by Mimi Strong
Meanwhile, his big, masculine palm remains on my knee. The heat is radiating into me, making my whole body warm and tingly. The waitress brings a fresh bottle and pours me some much-needed refreshment.
Drew’s hand doesn’t stray from my leg. It doesn’t move up, or down. His hand reminds me of those orange traffic cones people put in parking spots to reserve them for later. This is mine. Find another parking spot, because I’ve claimed this one, and I’m going to do exciting, adventurous, intimate things in this parking spot. Not now, but later, under the cover of night.
Rory says, “What do you think, Meenie?”
“About what?” I think my nipples are turning into orange parking spot cones, but you don’t want to hear about that, Rory.
She laughs, seemingly even more comfortable with this situation than I am. “What’s more manly, guys slamming into each other on a rugby field, or grunting over each other in a wrestling ring?” She looks over at Drew and explains, “Meenie was on the wrestling team in high school.”
He gives my knee a delightful squeeze, the kind of squeeze that sends pure delight through my muscles and veins and bones.
Chuckling, he says, “Why am I not surprised? Did you trash talk the other guys about their lack of balls? Did you hold the guys down until they cried?”
“I only wrestled girls.” Well, that’s not entirely true. “Officially.” I take a sip of refreshing wine, since my glass is too full and in danger of spilling.
“Meenie, go easy on that,” Rory says, looking at the bottle between us.
“I think the waitress is trying to get me drunk so I’ll give her a big tip.”
Drew turns to me, and just as I’m about to swallow, he says, with lusty fire in his eyes, “Do you think you can handle a big tip?”
Big tip. He means penis. The hand on my knee squeezes. I can’t swallow. Wine’s in my mouth.
He waggles his eyebrows.
My throat clenches, and the wine sprays from my mouth, in a perfect spray—perfect if you were, say, filming it, not perfect if you were hoping to stay dry during your visit to the pub. The wine lightly coats Drew’s handsome, GQ-pretty, lickable face, as evenly as a spray tan.
At least pinot grigio is a white wine. (Did you think, from the name, it was red? So did I, until this week.)
Across the table from me, Rory pushes her chair back and starts looking around urgently for the waitress.
Drew picks up a napkin from the table. Instead of wiping his face, he laughs and starts dabbing at my chin. I push his hand away. “Drew, don’t be intimate in front of Rory. You’ll make her head pop off.”
“I’m fine, you guys,” Rory says, which is about a seven on the white lie scale. “I’ve got to be up early, so I think I’ll call it a night.”
We’ve both finished eating our dinner, so I really have no excuse to beg her to stay. My only option, sadly, is the truth.
“Rory, you can’t go. Drew is in my self-help group, and we’re not allowed to be more than friends. But he’s wearing a tight-fitting shirt, and look at his face. Don’t you want to make a cake that looks like his face and eat it? You can’t leave me alone with him.”
She stands, her purse on her shoulder. “You’re a big girl,” she says, and then she leaves.
Drew uses the napkin to wipe his own face, then turns to watch Rory leave. He watches her just a few seconds too long, with his eyes just a little too low.
I grab his perfect GQ chin and turn his face back to mine. “If you look at Rory’s ass one more time, I will take you down. You’ll be eating peanut shells off the pub’s carpet, and there’s something else you should know. They haven’t served peanuts here in five years. That’s how far into the floor I’ll shove your face.”
He blinks. “I’ve never wanted to make love to a woman so badly as I do now.” He blinks again. “And that woman is you.” He blinks slowly, eyebrows raised like he’s having difficulty keeping me in focus.
“Are you drunk?”
“Noooooo.” He shakes his head emphatically. “I just had a few beers. Beer? Plural? Beers.”
I run his words through my internal slurr-o-meter. On a scale of one to ten on the slurr-o-meter, I’d say he’s at five.
