by Mia Malone
I slid my hand down and felt him moving in and out as I touched myself. He increased the pace and started pounding harder, and I whimpered.
Then it suddenly hit me, and I came with a low cry. He grunted again, and his movements became shaky.
“God,” he groaned. “Feels so good, Jenny.”
Our eyes held as his face grew taut and he planted himself deep. I felt his cock jerk, and he came too, on a half shout. Then he sank down and leaned his face into my neck.
We were silent for a long time and then his lips moved against my neck in a kiss.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome,” I whispered and felt his lips move with a smile.
He gave me another kiss and raised his head.
“I’m never moving,” he shared. “I like it here.”
I pulled his head down to kiss him, and we did move, but not for a long time.
Then we had breakfast and went to work. I came back when I'd closed the restaurant, and we had dinner. We talked a little about what had happened, but the fight he'd been in with Gibson had apparently worked the anger out of him because he seemed calmer, as if he’d accepted what had happened, much like I’d done myself. Then I explained the concept of early menopause to him and had to laugh at the unexpected blush on his cheeks. He grinned too, but his eyes darkened when he remembered that condoms now were entirely optional, which meant we went to bed early.
Later that week I met Lee and Annie at Oak, and we talked about my marriage. Annie vowed to kill Martin, and I informed her that her dad had called dibs, after which Joke would do his bit and then apparently Gibson would urinate on the corpse. She stopped crying and stared at me. Lee calmly shared that after Gibson had relieved himself, she would pour gasoline on my ex-husbands remains but if Annie felt up to it, she could toss a match on the sorry pile of shit. Annie swallowed, Lee smiled sweetly, and I started laughing. Then Joke put three shot glasses in front of us with a wink, Mac and Day joined us, and after that our evening changed into something which ended with drunk-sex.
The next day, out of the blue, Paddy showed up at the restaurant and asked me to go to the movies with him that weekend, adding how they showed a romantic comedy he thought I wanted to see. I preferred action movies, which he knew, so I just stared at him. He looked so sweet, though, and when Annie chimed in that she’d cover the restaurant, I agreed.
And there I was, sitting in my kitchen with Lee and Gibson, who for some reason had decided to show up just before Paddy was supposed to pick me up.
“I’ll leave in a few minutes,” I said, heavy on the hinting that they should get up and leave.
“We know,” Gibson murmured with a smile.
“Okay,” I said and bugged my eyes out at Lee who grinned back at me.
What the hell was going on?
“You better open the door,” Gib said, and I blinked.
I hadn’t even heard the knock.
Paddy stood outside, and my insides melted into a puddle of goo. His hair wasn’t as long as when he was young, but he’d not combed it away from his face like he usually did, and it was long enough to curl a little. He was in a pair of old jeans with rips on his thighs and knees, and his old high school tee. And he held out a rose toward me.
“Stole this from Mrs. Baker,” he whispered.
“She won’t be happy,” I murmured and watched the pretty pink flower.
His elderly neighbor was the kindest creature on earth, though, so I didn’t think she’d scold him too badly.
“She said that if it was for you, she forgave me,” he shared and looked over my shoulder. “We'll go to the movies and then stop by the diner for a milkshake,” he said.
I turned slowly and looked at Gib and Lee who both tried their best to look solemn.
“Curfew at eleven,” Gibson said.
“And no kissing on the front porch,” Lee chimed in.
Oh, God. I got what he was doing then. He was taking me out on a date like he would have done if we’d been teenagers.
“Paddy…”
He stepped in closer and put a hand on my cheek.
“Come on, baby-girl. We have to go, or we won’t have time to get…” he leaned in and breathed into my ear, “Popcorn.”
I giggled. A stupid, girly giggle no woman of my age should ever produce, and I couldn’t have stopped it even if I tried. I felt his lips smile against my cheek but then he handed Lee the rose, took hold of my hand and pulled me down the steps. I turned and waved at Lee and Gibson who waved back with huge grins on their faces.
“Mommy and daddy had better not have sex on my couch,” I muttered, and Paddy burst out laughing.
We probably increased the average age with a couple of hundred years when we entered the small movie theater, and it was clearly a chick-flick because the testosterone level also went up significantly by Paddy's presence, but he didn't seem to notice and got us tickets and a big bucket of popcorn without letting go of my hand. We sat in the back row, and the calm stare he gave two boys and their dates made them move away, so we had several empty seats on both our sides.
The movie was probably okay. At least, the first two minutes were, but after that, we were making out, so I didn't watch. Paddy had his hand up my tee and his tongue in my mouth when a flashlight was suddenly in our faces.
“Paddy Callaghan,” the old janitor sighed. “I should have known it was you. Don’t think you’ll ever grow up, son, but your taste in girls has improved. Finally.”
Then he turned off the light and shuffled away. I had to press my face into Paddy’s shoulder to stifle my giggle. His chest shook, and I heard one of the boys further down the row murmur, “I totally wanna be him when I get old,” so I couldn’t hold my laughter back which made several voices shush us. God. It was just as if we were teenagers, except better because I knew what we’d do later, and we wouldn’t have to sneak around to do it.
