Caleb
Idon’tsleep.
How could I, after royally screwing up whatever that had been last night on the front porch?
“…the moment you use your brain, you get it all, entirely wrong!”
Those words have been playing in my head over and again like a broken record. They keep me up most of the night. They echo on the tile while I shower the next morning. They follow me into the kitchen where a happy little note from Lizzie had been stuck to the fridge.
Went to work early. L.
No sign-off. No feminine little kiss at the end. Even strangers got little ‘x’s from women. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve definitely pissed her off.
And for what?
Because I’d been arrogant enough that, because she’s a woman, her actions had to be prompted by sentiment?
“I’m a healthy woman who enjoys sex… I kissed you because I wanted to… Because I find you sexy as all hell.”
Congratulations, Walker. You cock-blocked yourself.
That had to be a new level of hermitting.
I’d had an absolutely stunning woman living in my home and looking for supposedly no-strings-attached sex. And I’d managed to tweak her pretty nose so far out of joint that she’d rather walk into town in the fall cold than spend twenty minutes in a car with me.
And Jace wonders why I’m single.
Jace!
Like a little beacon of hope, I recall every infuriating sign of affinity between Jace and Lizzie. The little looks and smiles I’ve spotted when picking her up from work. The jokes they’ve openly shared across the garage forecourt.
The two of them have become close since Lizzie arrived in town. Friends even. Whatever the label, they’re certainly on higher ground than I am right now.
Not hard to be when you handle a make-out session like a therapy appointment, Walker.
But Jace knows Lizzie. And he knows women in general. He understands how to tame the wildest or angriest of women and generally schmooze his way into the good graces of any female he encounters from the ages of nine to ninety. He’d been able to since high school.
And while the idea of going to the manwhore for advice is like acid on my tongue, Lizzie isn’t due to exchange contracts on her house for another few days. And it’s going to take weeks to make the Jessop house liveable.
Living with the woman in uncomfortable silence for that long is definitely a greater evil than swallowing my pride in front of Jace.
Unnecessary as it is, I decide to take a second shower, this time scrubbing some resilience and resolution into my skin. I get dressed. Pull my boots on with more determination than most mornings and stomp my way unhappily to the truck.
The lesser of two evils…I repeat to myself. The lesser of two evils. And the answer to a better connection between Lizzie and me.
A connection.
Something deep inside is warning me against calling it a ‘relationship’.
I cuss at myself as I kick the truck into life. One problem at a time.
First, I need to repair some of the damage that has turned the atmosphere of my home into an arctic winter.
Then I can worry about the rest of it.
Because in all my musings, and thinking about last night, I avoided one thing… the kiss that should have never been. The kiss that I suspect is going to haunt me for damn near eternity.
“And we are skulking because…?” A disembodied voice comes from the other side of the Ford. A moment later and Jace appears around its hood, rag in hand and fingers twisted in its length. Half of them are still smeared with grease.