Which explained my outburst with Ty and the fact that I had called him by another man’s name.
“Yeah. So, anyway, I blew up at him and yelled, and then I accidently called him John.”
Lincoln gasped. “Yikes.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t realized I did until he said something. Then he got all sweet on me, and nice, and he looked like he was going to kiss me, and then he did what he always does. He pushed me away and headed downstairs to leave. I stopped him and asked him to stay. He said he wasn’t any good for me, that he was fucked up. I responded in a way that might have been careless.”
Her brow rose and she picked up her tea. Before she took a drink, she said, “Keep going.”
“Well, I sort of stood in front of the door and started to take my clothes off.”
Lincoln coughed. Then hit her chest a few times. “You took your clothes off!”
I leaned in and shot her a warning look. “Why don’t you stand on the chair and yell it a little louder? The people in the back didn’t hear you.” I looked around the coffee shop; no one appeared to have heard my loudmouthed friend. Everyone was buried in their computers or phones.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she whispered.
“It was the only thing I could think of doing. So yes, I threw myself at him. Of course, Ty being a man, all his senses went right out the door, and he kissed the living shit out of me. Let me just pause here to say the man can kiss. Like, whoa, he can kiss.”
Lincoln smiled.
“Then he informed me that he wasn’t good enough for me, or some bullshit like that. He warned me that he wasn’t looking for a relationship.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“It didn’t me, either. He said if I was looking for something more than just a night of sex, he wasn’t the guy.”
“And you obviously told him you were fine with that, I’m assuming. Since, you know, you guys did the deed.”
“We did more than the deed, Lincoln. The man made me come eight times. Eight! He has some weird fetish about odd numbers.”
Lincoln seemed confused, but her look was quickly replaced with shock as she leaned across the table and whispered, “Wait, you had eight orgasms?”
I leaned in closer so I could whisper back, “Over the course of the afternoon and night. Yes! The man is good, I’m telling you. I don’t think his dick went down all night.”
Giggling, Lincoln covered her mouth and looked around the coffee shop again. Then she focused back on me. “Wow. Okay, so it’s pretty damn clear the two of you have been wanting that for some time.”
I nodded. “He said he hadn’t been with a woman since last year. Spring, or something like that.”
Lincoln narrowed her brows and thought for a moment. “Probably that woman he hooked up with in Billings.”
“What woman?” I asked, surprised by this bit of information.
Lincoln froze.
“You knew he hooked up with someone and didn’t tell me, Lincoln?”
“Would telling you have made you feel good about it at the time?”
“No.”
She waved her hands in front of me. “Well, okay then, there you go.”
I dropped back against the chair and let out a groan. “Oh, God, Lincoln. I’m in so much trouble.”
“Because you’re not okay with the one-night-only thing, are you?”
I shook my head. “I’m so far from okay with that. I think at some point last night, when he whispered how amazing it felt being inside me, or the way he made love, or when he told me how beautiful I was when I came and it took his breath away . . . yeah . . . I might have fallen in love with him. Or maybe I already was in love with him and hadn’t wanted to admit it.”
Lincoln reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Oh, sweetie.”
My eyes closed, and I forced myself not to cry. I had agreed to Ty’s conditions, but I had done so because I’d wanted him so desperately. Needed him. It had clearly clouded my better judgment.
“Does this have anything to do with yesterday being the anniversary?”
“No!” I said, opening my eyes and looking at Lincoln. “I mean, the anniversary always makes me feel sad, but I wasn’t trying to sleep with Ty to make things better. Okay, that’s a lie, maybe I was . . . but not about John. I needed him, and I was tired of us always fighting, and I saw it in his eyes how much he wanted me too. And last month, we messed around on the sofa for, like, three minutes before we got interrupted, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. How close we had almost come to sleeping together that morning. I’ve been going insane thinking about it.”