“Mom, you know how I am about dating. It was dinner and sex. No biggie.”
Cynthia sighed, too used to her daughter’s skewed thinking to react to it with anything other than hope-dashed dismay. “I know. But I’m your mother. I can hope, right?”
Gina’s head fell back onto the pillow, making her voice muffled once again. “Yeah, mom.”
“So, are you gonna see him again?”
“Ma! You know the rules!”
“Yes, yes, I know your silly rules. Damn! I had hoped he would be different,” her mother muttered. Gina wasn’t even sure she’d heard her correctly.
“What?”
“Nothing. Alright, doll face. I’ll talk to you later. Bye!”
Gina shut the phone off and buried her head beneath her pillow.
A few towns over, Cynthia hung up her phone, then immediately turned it back on and called Dolores. Her friend picked up on the first ring, waiting for her call.
“Well?” Dolores asked, hope evident in her tone.
“The plan’s not working! Gina was as cavalier as always about their date.” Cynthia was nearing panic mode.
Dolores, ever cool and practical, calmed her friend. “Relax, Cindy. It’s only the first date. We can’t expect them to love each other overnight.” When Cynthia took a few calming breaths and agreed, Dolores said, “Now, I’ll wait a couple days, then I’ll call him.”
“A couple days? But-”
Dolores smoothly talked over her friend. “I’ve got to let him think he’s forgotten her. Then when I call, it’ll put her right up front in his mind again.”
Cynthia saw the ingenuity of it, and giggled. “Okay. Call me.”
The rest of the weekend passed quietly for Aaron. He didn’t do much of anything, though Fisher came over for the baseball game Saturday night. Feeling it was his duty as a best friend and fellow guy, Aaron was upfront about his non-relationship relationship with Gina, though Fisher didn’t appear to be too surprised or upset by the fact.
Knowing that his friend wasn’t angry with him for stealing away what Fisher had thought was a possible love interest, he shared the details of Friday’s date, leaving out only the most crude.
“Dude, right up against her door?!” Fisher exclaimed.
“Yeah. It was wild. Never before in my life have I had sex that spectacular.”
“Really?” Fisher was clearly surprised. But then, he was about the only other person on the planet who knew Aaron’s track record with women.
“Yep. She was pretty great.”
“Dude, you are my idol,” Fisher said, punching Aaron’s shoulder.
Aaron shook his head at Fisher’s words, uncomfortable with the praise, but he grinned.
True to the rules of serial one-night-stander’s, if he happened to see Gina in the hall or outside the building, he pretended he didn’t really know her. He didn’t stop and engage her in conversation, but simply said hello or gave her a flirty grin as he might have if they had only just met. Which, basically, they had.
But he didn’t dwell on their time together, other than that ten minute relay to Fisher. And by Tuesday, he’d pretty much put it out of his mind completely. After all, she wasn’t the only thing he had to think about, what with work and still unpacking his belongings.
So when his mom called him on Tuesday night, he wasn’t expecting her to ask about his date with Gina. Especially since he’d seen his mother on Sunday at his sister’s for dinner, and she hadn’t mentioned it then.
“Hey, mom.”
“Hi, honey. Hey, I was just calling to ask about your date Friday. I forgot to ask you on Sunday, what with the grandkids there and all.”
It was true, Aaron thought, that if her grandchildren were around, Dolores Davison barely remembered she had children.
“Uh…” He’d let Friday disappear into the back recesses of his mind, since it was only allowed to be a one-time thing. Forcing it forward now was probably not a good thing. But since his mother had asked, Aaron tried. “It was fine. Thanks for the suggestion.”
“That’s it?” his mother asked.
“What?”
“That’s all you have to say? It was fine?”
“What did you expect, mom?”
“I don’t know. Better than fine.” Then she mumbled, “I just hoped she’d be different.”
Distracted by the football game he was watching, Aaron hadn’t quite heard her. Or, he didn’t think he had, because what he’d heard didn’t make any sense. “What?”
Dolores sighed. “Nothing. Are you gonna see her again?”
Hedging, he said, “It doesn’t always work that way, mom.”
“Yeah, but if you both know the rules, it can’t hurt. Especially if you… enjoyed each other’s company. Right?”
Aaron was uncomfortable talking about sex with his mother, despite being thirty and fully aware that she was fully aware that he had sex regularly. “Ma…”
“I’m just saying.”
“Yeah, alright,” he said, eager to let it go.
“I gotta go, honey. I’ll talk to you later.”
Dolores hung up and dialed Cynthia’s number. “The wheels have been set in motion,” she said as soon as her friend answered. Then they both started to laugh, pleased with themselves and their plan.
By Thursday, Aaron could have happily killed his mother for mentioning Gina to him. He’d been well on his way to putting their night together out of his mind, which was exactly what he was supposed have done. But one call from his mother, and he couldn’t stop thinking about his neighbor. About the way she’d moaned for him, her soft thighs against his hips, her tongue stroking his.
“Dammit!” he said out loud, pushing to his feet from his desk and pacing his home office. He was not supposed to be thinking about her, or what she might be doing, or considering going over there to ask her out again. He knew the rules.
