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The real funny thing was that over the course of a five-mile hike, we never kissed or purposely touched each other. The occasional brush of fingers and the slide of Reg’s smile made me feel as if I were walking on air. Fucking weird.
We stopped at the end of the trail with Tate panting between us and discussed meeting for dinner at an Italian restaurant he liked in Fallbrook.
“I’ve never been to Fallbrook,” I said, bending to pet Tate.
“You’re kidding? How is that possible?”
“I haven’t been to Pinecrest either.”
Reg gaped in disbelief. “No.”
I chuckled. “I’ve driven through it, but I haven’t stopped.”
“I’d tell you not to bother ’cause the people there suck, but it’s a pretty town. However…Fallbrook first. Seven o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
We met at Amici’s, a tiny Italian place in Fallbrook with red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths, candles melting in old Chianti bottles, and corny seventies ballads piped through the speakers. It was a family-style restaurant with loud waiters, gigantic food portions, and kitschy photos of the owners and some of their more famous clientele—mainly football and hockey stars from the area.
Honestly, there was nothing romantic about it, and that made it kind of perfect. We didn’t stare into each other’s eyes or play footsies under the table. We just…talked. And in unspoken agreement, we kept it light.
The topics were all over the map: songs that get you on a dance floor (Reg was an unrepentant disco lover; I liked “Groove is in the Heart”), first concerts (Bon Jovi for him, Green Day for me), and the wackiest things he’d dealt with as a police officer.
“I was a beat cop in Burlington for a few years, and I definitely saw some skanky things. I pulled over a man who was swerving wildly on the road, asked him to step out of the vehicle…and yeah, he was naked. And so was everyone in the car.”
“Ha!”
“Another time, a woman called in to report a domestic incident. It turned out that her dishwasher wasn’t working.”
“No! She called 9-1-1 for that?”
“Yep. Have a meatball. These are amazing.”
I refused the meatball, and swore there was no way I had room for tiramisu. Reg ordered dessert anyway, ’cause I had to at least have a taste, and when I wasn’t paying attention, he paid our bill. Sneaky fucker. I wasn’t sure how he’d managed to do that and still play off the “just a couple of buds having dinner” vibe, but I really doubted anyone thought twice about the burly dudes eating their weight in carbs.
We met back at Reg’s house and this time it was me with my knees around my ears, begging for more, harder, faster.
Afterward, we lay panting, our legs entwined like pretzels, our fingers linked. I remembered thinking I should let go of his hand. It seemed like something lovers did, not two guys scratching an itch. And Reg was no ordinary man. He gave off a powerful energy even while lying still. Like a lion prepared to pounce. I wondered what that made me.
I rolled to face him, hoping to defuse what had begun to feel like a strangely poignant moment with a lighthearted quip, but he smiled, and fuck me…I came up empty.
Chill out. This is sex. Only sex.
But I spent the night again, and in the morning, we had coffee on his deck. We didn’t say much, and that was odd, too. Where was the nonsensical chatter designed to fill uncomfortable silences? Where was the lazy excuse about places to go and people to see? Why wasn’t I panicking about how easy it felt to share his space?
I had no answers. Only an inexplicable sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
CHAPTER 23
WAYLON
“Hey, Waylon!”
“How you doin’, man?”
“Good morning, Mr. Gibbons.”
I waved to a brunet I was pretty sure I’d met at the football preparty last week, slapped high fives with the loggers taking smoke breaks in front of the mill, and tipped my head politely to the older woman critically studying the display in the window at Dexter’s Donuts.
