Stepping up to the counter, I ordered a steak sandwich for both Ed and myself before paying the girl.
Waiting for our food, I turned and looked out the window and watched as Ed smiled at something Ella was saying over the phone. A brief pang of jealousy squeezed my chest as he murmured something to her with that grin still in place.
My thoughts immediately turned towards Rissa and the way she made me smile all Saturday night. What I wouldn’t give to see if she could make me smile that way for the rest of my life. Something about being with her felt right. Like it was meant to be. And I hated not being able to enjoy it every day like Ed could.
And didn’t that just make me sound like a big fucking girl. Seemed that was the way it always was when it came to her.
“Here’s your sandwiches, Ben.” The words from the girl behind the counter pulled my thoughts back to the here and now.
“Thanks, Mona.” I gave her a half grin as I took the baskets and maneuvered to the last open table, tucked away in an alcove in the back corner.
Taking a big bite of my sandwich, I waited for Ed to join me. A few minutes of peace and quiet weren’t so bad given my mostly bad mood. The more the day dragged on, the worst it seemed to get.
“Is this seat taken?” a melodic voice came from behind me just as I took a sloppy bite that had peppers hanging from the sides of my mouth.
Silently cursing my horrible luck with this girl, I stuffed the wayward peppers into my mouth and grabbed a napkin. I hastily wiped my face and turned towards her.
She looked like an angel with the way the light streamed in the window behind her and illuminated her hair and face. Wearing a tight shirt and short skirt, I could barely keep my eyes from raking over her body again and again.
“Well is it?” Her words held a tinge of amusement, which made me feel slightly better about the fact that we never talked after almost kissing—numerous times—on Saturday night. I was afraid she’d be mad at me for taking advantage of her in her inebriated state, but the radiant smile on her face told a different story.
“No, it’s not.” I scrambled to stand and pull a chair out for her.
“You sure you aren’t waiting for someone?” She eyed Ed’s sandwich and then looked at the chair I was holding out for her.
“Just my partner. He’ll be around eventually. Please, sit.” Hopefully he never came around. I may have just been saying I needed peace and quiet, but I’d take time with Rissa over that any day.
“Thank you.”
Once she was settled, I sat back in my seat and watched as she prepared her chicken salad. The way her fingers squeezed and kneaded the packet of dressing made me think dirty things. I ached to find out what those fingers would feel like squeezing my dick and kneading my balls.
Adjusting myself discreetly in my chair, I cleared my throat before taking another bite of my sandwich.
“So you work on the base?” she casually asked as we both ate.
I nodded. Between my uniform and the fact that only base workers tended to eat here it wasn’t that hard to deduce. “Yeah. You work over at Smithson Consulting, right?”
Rissa’s face showed her surprise when I admitted to knowing where she worked. I hadn’t worked up the courage last weekend to tell her that we had briefly met before right in this very place or that I had seen her so many times from afar.
“How do you know that?” she asked skeptically. Setting her fork down, she reached for her water bottle but her eyes never left my face as they regarded me intently.
“I work at the Defense Sector.” I gestured toward my fatigues causing her eyes to make a slow perusal of the parts of my body she could see before darting over to the hat sitting on the table. She licked her lips and nodded her head.
“That still doesn’t explain how you know where I work,” she pointed out.
“I’ve seen you a few times.” I shrugged nonchalantly trying to down play how many times a few actually was.
“Okay.” She drew out the word before going for more of her salad.
“And you talked about your job on Saturday night,” I added.
“I did?” she croaked out. Fear shining in her eyes.
“You don’t remember?”
“Not really. I mean I remember drinking but most of it is a haze,” she admitted.
“So you don’t remember us getting sweaty and naked together?” I leaned forward in my seat and quirked my eyebrow in question. Putting a lascivious grin on my face, I let the innuendo sit between us.
“We didn’t!” she gasped.
“No, we didn’t. I did almost kiss you though.” She didn’t need to know that we were heading up to do just that when we were interrupted. If she ended up remembering, I would worry about it then. I didn’t want to embarrass her or, God forbid, find out she wouldn’t have spent time with me if she had been sober. For now I would choose to believe she wanted every single thing that happened or almost happened for that matter.
“Um... so what stopped you?” She fidgeted with her fork and her eyes focused somewhere over my shoulder not wanting to make contact with mine.
“Meredith opened the door on us. Biggest regret I have is not kissing you when I had the chance.”
She let out a small and slightly hysterical laugh, shaking her head. “As it should be seeing as how it’s never going to happen again.”
“We’ll see.” I gave her a smug look that told her game on.
“I guess we will.” She smiled completely unaffected by my challenge and went back to eating her lunch.
Phew. Potentially awkward situation avoided. That conversation could have gone a lot differently if she remembered everything that took place on Saturday night. Especially if she had regretted any of it.
“You know Meredith would probably do just about anything to get a picture of you in your uniform for a book cover.”
“I’m sure she would. Isn’t going to happen though.”
“How come?” Her head cocked to the side in that cute little way I was coming to love.