After the movie, we walked to the diner, and my mouth dropped open. They were all there, wearing their school tee's and sipping milkshakes. Lee had her hair up in silly braids and had put on pale pink lipstick. It was completely ridiculous and so sweet my throat closed up.
“Let’s get you something to drink,” Paddy murmured, and I heard laughter in his voice. “And for the record, baby-girl… I did not ask them to be here in those get-ups.”
Annie sent Cal into the kitchen to make us milkshakes, which we didn’t have on the menu, and I turned to Joke.
“Tee looks a little tight,” I told him.
“Can't move my arms,” he muttered. “Had a bunch of them in a box. This was the only one that fit, and I'm afraid it's gonna tear over the shoulders.”
I patted his midriff and grinned up at him.
“Still no belly, and the ladies don’t complain about your muscles, honey.”
“This is true,” he said with a grin.
“I wish you had pictures from back then, Gib,” I heard Lee say.
“Do I look like a guy who glues shit into an album?”
He did in no way look like a man who had touched a scrapbook in his life, but I had been the kind of girl who did them.
“I do,” I said. “I can go and get some?”
“Annie!” Paddy called out and pointed at me when she ambled over with a look on her face I recognized from her teenage years.
“If you run over to my place and get one of my photo albums, I’ll make sure you get extra dessert when the weekend comes,” I said sweetly, and she grinned because this had been a frequent bribe as she grew up.
The album I’d asked her to bring was from the guys’ last year in high school, and I flipped it open, knowing what I wanted Lee to see first. I’d taken the picture in the diner, and they stood in a huddle by the counter, arms around each other and grinning like idiots.
“Huh,” Lee wheezed out hoarsely.
“Exactly,” I smirked.
“Babe?” Gibson asked with a frown.
“Yuh,” Lee said and turn
ed to stare at me. “Holy mother of God.”
They were still handsome, and in many ways more so now because of the calm confidence they'd all grown into, but back then, standing in a group like that… they had been magnificent.
“I know,” I said, and started flipping through the pages with her.
We grinned at the clothes, and a picture of a long-limbed teenager version of me together with my grandmother.
“Gibson,” I said with a finger on a close up of him.
We both turned toward Cal who was leaning on the counter, chatting with Annie. He raised his brows, which was what Gib had done in the photo and Lee started laughing.
“Eerie,” she murmured, and she wasn’t wrong.
They looked so much the same it could have been Cal in the picture. Gibson muttered something, but I knew what was on the next page, so I nudged Lee and turned the page.
There was only one image, and it was a photo I'd taken of Paddy. He'd been walking away but had turned when I called out and was laughing into the camera. His black hair almost reached his shoulders, and a lock of it had fallen over his forehead when he turned, so he used one of his hands to push it back.
Lee stared at the photo, then briefly at Paddy's back as he disappeared toward the restrooms, then at the picture again for a long time.
“I didn't get it,” she said and leaned in closer with eyes which were suddenly a little sad. “We wouldn't have been friends when we grew up,” she whispered into my ear.
“I know,” I said with a grin, knowing what she meant,
She would have wanted to do Paddy like everyone else.
“Flip the fucking page,” Gibson growled.
Lee started laughing and leaned back to kiss his jaw.
“It was just such a surprise to see Paddy with long black hair,” she chirped.
“Do I look stupid?” he muttered.
“Yeah,” Paddy said and sat down. “What are we looking at?”
“Photos of you,” I said and leaned into him. “Lee almost fainted.”
“It was just the hair,” Lee protested. “You looked good with long hair.”
“You letting it grow, Pad?” Joke asked, helping her cover up her slightly embarrassing reaction.
“Yeah,” he said. “Not sure how it’ll look now that it isn’t black anymore, though.”
He’d started going gray before he turned thirty, like his father and grandfather, and by now it was way more salt than pepper. It looked good on him, I thought, even if he’d kept it shorter ever since he cut it all off when Marybeth moved in.
“Pretty sure it’ll look fucking great,” Mac said sourly and moved a hand over his own head.
“That short-short thing you have looks good on you, honey,” Lee said. “Makes you look like those FBI agents in the movies.”
Five sets of male eyes turned to her, and a lot of brows went up.
“What FBI agents?” Joke asked slowly.
“In what movies?” Paddy added.
“Matt Damon,” she snapped. “Or that dude with the black eyes, and…”
She was searching for other examples, so I decided to help her.
“Ben Kingsley,” I said calmly.
Mac turned slowly toward me.
“Are you saying I look like Ben Kingsley?” he asked, clearly not happy with this comparison.
“Not really,” I said because he didn't, and since Mr. Kingsley wasn't exactly Mr. Hunkalicious, I could see why my words would make him unhappy. “Just saying he has no hair. And plays an FBI agent.”
“When the hell did he do that?”
“Oh, I don't know,” I snapped. “He's made a gazillion movies, so I'm sure he did in one of them.”
“Who’s Ben Kingsley?” Gibson asked.
Mac turned to look at him and said hoarsely, “The guy who played Gandhi.”