His hand is back on my knee, or maybe it never left. The hand slides up, and it’s saying something. Mine. Mine, mine, mine.
My chest gets a fluttery feeling. It’s saying something, too. Yours. Yours, yours, yours.
“Drew, I really need my support group. It’s not for my personal problems, because I don’t have any personal problems, obviously, but going there makes me have more purpose in my life. I’ve always been good at counseling people when they come to the flower shop, whether it’s apology flowers or bereavement, or whatever. I just level with people, and they appreciate it. Usually. So, I don’t want to jeopar… leopard… jepper… damn this wine—”
I can’t finish what I’m about to say, because someone’s mouth is on my mouth.
Drew is kissing me.
Chapter 12
O’Flannagan’s pub disappears, like someone put it on mute.
His lips are just as kissable as they look, and I’m not exaggerating at all when I say Drew’s kisses could probably stop wars and lead humanity into a new golden age of enlightenment.
He keeps kissing me, his sweet, wine-soaked, amazing lips leading the way for mine, which are stunned but happy.
His hands move up, catching me firmly on the sides of my face, which is just the framework I need to keep me upright, because his kisses are making my whole body melt like a cheap birthday candle on the cake of someone too old for birthday candles.
The whole world tilts, suddenly.
I’m falling.
Not falling in love.
Falling off my chair.
Our lips pull apart as we hit the ancient carpet of the pub’s floor. We must be having an earthquake. I look around in shock as we both scramble to right ourselves.
The guys over by the pool table are staring, and one calls over to us, “Need a hand there, Drew?”
“We should get into a doorway, or outside,” I tell Drew breathlessly as I jump up from the floor.
He pushes my shoulders and does the sheepdog thing again, where he herds me down into my chair. His chair is overturned, so he rights it, and takes a seat next to me.
Wincing because I already know the answer, I say, “I guess we’re not having an earthquake?”
He holds up his hand between us. “Listen, Meenie. I’m not against kissing you, but you’ve got to give a guy some warning.”
“Excuse me? You’re the one who kissed me, Mr. Mouth Rugby.”
He shakes his head. “You’re crazy.”
I reach for my water glass, which has been untouched until now. I take a big drink, fuming over the nerve of Drew, lying and saying I’m the one who kissed him.
He chuckles again. “I’m glad you’re drinking that water, because for a minute, I thought you were going to toss it in my face.”
I stop drinking and throw the remaining second half in his face.
Sopping wet, he holds one hand to his eye. “Ow! You got me with the lemon wedge.”
“Boohoo. Let me see it.” I pull his hand down. His eye does look a little red, but there’s nothing stuck in it.
He reaches down and grabs the hem of his shirt. He pulls it all the way up, revealing a very appealing torso, and a belly button that’s downright adorable. He mops his face with the hem of his shirt, raising it higher and higher. I hold my breath as his nipples are revealed. They’re perfect. I’m not saying I wouldn’t date a guy with big pepperoni nipples, but, all things being equal, I do prefer the smaller, non-pepperoni ones.
He pulls the shirt down again and licks his lips. “Good job. You got most of the wine rinsed off.”
“I didn’t do it.” I clutch my hands tightly together on my lap. “My hand did that, not me. I think my hand might have Tourette’s.”
“That’s not a thing.”
&n
bsp; “Are you a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Shut up. You are not. You’re just being contrary.”
“I have a certificate.”
“Where?”
“At my dental practice.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re a dentist, not a doctor.”
“Yes, I am. I’m Dr. Morgan.”
I shake my head. “No way. That can’t be your last name. If I married you, I’d be Megan Morgan.”
He gives me a funny look. “Tonight is certainly a fascinating journey into how your brain works. Is that your real name? Megan? Why does everyone call you Meenie?” He shakes his head. “Never mind. I shouldn’t ask. That’s something people who are dating would do, and you and I are just friends. Feather’s orders.”
“Tonight doesn’t count, because we’re both drunk.”