“I’m not into that sort of thing.”
“You seemed to do just fine last weekend. Posing for a few pictures isn’t much different than standing in front of hundreds of strangers and lip syncing whilst shaking your ass,” she argued.
“Whilst?” I pressed my lips together in an effort not to laugh at her choice of words. From what I could tell there wasn’t a hint of British in her.
This girl was downright adorable with some of the things she said.
Rissa rolled her eyes and gave me a smirk. “I sometimes say... odd things. Whilst is one of my latest.”
“I see. What else do you say that’s odd?” I opened the bag of chips that came with my sandwich hoping to look uninterested when in fact I was dying to learn more about her.
“I don’t know.” Her face flushed and she looked self-conscious for a moment.
“Oh come on. Sure you do,” I cajoled.
“Okay well let’s see. Sometimes I say shitake mushrooms instead of shitty.”
“That’s not really weird. I thought you’d tell me something crazy with the way you blushed. That’s downright boring actually.”
She looked affronted for a moment. Her slender finger tapped on her chin and her eyes sought the ceiling as she thought about it. “Oh I know. This drives Meredith crazy. I have a tendency to say yo soy even when it doesn’t make sense.”
“Yo soy? Isn’t that Spanish?”
“Yes. It means I am.”
“Give me an example.” I leaned forward eager to have her keep talking. I liked how easily conversation flowed between us after only knowing each other for a short period of time.
“Yo soy doesn’t like that. Or yo soy doesn’t feel good. Or yo soy doesn’t think so.”
“That is a little weird. You’re still relatively tame though.” I gave her my best boyish grin letting her know I was teasing her.
“You sound like you have experience with crazy,” she noted.
“My brother Tann
er once hooked up with a girl who called all of us brah. Not sure what that was about,” I muttered as an afterthought. “Or there was another one who would only talk baby talk. She tried to say that was her normal voice until we caught her on the phone with her mother.”
“If I ever talk like a small child, you have my permission to shoot me.”
“Deal. And that isn’t even touching the ones with stalker tendencies. Tanner even caught one really twisted girl sticking her tongue in one of his used condoms.”
“Oh my God! Are you serious right now? That is—”
“Absolutely fucking disgusting?” I finished for her.
“Exactly.” She pursed her lips in thought. “I also have a tendency to quote lyrics when I can’t come up with my own words to describe what I’m thinking or feeling.”
“Oh I know that,” I said in between chuckles.
“Oh yeah... Britney Spears,” she mumbled.
“And Kenny Rogers,” I informed her.
“Oh God. Please say I didn’t.”
“Okay. You didn’t.”
“Fuck. I did. Didn’t I?” She sighed and shook her head. “And that would be why I shouldn’t drink.”
“It was cute,” I reassured her.
“Right,” she said with sarcasm.
“Sorry it took so long. Ella needed me to talk little Simone into taking her nap...” Ed’s voice trailed off when he realized I wasn’t sitting alone. “Who’s your friend?” He gave me a sidelong glance that promised I was in for some shit later.
Something to look forward to.
“Hi. Ed, right? I’m Rissa.” She stood and offered her hand to him before I could introduce them. He took it and gave it a brief shake before grabbing an empty chair from another table and joining us.
“So, Rissa. How do you know Ben here?”
Leave it to Ed to try to get right to the point and dig up as much dirt as possible as quickly as possible. He was such a girl sometimes.
“Oh we met last weekend. He was at the book signing for my cousin Meredith.”
“Is that right?” He quirked his eyebrow and leaned forward in interest.
“Yeah.”
“You got to tell me how hilarious it was watching him perform on stage like a Chippendale?”
Rissa burst out laughing at his description. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really that far off the mark. All I would have needed was a tight speedo and I would have filled the part perfectly.
“He was very...” She left him hanging as she considered her answer. Ed leaned even further across the table, sandwich long forgotten as he waited with bated breath for her to give him the low down. “Energetic,” she finally told him.
“Energetic? That’s a bit cryptic,” he murmured disappointedly.
“We’ll leave it at that.” She sat back in her chair before pulling a mirror and lip gloss out of her purse.
“You’re the devil in disguise aren’t you?” He sat up and reached for his lunch, slightly disgruntled by her lack of forthcomingness.
“I am,” she agreed. She gave me a wink behind her mirror—which he couldn’t see—that had me chuckling. “Well boys I better get back to work.”
“You really aren’t going to tell me?” he asked incredulously.
“No. I’m really not.” She gave him a heart stopping smile, pushed back from the table and threw her garbage away before coming back to stand next to us. “It was good seeing you again, Ben. And it was nice meeting you, Ed.”
“You too, Rissa,” Ed replied.
“See you soon,” I called out as she turned to walk out the door. At the last second, she stopped and gave me a little wave before continuing into the bright afternoon sunshine.
“You held out on me.” Ed punched my shoulder before shoving the last bite of his food into his mouth.
“Not really. Just didn’t find it important,” I lied.
“You are so full of shit. That girl has been driving you to distraction for a long damn time now. You, my friend, were holding out on me.”
