by Marie Sexton
Matt’s warning echoed in my mind, and I took a moment to check the faces around me, but the only person I recognized was Angelo, who stood behind the counter, pouring a glass of wine for a waiting customer while deep in conversation with a blond man sitting at the bar, nursing a beer.
“Lamar!” Angelo said, smiling broadly at me. “’Bout time you came in. What’re you drinkin’?”
“What kind of bourbon do you have?”
He laughed. “None at all, I’m afraid. Our license is only for beer and wine.”
“Oh.” But I remembered him mentioning lattes. “Hot tea?”
“Sure, I got a couple kinds. Matt’s mom orders ’em.” But another customer walked up before he could say anything else. “Give me a minute?”
“Take your time.”
Angelo went to the other end of the counter, and the blond man he’d been talking to smiled at me, his hair hanging in wild, coarse curls around his face. He held his hand out for me to shake. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Jared.”
“Lamar.” I shook his hand, wondering why he seemed to expect me to recognize his name.
My confusion must have been obvious, because he laughed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been hearing odds and ends from Angelo and Matt, but we haven’t actually met before.”
“Oh,” I said, as understanding dawned. “You’re Matt’s husband.”
“I am.” And I could definitely see why Dominic had been checking him out. He had the kind of casual, boy-next-door good looks that drew people to him. He gestured to the stool next to him. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks.”
“You finally found Coda’s hot spot.”
“I had no idea,” I said, looking around the shop.
“They were worried a couple of years ago, with movie rentals going the way of the dinosaurs. But they’ve made a niche for themselves here.”
Jared was unbelievably easy to talk to. He struck me as one of the happiest people I’d ever met. It seemed odd he’d be married to somebody as uptight as Matt, but it was clear, the few times Matt’s name came up, that Jared was crazy about him. I was also pleased to learn Jared was a teacher like me. Although our subjects were vastly different—he taught math and physics at the high school—our shared profession gave us plenty to commiserate about. We spent a while bitching about busybody parents, poor funding, and ancient photocopiers while he worked his way through a second beer, and I drank the first decent cup of tea I’d had in ages. The store was busy, but Zach and Angelo both stopped to chat with us when the flow of customers allowed it. Between the three of them, I found myself relaxing. Smiling. Even laughing. It was the most fun I’d had in Coda without Dominic. It seemed ridiculous that I hadn’t been friends with them all along.
“You’ll come watch the game with us on Sunday, right?” Angelo said before I left.
“What game?”
“What game,” Jared scoffed, grinning at me. “This is Broncos country. What game do you think?”
“Oh. You mean football?”
“Of course I mean football!”
“I’m not really much of a fan.”
“Good,” Zach cut in. “You can keep me company.”
By the time I left, I found myself saying yes, I’d be at Zach and Angelo’s house on Sunday at two o’clock for a football game I cared nothing about. I was even looking forward to it.
Right up until I reached the door and Angelo called, “Tell Dominic he’s invited too.”
Just like that, a whole evening of feeling better went up in smoke.
I SPENT Saturday morning raking leaves in my backyard, basking in the warm Colorado sunshine and getting an outrageous sunburn on the back of my neck. I’d always associated sunburns with heat. It’d never occurred to me how much stronger the ultraviolet rays were a mile above sea level. I was slathering on the aloe when my phone rang around two. I stared in surprise at Dom’s name splashed across the screen.
“Hello?” I was once again struck by what a stupid way it was to begin a conversation.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “How’ve you been?”
Only a few words, but their effect was profound. Not joy at hearing his voice, as I’d expected, or relief at the apparent end of my exile. No, this was anger, sudden and bitter in my throat. I wanted to snap at him, to lash out and wound him somehow, but nothing came to me. My mind was infuriatingly blank.
“I’m sorry,” he said before I recovered. “I meant to call earlier, I just….”
I heard the lie in his voice—he hadn’t meant to call at all—but I also heard grief. I heard a note of sorrow that brought me up short.
“Lamar?”
“I’m fine,” I said grudgingly.
“I don’t blame you if you’re mad.”
I sighed, debating. Was there any point in demanding an explanation? Maybe if we’d been face-to-face, but over the phone, it felt wrong. I squashed my anger and asked, “How are you?”
“Good.” But it was a rote answer, not a genuine response. “Listen, are you home?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Naomi has something for you. Can we come by?”
“Sure,” I said, surprised. What in the world could his daughter have for me?
“Elena’s with us.”
His tone was odd. “Okay.”
“And no matter how much Naomi bats her eyes and begs, you can say no, I swear.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“We’ll see you in ten minutes,” he said, and the line went dead.
They came in two cars, Dom in his GTO, followed by Elena and Naomi in a Subaru Outback. And they came bearing a yowling cat in a cardboard pet carrier.
“Hi, Mr. Franklin!” Naomi said, smiling broadly at me as she carried the thing inside. “Are you having a good weekend?”