“Do you want to come back to my place?”
“No. I’m not interested in one night of mediocre sex.”
He smiles, which is not the reaction I expected. “Who says it’ll be mediocre? I predict it will be terrible. I am terrible in bed. Plus I’ve had a few beers, and up until recently, my balls have been in someone else’s purse.” He keeps grinning, really working the whole self-deprecating thing in a way that makes me want to cradle him in my arms and tell him everything’s going to be magical.
He continues, “In case you’re not reading between the lines, what I’m saying is that I haven’t been with anyone since my breakup, two years ago.”
“Do you mean you haven’t been with the same hookup twice in a row since then?”
His dark brown eyes lock on mine. “I’m being honest with you. I don’t know what came over me the first night I met you. That’s not what I’m like, but you painted me as this wild player character, and I liked how that felt. Right up until you saw the truth, the real me. I ran out of there like the coward I am.”
“You’re not a coward.”
He leans in toward me, until our foreheads are touching. I’m aware of the noise around us in the pub, but none of it matters. We’re in our own private bubble.
“Of course I’m a coward,” he says. “But you’ve already seen that in me, so I’ve got nowhere to go but up. You think I’m terrible in bed. Your opinion of me can’t get any worse, so what have I got to lose?”
His words sink in, and a darkness rises within me. “You want to sleep with me because you’ve got nothing to lose? Because it can’t get any worse?” My voice is cold, like a parking meter in the dead of winter. “Thanks a lot.”
Our foreheads are still touching, and he looks down at my lips like he’s thinking about kissing me again.
I put my hands on his shoulders and push him away. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m going to take Feather’s advice and stay away from your bed.”
“Are you saying that if it wasn’t for her, you’d be in my bed tonight?”
“That’s a paradox, because if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have met.”
He settles back on his chair, stretching his broad shoulders out just enough to make his shirt taut and give me a little nipple visibility. That tease.
“I beg to differ,” he says confidently. “We’re meeting right now. A week ago, our regular pool hall closed down, so this is our first night here. How often are you here on a Friday?”
“Even if I am here on Fridays, you wouldn’t have come over to talk to a girl who looks like me. Not unless you needed directions to the men’s room.”
“Wrong again. You’re beautiful, Meenie, and you’re just my type.”
“Your type?”
“Complicated.”
His words settle on me like a heavy-carb-pasta inertia. I’m finding it hard to breathe. He called me beautiful. He’s drunk, but still. Beautiful.
“Let’s get a cab somewhere,” he says, his voice low and seductive. “We’ll go dancing, or get coffee, or find a bowling alley. Let’s do something.”
My mouth starts to move, to say sure, I’d like to get coffee, but then he says, “We won’t tell Feather.”
His final words crush me. I push my chair back and get to my feet. The room swirls, but my recent tumble and this conversation have sobered me up.
“Forget it,” I spit at him. “I’m not your dirty little hookup secret.”
I turn on my heel and march away from the table.
He doesn’t run after me, which confirms I’m making the right decision.
I stop off at the bar and settle the bill, paying for everything that went to our table. This takes a few minutes, and still Drew doesn’t try to stop me.
With my head held high, I push the big wooden door open and step outside. The air is crisp and colder than expected.
It’s September now, and even though we’re only a few days in, August feels like a pale shadow, like a photo of yourself from yesterday, before you endured today’s humiliations.
Chapter 13
I’m still feeling blue when I open Gardenia Flowers on Saturday morning. The bluest blue. I’ve got the blues, and like the song says, these blues cut me to the bone.
I put an all-blues playlist on the stereo and stand inside the walk-in flower cooler to clear my thoughts.
Last night’s debacle with Drew keeps playing on repeat in my head. I really wanted to go home with him, and have some of that mediocre-to-terrible sex he was offering. It would have been better than the zero sex I’ve been getting.
