Well, hell.
If a little yarn was good, then a lot of yarn was probably better, I thought. I plucked a big skein of black from the rack, then followed her instructions to find the right needles. By the time I was ready to check out, I had a few different colors, and all kinds of fantasies bubbling in my Itch (and lust) addled brain about the things I was going to make. How I would impress this fly-by-night knitting goddess if I ever chanced to meet her again. Seduce her with…a dashing turtleneck sweater? A skillful pair of socks?
Right, I scoffed to myself. Like you’ll ever run into her again in a city as big as Seattle.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my craft store savior for the rest of the day—not during the drive back to my tattoo shop, not while I finished tattooing a full back piece on a client and definitely not while I was sketching later—instead of the art deco mermaid I was supposed to be drawing, I doodled the way the loose strands of hair brushed along the curve of her neck, the graceful line of her jaw, the roundness of her breast under the thin cardigan.
And she still hung in the back of my tired brain as I drove home to my condo a couple of miles away.
My house was nice enough, I supposed—for a bland bachelor’s condo, anyway. I spruced the place up with some of my paintings, a few other pieces of local artwork, some decent furniture—but it would always be what it was. An air-conditioned warehouse for a single guy.
Coming home tonight, the emptiness hit me especially hard, the kind of unbearable quiet that would have had me reaching for the vodka bottle a few years ago, just to dampen the silence. But my sober self, the guy who had done the work and faced his demons—I just flopped onto the couch and sighed. Let myself feel it. Thought about what was really bugging me.
Maybe the woman at the craft store was a sign that I was lonely, I mused. With Frankie and Nick both paired off and disgustingly happy, I found myself thinking more and more about finding something for myself. The kind of thing I avoided early in recovery, when I felt too fragile and unsteady to give too much of myself to others because I just wasn’t healthy enough to do so.
I wish I’d gotten her number, I thought, and as images of my goddess drifted through my mind, my body pulsed with the kind of desire I hadn’t felt in too long. Resting my head against the back of the sofa, I unzipped the fly of my jeans and drew my already erect dick out. I closed my eyes and stroked my thickening flesh in my palm as I pictured her lush ass as she’d bent over in the store, the sexy curve of her waist, those soft, full lips I’d pay a million bucks to feel wrapped so seductively around my stiff, aching cock.
Nope,I thought as the dizzying pleasure tightened in the center of my body and my orgasm barreled through me. With a long, low groan, while imagining her soft green eyes looking up at me as she sucked me off, I came hard—hard enough that my legs shook, even though I was seated.
That woman wasn’t a sign. It was her specifically.
I’d find her again somehow, I decided. I had to. Even if I had to camp out at the fucking craft store until she showed up again.
* * *
“I’m here for the knitting class?”
The senior center’s front desk worker, a middle-aged volunteer, canted her head and looked at me with a confused expression, saying nothing.
“The…knitting…class?” I repeated nervously. My fingers worried at the plastic bag containing my hard-won yarn and needles. “Has it been canceled or something?”
Finally, she shook her head. “Nope, just in that room over there.” She gestured down the hall. “I…ah, enjoy your class, sir.”
I nodded and smiled. “Thanks. I think I will.”
And I fully planned to, even though for the last twenty-four hours, the Itch had been competing for my brain space with another subject—my curvy, anonymous craft store savior, she of the blonde hair and bright green eyes, and the star of not one, but two highly entertaining sexual fantasies since our chance meeting the day before.
Who knew that a helpful gesture from a stranger in a craft store could be so incredibly compelling?
The classroom was full to bursting with people, and just like I predicted, I was the youngest by a good forty years. This was a popular offering, it seemed, and all of these people knew each other. Usually I was a pretty self-assured guy—a perk of my hard-won sobriety—but I felt something unfamiliar to me. At least these days, as a thirty-two-year-old man and a business owner.
I felt…hesitant. Self-conscious.
Interesting.
“Come sit with us, kiddo,” a soft, scratchy voice called out from a nearby table.
I turned to see two women—one with obvious dyed-black hair, the other sporting a fluffy cloud of white, smiling and gesturing for me to come over and join them.
I shook off my uncertainty and headed in their direction. “Thanks,” I said as I slid into one of the plastic chairs and set my bag of supplies on the table. “It’s my first night.”
“Oh, we know,” the dark-haired one said, peering at me from above her rhinestone rimmed readers. “We’d remember you.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Fumiko.”
I shook the soft, fragile-feeling hand, then turned to her friend, gently taking her outstretched hand as well. “I’m Ian.”
The white-haired woman gave me a soft, grandmotherly smile. “I’m Anita. It’s lovely to meet you, Ian. We were just talking about—”
“Your tattoos,” Fumiko cut in, her gaze shifting to the sleeve of artwork on my arm. “And wondering what your mother thinks.”