“I guess,” I said, glancing uneasily at Dom, who looked uncomfortable and embarrassed as hell, and then at Elena, who smiled at me with bright, friendly curiosity. She looked so much like Naomi, I was taken aback.
“Lamar!” she said, shaking my hand enthusiastically. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Uh….” Had I met her before? “Really?”
“You don’t remember, do you? I was at the party where—”
“Lane,” Dominic growled. It took me a second to realize “lane” was apparently short for Elena. “Not now.”
She threw him an exasperated look, but Naomi spoke up before she could answer.
“I have a favor to ask you, Mr. Franklin. My cousin’s birthday is a few weeks away, and she really wants a cat. The rescue was in town today, so we went and got one for her. But see, her birthday isn’t until December, so I can’t give it to her now, and Dad says I can’t keep it at his house because he’s allergic, and I can’t keep her at Mom’s because her boyfriend doesn’t like cats. So, I thought maybe you could keep her for me?”
She smiled at me. Elena did too. Excepting Naomi’s blue eyebrows, the resemblance between then was uncanny. The cat’s desperate meows for freedom grew in volume, as if she sensed her impending verdict. Next to them, Dominic stared at the ceiling as if he wanted to be anywhere in the world more than here.
“Well,” I said, stunned at the request. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a cat. I don’t even know what they need.”
“Oh, it’s easy!” Naomi said, and based on her tone, I may as well have said yes already. “She’s box-trained already and everything.” She undid the top of the box and pulled out the cat. “She’s really sweet. Here.”
She thrust the thing into my arms. It was a big a cat with long, silver fur. She immediately squirmed out of my arms. I figured she’d bolt, but she didn’t. She plopped unceremoniously onto her bottom on my living room floor and lifted her hind leg to lick it, watching me out of the corner of her eye as she did.
“Isn’t she great?” Naomi gushed. “So, you’ll do it, right?”
“Well—”
“You’ll love her.” She turned to the cat
. “He’ll love you, right, Missy Prissy?” she cooed.
The cat blinked at her and continued licking her leg.
“Missy Prissy?” I asked. “Is that her name?”
Dom made a strangled sound I suspected had started out as a laugh. Naomi threw him a blistering look before answering me. “Her full name is Missy Prissy Pom-Pom Paw,” she said with a completely straight face.
“Excuse me?”
“Look at her fluffy paws! They’re like tiny pom-poms! See?”
As if to demonstrate, Missy Prissy Pom-Pom Paw switched legs, raising one hind paw toward me and spreading her hairy kitty toes.
“Oh,” I said, glancing at Dom, who was clearly doing his best not to laugh. “Missy Prissy—”
“Pom-Pom Paw, yeah!” Naomi finished, beaming at me. “You’ll keep her, right?”
“Well—”
“You can say no,” Dom said.
“But Daddy!” Naomi protested. “If he says no—”
“You can say no,” Elena interrupted firmly.
Naomi stomped her foot at her parents before turning to me. “But you won’t, will you, Mr. Franklin? Because if you do, we’ll have to take Missy Prissy back. They said she’s been waiting for her forever home for almost two years now, and she really doesn’t want to go back to being all alone in her cage.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“What do you mean, what’s wrong with her? Nothing’s wrong with her! She’s perfect!”
“Why hasn’t anybody adopted her before now?”
“Because she’s nine years old,” Naomi said, subsiding from overblown teenage fury to a near pout. She crossed her arms and blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Nobody wants to adopt old cats. They only want the kittens.”
I had a pang of sympathy for Missy Prissy Pom-Pom Paw, not just because of her horrendous name, but because I had an idea what it was like living alone in a box. I knew how it felt to be unwanted, and the idea of sending her back to wait for somebody else seemed unbelievably cruel. I found myself smiling.
“I suppose I can keep her.”
Naomi squealed in a key that probably raised dogs’ heads for miles around, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “Thank you, Mr. Franklin! You won’t regret it, I promise.”
IT WAS only a few minutes before Elena herded Naomi out the door—
“Bye, Mr. Franklin! See you Monday!”
—and then I was alone with the cat and Dominic. The former bolted down the hallway. The latter refused to meet my eyes. He wandered into the kitchen as if he were looking for something, but I had a feeling he was only looking for a way out of the awkward conversation we both knew was coming. I could pretend nothing had happened and act as if everything between us was the same as it had always been, but I was still angry, albeit far less than I had been, and I wasn’t quite ready to let it go.
“It’s good to see you again,” I said at last.
His smile was slow and unsure. “It’s good to see you too.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
His cheeks flushed red. He leaned a hip against my kitchen counter and stared down at the floor. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t like that.”
But his body language spoke of guilt.
“I didn’t mean to mess things up,” I said.
“You didn’t.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to spend the night.”
“It’s not that—”
“Then I’m sorry I kissed you.”
“No. Please don’t apologize for that.” And for the first time, his pleading gaze met mine. “That’s the last thing I want you to feel bad about.”