The guys tried, I had to give them that, but they also failed, and loud laughter echoed. Mac couldn’t hold his own grin back, and since he looked way more like a black-eyed and older version if the guy who played Thor rather than Gandhi, I was pretty sure he hadn’t been offended.
“It defies nature though,” Lee said when the laughter had died down. “Except for Mr. FBI agent here, you guys have a lot of hair.”
Jokes about testosterone levels and the quality of the water in Wilhelmine flew across the table as we kept flipping through the album, sharing our memories with Lee. When we’d reached the last page, I turned back to the image of Gibson, pulled it off the page and handed it to Lee.
“You should have at least one,” I said. “When he’s old and gnarly, you can look at this.”
Gib reached over the table to slap me gently at the back of my head, and I grinned at him. We spent another hour at the diner, laughing and joking about anything and everything. It didn’t feel like back in high school, mostly because when I’d been that age, they’d passed twenty and had moved on from milk-shake dates. We had fun, though, like we always did.
When we were back outside my door, Paddy backed me up against it and started to kiss me. His hands moved along my sides, and the kiss was hot, but when I fumbled behind my back for the door handle to get us inside, he stopped me.
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow when you’ve closed the diner. How about we go for a ride on the bike?”
I blinked. He wasn’t going to sleep with me?
“Paddy,” I said. “I had such a good time tonight, and I get what you’re doing, but you don’t have to. I’m a sure thing.”
His eyes darkened for a second, and I'd meant it as a joke, but I could tell that it had made him unhappy.
“Jenny,” he sighed. “If I ever treat you as a sure thing you need to slap me on the head.”
“You don’t have to –”
He gave me a squeeze to shut me up, so I stopped talking and kissed him back instead.
“I want to,” he murmured against my lips. “So, please let me.” He kissed me softly, and I felt his lips form a smile. “Not going to sleep with you tonight, Jenny. But I think we might hit third base later when I call you.”
Heat washed through me, and I had a full body shiver in anticipation of what would come.
“I can totally do that,” I murmured.
And I did. Totally.
***
“Are you still mad at me?” I asked quietly.
Joke and I were behind the diner, sitting on the steps to the back door and waiting for a delivery. We’d discovered years earlier that consolidating our food orders was cheaper, and only one of us had to be there to receive them so we could split the task between us. Today had been my turn, but he’d showed up anyway.
“A little,” he murmured. “You know how dad was, and you know how I felt about him being the biggest fucking dick in the county. I handled him, and I would have handled Martin.”
“That’s just it,” I protested. “I didn’t want you to have to handle it. You had enough of that shit, and I didn’t want you to have to deal with it.”
“I would not have minded one bit.”
“It wasn’t always bad, Joke. There were long stretches when nothing happened, and we weren’t a match made in heaven, but it wasn’t all bad.”
“Ah, Jen… To stay married because it wasn’t all bad? I never wanted that for you.”
“I ended it.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. I should have told you. I won’t ever hold something like that back from you again.”
He chuckled, and I turned to stare at him.
“If you think Paddy would ever hurt you, then you’re out of your mind.”
“What?”
“You’re gonna break up with Pad?” he asked, and I could tell by the smirk in his eyes that he knew the answer to his question.
“No,” I answered. “But he might break up with me. It’s not like he’s known for his long relationships.”
“Neither are you.”
I nodded to acknowledge the truth in this
and leaned my head on his broad shoulder. He tilted his head a little to rest it on mine, and we sat in silence for a while.
“Do you love him, Jen?” he suddenly asked quietly.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I do, and I think I always did.”
“You should tell him,” he murmured.
“Yeah, no. I’m not stupid,” I said. “Paddy is who he is, so he might end things with me if I do. I never expected us to end up where we are right now, but then he barged into my kitchen all worked up about some dumb comments he made to Doug Hanes. And I remembered how Lee dared to take a chance. Gibson steamrolled her into where they are right now, but he would have backed off if she told him to. She had the guts to take a chance on him, and they look good together, so I decided I wanted a little bit of what they have, even if it's just for a while.”
“Yeah,” he sighed.
“Don’t you want it? To meet someone?”
“Fuck, no,” he said. “Before Gib took one look at Lee and just fell right in fucking love, I didn’t even believe that kind of shit happened. It’s unbelievably rare, though, so I don’t expect it. And I won’t settle.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I settled, and that lasted ten years. Lee settled for longer. In the end, it led to nothing for either of us.”
“I’m good, sweetie,” he said. “I meet women when I feel like it, sleep with them when I feel like it. Have my bar, my friends. You. I’m not looking for anything else.”
“I know what you’re looking at,” I teased him.
“Don’t fucking go there.”
I started laughing, but I was certainly not going there. I knew from Lee exactly what they were up to, and he likely knew she talked about their activities with me, in carefully worded explanations. But I wasn’t ever going to discuss them with him.
“You should tell Paddy how you feel about him,” he repeated.
“Nope,” I grinned. “And you can’t tell him. I know you boys gossip worse than little girls, so you have to promise me you won’t.”
I glared at him until he gave me the promise I asked for, although he did it sourly, and added that he wasn’t a fucking idiot, which I knew.
“I’m good with what we have for as long as it lasts,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie.
