And every time I’d bumped into Edmond, he’d been friendly, respectful. Normal. Attractive in that Brooks Brothers kind of way.
Before last week, our interactions had been entirely platonic. Although I hadn’t missed the way his eyes had quickly flickered over my body. He was interested.
And he made that clear when I was buying coffee—the best in the continental United States—after school drop-off last week.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he joked as I almost ran into him and almost spilled scalding hot coffee over my chest.
“Yes, I would rather not have to visit the ER with third degree burns,” I replied, using a napkin to mop up the coffee that had escaped the lid.
“Well, how about we abandon the idea of scolding hot coffee and go for an ice-cold beer. Or wine, if you’re into that,” he offered with a smile.
It took me a moment to catch his meaning, and when I did, I prolonged my mopping up so I could have some more time to think. And so I didn’t have to look him in the eye.
He was asking me on a date. Me. The lawyer in the suit asking out the biker widow wearing leather and lace. That definitely sounded like the plot of a good romance novel. Our ‘meet cutes’ certainly fit the bill for that.
But my life sure as shit was not a romance novel, and these kinds of things didn’t work out that way. This lawyer in a suit would likely be getting visits from men in cuts if they caught wind of this interaction.
A certain biker in particular. One who had left my bed in the middle of the night last night. The reason I needed the extra-large, triple shot coffee I was drinking.
“Or not,” Edmond continued when I’d been silent a long time, making a ceremony of wiping coffee from the top of my cup. “I’m not going to be offended if you’re not interested or—”
“I’m interested,” I blurted out, not entirely of my own volition. “I’m a beer girl mostly, but I won’t turn down wine either. Though I’m not entirely sophisticated in my drinking habits, which horrifies some of my more cultured friends. And you definitely look like a guy who knows things about wine. So as long as you don’t judge me.”
A smile hooked his lips. “Judge you? Never. As long as you don’t judge the fact that I’m partial to a glass of rosé as opposed to whisky on the rocks or more masculine drink that is more masculine.”
I smiled back. Mine was mostly forced but that didn’t matter. “Okay, it’s a deal.”
“It’s a date,” he corrected.
I’d thought about cancelling about one hundred times since then. Especially since the night before the date another man had been inside me.
But I didn’t cancel. Precisely because of the man who had been inside me last night. It was meant to be just sex. It was meant to be the way I got my needs sated. No strings. Men did this all the time, got younger women, used them for sex and felt nothing.
But I was not a person who felt nothing. I was a woman who felt it all. Even before Ranger took my books from my arms all those years ago. My mother had tried to discipline it out of me, my emotional tendencies. Emotionality didn’t become a lady, apparently. But she’d failed. My marriage, my life had been full of all sorts of emotions. Pain. Joy. Love. Heartbreak. Fear. Rage. The feelings weren’t always good, but never had I gone a moment without being consumed by feelings.
After losing Ranger, something broke in me. It had needed to. As a sensitive person, I wouldn’t have been able to survive if I’d actually let myself feel all of my grief and pain. It would have destroyed me. So my body and mind worked together, entering survival mode. Dulling down the edges of my feelings. It still hurt, of course. I’d have to be dead not to feel this pain, but everything was muted.
Hence me making the decision to take Kace to bed. Yes, I was still fooling myself into thinking that had been a conscious decision within my control. I had figured that with my heart so broken, my insides so torn and gnarled, that there’d be no way my soul would ever let me feel anything again.
But something was growing. In the rotten soil of my heart. And the best way to kill it was to go on this date. Not ending things with Kace, no. But I couldn’t get too wrapped up in him. So the date was my plan.
“You sure you’re okay to babysit?” I asked Mia, walking into the room, fastening my earrings at the same time.
Her eyes were glued to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The kids were in their respective rooms doing their homework, as asked, like aliens had come in and invaded their bodies.