But, damn it, he was gonna break them, he thought with more than a little self-directed fury. But it didn’t have to be catastrophic. He could ask her to dinner again, no big deal. And keep it at dinner this time, so that he wasn’t actually breaking the rule, but starting a whole separate relationship with her, as a neighbor and possible friend.
Since that made as much sense as he figured he was gonna get, he stalked through his apartment and wrenched open his door, leaving it open as he crossed the hall in bare feet. Before he could change his mind, he lifted his fist and knocked, perhaps harder than he’d intended in his determination.
He hoped he hadn’t frightened her by slamming on the door, but the smile she gave him when she opened it in a white tank top and cotton pants told him if he had, she wasn’t afraid now.
“Hi!” she said happily, her ponytail swinging behind her. With her almost frumpy clothes and her mellow hairstyle, she shouldn’t have turned him on, but she was just cute enough in her pajamas to spark thoughts of bedtime.
With a faint smile, he said, “Why am I constantly catching you in your pajamas?”
Her own smile broadened. “I’m a very lazy person. I’d rather wear my pajamas than anything else.”
“So, you basically roll out of bed in the morning dressed for your day?”
“No. I have to get dressed first, even if I’m just staying in.”
“Ah. So you change them in the morning when you get up, not at night before you go to bed?”
She shook her head, a twinkle in her eye. “I sleep naked.”
His breath huffed out as images from Friday night swirled through his brain. He hadn’t seen much because it had been so dark in her apartment, but what he had seen, mixed with the images his hands had given him as he’d streaked them over her body, was plenty for him to know how sexy she was naked.
Determined to ignore that and not make a bigger fool of himself, he said, “Look, I know it’s against the rules and all, but my mom asked me to see if you wanted to go to dinner again.” Which wasn’t completely true, but she didn’t know that.
Gina
lifted a slightly skeptical brow. “Dinner? Or… after?”
He hadn’t meant to, but he shrugged. “Dinner. And… after. If it’s what you want,” he added quickly.
She regarded him for a minute, then smiled sexily. “What do you say we skip dinner, for right now?” Then she grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him inside.
A little while later, as Aaron was dressing, he felt guilt squirrel through him over what had happened. He’d honestly meant to come over here and ask her only to dinner, to prove they could be friends without the sex getting in the way. To cover his ass, he said quietly, “About dinner…”
Gina’s eyebrows lifted in mild surprise from where she stood near the couch, pulling her pajama pants back on. “Really?”
“Yeah. My mom, you know?”
She nodded in agreement, because she did know. She had a mother of her own, who was very similar to his. “Okay. But let me pay this time. It’s not fair if you have to keep paying to keep our mothers happy.”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”
She nodded. “When?”
“Tomorrow’s Friday. Seven again?” he asked as he headed for the door.
She nodded again, watching him leave from behind the couch. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Like clockwork, he knocked on her door at seven. Because she knew it was him, she didn’t bother looking through the peephole, but pulled the door open, then burst out laughing. “How is this possible?” she asked, indicating their clothes with her hands.
He grinned. “I don’t know. It’s like our brains are wired the same.”
They’d both put on blue jeans- his dark, hers light- and a nice shirt, his in black and hers in teal. They looked dressy casual, as if they’d planned their location, ready for anything from fast food to honky-tonking to five-star cuisine.
She locked up, and they headed outside and around back where they parked their cars. She saw him heading for his SUV again, and called him loudly. “Hey!” she said with a smile. “I’m buying, I’m driving.”
“Okay,” he said with a shrug, returning her smile.
They ended up at a retro diner, outfitted in classic 50’s fashion, with records on the walls and red vinyl booths. They laughed over milkshakes and cheeseburgers, neither concerned with what later might bring because of what had happened the day before. Like they’d gotten it out of their systems or something.
They were still laughing when they got back home, Gina regaling him with tales of video game mistakes that were often erotic in nature.
Once they hit the landing, Aaron said, “Do you want to come in for a drink?” He knew he shouldn’t- those pesky rules again- but he was having too much fun. And who knew? Maybe they could be friends and not worry about what had already happened between them.
He expected her to decline, tell him he wasn’t following the code, and go inside her own apartment, but she smiled sweetly and nodded. “Yeah.”
Once inside he put a music channel on the TV, something mellow and jazzy that could easily be talked over, then made her a cosmopolitan and himself a rum and coke.
She took a drink and shivered, then took another. “I can always tell it’s a good drink if the first taste gives me chills. You’re a good bartender.”
“Thanks. Tended bar in college, once I was old enough.”
She nodded, interested in his past. Admittedly more than she should have been. But she sat and drank her cosmo, and another, listening avidly to his tales of foolish things people had done while drunk under his watch.
After nearly an hour, she was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. He laughed quietly, smiling at her from across the couch. When she sobered enough to notice, she saw his eyes were dark, nearly black, and his facial features were very tense as he looked at her.
She instantly recognized the look, and gave him a barely perceptible nod. Rising, he offered her his hand. When she placed hers into it, he helped her to her feet and pulled her close. “Let’s do it slow this time,” he muttered, then brushed his lips so softly against hers.
