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“Imagine if you married me.” He sat on the couch with me, keeping a
respectful but crossable distance between us.
“Imagine if it was the nineteen-fifties,” I said. “You come home every
night at ten from a hard day running the world, expecting your slippers right
at the door and the ironing board put away. Dinner hot. Wife in full
makeup—”
“That’s not—”
“Ready to get on her back and spread her legs at the drop of a hat.”
“Okay.” He stopped me, hand up. “That, I won’t deny.”
“Knew it!”
“But she’d be the one dropping hats.”
“Oh, really?”
“Totally worth her while, and not just on her back. On her knees, or
facing down on the bed with her feet wide on the floor. My wife’s gonna be
ass up begging for it. She’ll wait all day, soaking her panties until I come
upstairs to give her everything she wants for as long as she wants it.”
A knot the consistency of oil paint gathered in my throat when he
started, growing into a sticky, unswallowable lump as if every bit of liquid
from my mouth had pit stopped there on the way to the throb between my
legs.
Oh, hell no he wasn’t talking like that for a year.
“Those are big promises,” I said, voice cracking when the knot broke.
He shrugged. “I only promise what I can deliver.”
“To your one-day-real wife.”
“Who may or may not have my slippers at the door.”
And that was the rub, wasn’t it? He was shameless in his needs.
Everyone close to him must have known what he was looking for in a mate,
and every one of them would know I wasn’t anything close to his dream
girl.
“No,” I said. “We’ll never sell it. I have friends too. They know I want
what my parents had. Same as you. If your side doesn’t blow it, mine will
and we’ll be caught.”
His laugh was so deep and authentic, I froze with my tea getting cold
against my palms. How could he miss what getting caught would do to his
name? I was damn sure of what it would do to my father’s.
“What’s so funny?” I twisted to face him, swinging a pillow that he
caught and tucked behind him when he faced me.