What I did do, after I left the pub, was stop by the grocery store and buy half a roasted chicken and three kinds of chips, plus dip. My sister has a sweet tooth and goes on candy binges when she needs a mood boost. Me, I hit the savory aisle.
Even though I’d eaten dinner at the pub, the walk back home burned off enough calories to justify a second dinner at home. I sat on the floor in the kitchen and shared the chicken with Muffin. I got the plain kind, with no seasonings, on account of him.
This doesn’t paint me in the most flattering light, but I’ll be honest. I did sob and blubber to Muffin about him being “the only man who loves me, and that’s only because I have free range chicken.” Then I used his soft, orange fur to soak up my tears.
Because that is how future crazy cat ladies like me roll.
Now I’m standing inside a walk-in flower cooler with my face pressed against the interior glass, in an attempt to press down the puffy bags under my eyes.
I can see by the reaction of people walking into the shop that this is not the sight they were expecting.
With a heavy heart, I step out of the cooler and try to be as professional as I can, helping an excited young woman pick out wedding flowers. I do a decent job with the girl, considering I’ll never (cue the cat-fur-soaking sobs) know the joy of being a beautiful bride myself.
I get through the day with no meltdowns, and I’m feeling good by closing time. I worked the full shift today, so Tina could spend the weekend with Luca.
She phones me right at closing time, just to make sure I’ve got everything under control. Sometimes we get a flurry of orders right before closing, but today’s been quiet, so she doesn’t need to come in.
“Rory said she met your friend, Drew last night at O’Flannagan’s,” she says. “He sounds like a player. I’m worried about you, sis.”
I squeeze the phone in my hand, silently cursing Rory for tattling on me.
“I’m being a good girl. I didn’t sleep with him. I’m taking your advice, and Feather’s, and I’m staying away.”
“Good. That’s a relief.”
“Tina, how do you turn down guys? I thought I’d feel better today, but I feel horrible. Is it possible that Drew wants me for more than a booty call hookup? Like, if I’m really good at sex, do you think he’ll fall in love with me?”
“Are you joking? I can’t see your face over the phone.”
“Of course I’m joking.” I wasn’t. “I’d be pretty stupid if I thought a guy would fall in love with me because I’m good at sex, ha ha. Um. Ha.”
“Just ha
ng in there. There’s someone for everyone.”
“That’s what pretty people say to ugly people.”
She laughs. “What are you talking about? We’re sisters, and we’re practically identical. How can you say I’m pretty and you’re ugly?”
“My nose is crooked and one of my eyes is higher than the other.”
“Meenie, love always makes us feel vulnerable and not good enough. I thought Luca was way out of my league. I still do. But he wants to be with me, so who knows. Maybe guys aren’t half as critical as we think they are.”
“But what do they want from us? Besides sex.”
“Most of them just want someone to be vulnerable with. There’s a lot of pressure on guys to be tough and rugged, and they all razz each other. Take Luca, for example. He was raised by his father, with no women around for most of his life. All those nice things that we girls do for each other, we take for granted. Guys aren’t like that, but they crave it. You know, I bought Luca some big socks, so he could wear one over his cast and keep his toes warm now that it’s getting chilly. When I looked up at his face, he looked like he was going to get all emotional, or propose to me, or both.” She chuckles softly. “He’s a big sweetie.”
I snort. “I could buy someone socks.”
“Good. But stay away from this Drew guy. I don’t like him.”
I promise her I will stay away, and I end the call.
It’s five minutes past closing time, so I hit the lights, grab my jacket, and fly out the door to lock up.
I’ll still have to see Drew on Tuesday nights, if he keeps coming from group, but I’ll ignore him. Is his problem something to do with women? He did share with me that he’s recovering from a breakup that’s a few years old, but that only confirms that he’s looking for a rebound girl to pump and dump. It’s not going to be me.
I’ve got some checks to put in the mailbox, so I walk up Baker Street, toward the post office.