We cleaned our table and headed out to the truck in silence. I knew the respite from his questions would be short lived, but I relished it just the same.
“Wait! Was she your hand job?” Ed asked with exuberance when the truck door shut behind him.
“Of course not, fucker.” I gave him a baleful glance before starting the truck and backing out of the parking spot.
“So does this mean you’re finally going to make some headway with the lovely Rissa and stop pining after her like some lovesick puppy?”
“We’ll see.” Rissa might think we were destined for friendship. I knew differently. We were destined for so much more and I was going to show her just how great that something more could be.
*****
I turned up Pearl Jam as I made my way out of the parking lot, turning right at the exit to head home after a long and trying day at work. Big wigs were in town, which was never a good thing. It meant longer shifts, more shit handed down for us to do, and boring meetings with new protocols to review.
Fingers drumming on the steering wheel, I belted out the lyrics to “Black.” So lost in the song, I almost missed the white convertible off on the side of the road with steam rising from the crumpled hood.
Recognizing the car and the woman sitting on the trunk, I quickly swung my Jeep in front of the wrecked car and got out.
“Is there a problem here, miss?” I asked in my best southern drawl. Walking up to where Rissa sat, I rested my hip on the trunk next to her.
“The sun was shining in my eyes so I went to put my sunglasses on. That’s when a stupid deer decided to jump out in front of my car. I swerved and ended up hitting the guardrail and pole.”
“How fast were you going?” I asked her as I walked around to inspect the damage.
“Probably too fast. I have a wee bit of a tendency to have a lead foot,” she admitted on a distressed sigh.
“Well you’ll be lucky if they don’t total the car.” I told her after seeing just how bad it was. I looked up and saw her face crumple at my words, so I quickly added. “But you never know. A good garage could work wonders.”
“I love this car,” Rissa admitted on a stuttering breath while trying to keep her tears at bay.
“Don’t be upset. At least you weren’t hurt.” I put my arm around her shoulder and was rewarded when she relaxed into my embrace.
As the afternoon sunshine washed over us, I soaked in the warmth that having her in my arms provided. The lilac scent of her teased my nose and I itched to pull her closer so I could bury my head in her tresses like on Saturday.
“You’re right,” she eventually said.
I dipped my head to look at her face in order to ascertain how she was holding up. “You want a ride home?”
“That would be great. I wasn’t really looking forward to calling Meredith and waiting for her to get her ass down here. I swear she’s on a different timetable then the rest of us.”
“I seem to remember that. She and Tanner both go about life much the same way. I always thought they were perfect for each other in that aspect.”
“I seem to remember them being both loud and volatile.” She gave a slight shudder like the very thought of it grossed her out.
“What do you mean?”
“I lived with Meredith briefly when she and Tanner were dating or sleeping together or whatever. I’m really not sure what they called it. I called it the longest month of my life. If they weren’t having sex they were arguing. Both were loud. As in so damn loud they kept me up half of the night.”
My mouth twisted into a grimace. I never dealt with quite that much when it came to the two of them, but I had walked in on some wild action a time or two.
What perplexed me was how entwined our lives had been yet we never met one another.
“How have we never met before?” I asked her in disbelief.
She studied me a moment before shrugging. “I have no idea.”
Just then the t
ow truck pulled up ending our conversation, and once again I decided fate was a fickle bitch when she wanted to be. I just hoped the timing of our friendship was the right one.
*****
“Why am I not surprised that you have a giant Jeep Wrangler?” she commented as she jumped up into the truck and fastened her seatbelt.
“Hey! This is a fine piece of machinery. It’s an Unlimited Rubicon with a three point six liter, two hundred eight-five horsepower engine. It’s trail rated with a two thousand pound towing capacity.” I lovingly rubbed my hand along the dash as I spoke passionately about my baby.
“How could I have forgotten those fine points?” she said stiltedly in between laughs. God I loved her laugh. Even when it was at my expense. “Although I will say these leather seats feel as soft as butter. And well, if you wanted to take the top off, I wouldn’t object.”
My torso twisted, my arm resting on the steering wheel, and I gave her a crooked grin. “How about this weekend I take you out on a drive and I promise the top will be off.”
The idea was brilliant really. As far as I was concerned this would be our first date. Ideas of what we could do were quickly forming in my head and with each one I got more excited about it.
“I can’t this weekend,” she murmured and I immediately assumed she was trying to let me down gently. When I saw genuine disappointment in her eyes, I felt lighter knowing that wasn’t the case.
“We can do it another time.” I started the engine and put the truck in gear.
“Next weekend?”
“I work next weekend. I’m off every other.” Sometimes I really hated not having a typical nine to five job. There was nothing worse than wanting to do something and not being able to.
“Then let’s do something the next time you’re off.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I glanced over at her and the smile on my face mirrored hers. That was when I allowed myself to start getting excited again. “So where to?”
“I live over on Easton, towards the park.”
“No shit,” I muttered. “I run over there every morning.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“It’s usually oh dawn thirty when I’m running,” I informed her.
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