“Then help me understand, Dominic. Because one minute you say you’re not going anywhere, and the next minute, you’re gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I must have scared you off—”
“No. I thought….” But his words trailed away.
“What?” I asked when it was clear no explanation was forthcoming.
He slumped in defeat. “Yes, I was avoiding you. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to be like that. You have every right to be confused. But I….” He shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck nervously as he stared at my feet. “I don’t know if I can give you what you want.”
“What I want?” I said. “What about what you want?”
“I want to be friends.”
“Friends?”
“Yes.”
But he still didn’t meet my eyes. I thought back to the way he’d held me that night in my room. The way he hadn’t been able to tear himself away. The way he’d touched me when we’d made out on his couch. “I can’t decide if you really are sending mixed signals, or if I’m pushing for something you never wanted to begin with.”
He sighed again and rubbed his temples, as if warding off a headache. “I’m not sure either, to be honest.”
“So you don’t want me?”
He laughed, although it wasn’t a happy sound. It spoke of nothing but bitterness. “That’s not it.”
I stepped closer to him, intentionally invading his space to see if he’d back away, but he didn’t. He met my gaze reluctantly. “Maybe having somebody to get off with is tempting, but I’m not your type.”
“Oh, you’re definitely my type. For the last fifteen years, you’ve practically been the definition of my ‘type.’”
“But now the reality doesn’t live up to your expectations?”
“That’s not it either.”
I leaned my hip against the counter too, mirroring him, and he inched closer. I was sure he was fighting to keep from putting his hand on my hip as he had that night in my bedroom. “Then what?”
He sighed. “It’s not that easy.”
“It can be.”
“I have a daughter.”
“I know.” I had to think about that for a minute. “I see. You’re not out with her?”
He sighed and ducked his head. “Not really.”
“And your ex?”
“Elena knows. She’s always known. But nobody else.”
“Not the rest of your family?”
“No.”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. Of all the men in the world, why did I always latch on to the ones who weren’t available? But this wasn’t Jonas, lying to me about what was going on. This was Dom, confused and horny and frustrated, and trying to do what was right. “Are you telling me you need time?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what I want. I’m crazy about you, but I have to think of Naomi. I have to put her needs first. I have to—”
I closed the gap between us. His breath caught as our bodies came into contact. “Putting her needs first doesn’t mean denying all of yours.” I snaked my arms around his neck. I stood on my toes to brush my lips over his. “You get to have fun sometimes too.”
“I can’t,” he moaned.
He sounded so torn, so conflicted, but his body wasn’t confused. His hands found my hips, and he pulled me tight against him. I felt the shift between us as his cock began to rise. He lowered his head but stopped short of kissing me.
“Why deny it?”
“Because I have to.” His words were a strangled moan. “Because…. Because….”
But his grip on me tightened. He moved his hips, rubbing his erection against me. I nuzzled closer to kiss his jaw and heard the low sound he made. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Christ, I wish I knew.”
But he didn’t say no, so I threaded my fingers through his hair and guided his lips to mine.
For a moment, he stood frozen, his breath quaking against my lips. And then he gave in. He moaned in surrender and kissed me hard, crushing my lips beneath his. I slid my hand between us to cup his groin, and his moans deepened. But when I began unbuttoning his jeans, he went still.
“Jesus, Lamar,” he whispered. “I don’t think I should be doing this.�
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“Do you like kissing me?” I asked, freeing another button.
“God, yes.”
Another button, and his erection bulged through the gap of his fly, covered by the fabric of his boxers. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “And no.”
I brushed my fingers up his length, and his breath caught. “Does it feel good?”
He didn’t answer except to close his eyes, bite his lip, and moan deep in his throat. Not a moan of frustration or confusion. This was pure pleasure, and I knew I’d won. He was done fighting, for the moment at least. No matter how great his misgivings, I’d eclipsed them all with nothing more than my hand on his cock and my tongue brushing his lips.
“Seems simple to me,” I said. I pulled the waistband of his boxers out of the way. I pushed them and his jeans down over his hips, freeing his erection as I sank to my knees. I’d known what he wanted most since that day in his kitchen. He tensed but didn’t move to stop me. He trembled, straining toward me, waiting for me to touch him.
I stopped, eyeing his erection. Even after fifteen years, I remembered the way he tasted, and the way he smelled. I knew how he’d hold my head as I did it. The memory made me shiver. I leaned forward and opened my mouth, exhaling hot air onto his naked flesh. He made a soft sound—not quite a moan, but a whimper of anticipation. He put his hand into my hair. Not pulling or demanding, but I knew he wanted it as much as I wanted to give it.
I ran my tongue up his shaft as slowly as I could. I tasted the bead of moisture on his tip. I flicked my tongue over the head, shivering at the deep-throated sounds of gratification he made. And finally I took him in. I swallowed him deeper by degrees until he was buried in my throat, my nose pressed into his musky hair. I stayed there, waiting, simply giving until he finally began to move.