She wasn’t sure why it was different. All the parts had worked the same way, with the same end result. But when Gina let herself out of his apartment a long while later, she couldn’t help thinking that it had been different. Something seemed to have… changed between them.
“No!” she told herself firmly as she unlocked her own door and went in. “It was the same. It was just sex, just like always. Just because the tempo slowed down doesn’t mean it’s anything other than that.”
But as she showered and readied herself for bed, she couldn’t help recalling how he’d touched her, so gently, or how he’d reverently kissed her as he slid slowly inside her. Some people, she knew, used a different term for what they’d done. Lovemaking. She was startled to discover that just the thought of it scared her more than anything else she’d ever had to face in her life.
Chapter Five
The woman was driving her nuts, Gina thought on Saturday morning, when once again her phone was ringing at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m. She was positive it was her mother. No one else would dare to call so early on a day that Gina considered sacrosanct.
It had taken her hours to fall asleep last night after her terrifying revelation that sex with Aaron had taken a possibly emotional turn. She’d tried every way she could to downplay it, or even terminate the thought all together. But their was no denying that they had gotten very close in a short amount of time, that they had a lot in common, and that the sex was mind-blowing enough to have made her forget all her rules and see him more than once. For someone as strict about this as she was, it was confusing, bordering on upsetting.
And now her mother was making things worse by waking her up once again, no doubt curious about a date Gina was sure she hadn’t even mentioned to her mother. Which meant Dolores had told her, which in turn meant Aaron had told Dolores. Her only pleasant thought at that moment was that Aaron’s mother might be waking him, too.
Gina glared at the phone on her nightstand, considering letting the machine get it so she could go back to sleep. But she knew her mother would only call back. Or, worse, much worse, Cynthia would assume that Gina was still in Aaron’s bed, and her mother- knowing that was a big red flag for Gina- would think they were a couple, and call his mother, who might call him, and… Blowing out her breath through her lips, Gina grabbed the phone on the fourth ring.
“What?”
If Gina was terse, Cynthia was willing to overlook it. She jumped right in with, “Well?”
Gina didn’t even try to play dumb. “It was just dinner, mom.” She rubbed one eye with her knuckle.
“Really? Damn!”
Something had Gina’s sleepy brain picking up the undertones of what her mother was saying. Slowly, unsure why she was suddenly so concerned, Gina asked, “Why do you care so much?”
Cynthia made a faint sound, which might have been a startled gasp, or an annoyed grumble. “Eh… I want you to be happy, darling.”
Gina wasn’t buying it. “Mom,” she said warningly.
“Oh, stop it! I’m your mother. I can hope that this guy is different. You’re my only child. If you don’t have kids, I get no grandchildren.” She ended her mini tirade on a huff of breath.
Gina was smart enough to be contrite. “Okay, mom.”
A few minutes after that Cynthia rushed off the phone, though Gina had tried to chat with her about work and anything that wasn’t Aaron. Finally she gave up, wishing her mother a good day and smiling humorlessly when her mother grumbled about the impossibilities of that when her only child was so selfish.
After hanging up, Gina dropped her face into her pillow and groaned loudly. Then, knowing there would be no more sleep and promising herself a nap around lunchtime, she climbed out of bed and changed into her jogging clothes.
Cynthia wasted no time calling Dolores when Gina let her go. She loved her daughter more than anything, but right now she wanted her child happily married and s
tarting a family, and nothing could distract her.
As soon as Dolores answered, Cynthia said, “Nothing!”
Dolores was quiet for a moment, probably trying to figure out what Cynthia was talking about. Then she said calmly, “Give them time. It’ll happen.”
Cynthia took comfort in Dolores’ confident tone, and tried to see the wisdom in her words. “Okay, but…”
Dolores chuckled. “Patience, my friend. They’ve only known each other less than two weeks. People rarely fall in love that fast, especially people as stubborn about love as our children.”
Cynthia breathed deeply. “You’re right, of course. I’m just so sure that they’re perfect for each other, and it’s frustrating that they can’t see that themselves.”
“I know. But we both know how foolish young people can be. A couple days and I’ll call him. Mark my words, we’ll be planning a wedding in no time.”
The time between the end of his second date with Gina and his mother’s phone call during his lunch break on Tuesday passed awkwardly for Aaron. There were moments when he’d be sitting at his computer desk or watching TV, then glance at the clock and realize he’d lost ten minutes of time thinking about Gina. Then there were other moments when he’d be sitting in his apartment, wishing for the next moment to come on the chance that he might hear her moving around next door, or be in his cubicle at work wishing the time would go faster until he could go home so that he might run into her in the hall.
Something was wrong with him, he thought now, sitting at his desk with his lunch sprawled before him. And it wasn’t the first time he’d thought that in the last three days. If only he knew if she was thinking about him like he was thinking about her. Then he’d know that everything was okay.
Because Gina was stronger than he was. She was better at the sex-only game. He’d thought before meeting her that he was good at it. But she took it to a whole new level. She was fire-and-ice personified. Smokin’ hot, then arctic cold. She could have a screaming orgasm one minute, and be kicking him out the door the next.
Friends with Benefits Page 3
