chiseled out.

Bobby Jo had learned that Regina kept a confiscated hamster in her office for a week under the name Dr. Fluffington because she couldn't stand to give it back. He laughed with his whole chest, and somewhere between the hamster and the second plate of fries, he stopped being Bobby Jo Maddox, Former Drug Dealer, and became just Bobby, a man with a slightly dimpled smile who listened when I talked.

Then he set down his beer. "So when was your last relationship?"

I stared at him. “Define relationship."

"You divorced? Just get out of something?"

I shook my head suddenly feeling hot. “No."

"Then what?"

The wine had loosened something in my chest that I usually kept locked, and I heard myself say, "I don't really date."

"Why not?"

"I'm not sexually active."

He stared for a moment.

"I've never had sex."

His eyebrows rose, but he stayed quiet, and that only made me keep going.

"And I've never been kissed."

Bobby Jo waited a full second before he smiled again. "You're joking."

"I'm not."