Want anything from Starbucks?
The text from Mia pops up as I’m standing at my kitchen counter, browsing some news Web sites on my phone with a mug of steaming, fragrant coffee in my hand. Breakfast was an energy bar and a banana, which I downed in as many bites as I have fingers to count them.
It’s Friday morning, my watch shows six fifteen, and I’m waiting for Mia to come pick me up so we can get started on our seven-hour drive to her parents’ house for her grandmother’s birthday party tonight.
No, thanks, I message her back.
My phone buzzes as her reply arrives: Ok be there in ten.
I take another sip of my black coffee, the liquid washing bitter and hot over my tongue and leaving a burning trail down my throat. With almost a whole week of day shifts behind me, my body clock has finally adjusted back to what feels like a more natural rhythm. I’ve always been a morning person. So I’m feeling pretty good today, despite work last night running long.
It’s probably because I’ve been good about taking care of myself the past couple of weeks. Getting enough sleep, plenty of exercise, and, since spending more time with Mia, I’ve been eating better. She’s a great cook, the kind who seems to genuinely enjoy making food for other people. Even though it’s questionable if she should be allowed to use big kitchen knives.
And yeah, I’ve been getting laid. A lot. As in almost every day, which is impressive considering our conflicting schedules. It kind of feels like we’re making up for lost time…but it’s more than that.
The truth is, I can’t get enough of her. She’s the first thing I think about in the morning. Whenever I have a second of downtime during the day, my thoughts drift to her. And when I go to sleep, it’s with visions of her in my mind.
I still feel like I’m doing this against my better judgment, though. This new dimension to my relationship with Mia is like an addiction—a comparison that doesn’t sit well. I’ve spent the past ten years of my life making damn sure I’m always doing the right thing, the responsible thing, while also not allowing anyone else to derail me from my goals.
And that’s been pretty easy to do. Until now. I apparently don’t have the strength to stop myself, even though I know exactly why I shouldn’t be having sex with Mia.
It’s because I’ll never be able to just think of her as my friend with benefits. She means too much to me.
It’s because the last thing I need these final two years before I’m ready to move on with my career is entanglements that’ll make it more difficult to go. Leaving my best friend will be hard enough already.
It’s because there’s so much she doesn’t know about me and my past, and I can’t stomach the thought of telling her any of it.
But despite all of that, I guess we’ve reached a kind of compromise. She’s been respecting my rules, not saying a word about them even though I know she thinks they’re stupid. And I’ve been trying not to worry and just roll with things.
It’s all good.
Yup.
Swallowing the rest of my coffee, I rinse out the mug and leave it in the sink. Then I stuff my phone and my wallet in my pockets, grab my duffel and my suit bag from where I left them by the door, and head outside. The air is mild and crisp, birds are chirping, and the sprinklers are swishing and sputtering.
Her MINI pulls up to the curb just as I walk down the driveway. Its tailgate pops open first, then the driver-side door, and I see Mia scooting her seat back.
Which means she’s adjusting it for my longer legs. Which means she’s expecting me to drive.
“You’re driving first,” she says as she jumps out of the idling car, as if that’s not obvious already.
“Excuse me?” I stop right in front of where she’s standing with a hand resting on the open door, her white-and-green cup of coffee in the other. Quiet music is coming from the speakers inside the car. She’s wearing dark capri leggings with bright-red Chucks and a denim jacket over a plain white tee. Her wavy hair is up in a messy ponytail, her eyes hidden behind her aviator sunglasses.
I really want to kiss her. She’d taste like creamy coffee. Probably with a hint of caramel.
“I’m exhausted,” she explains, taking a sip of her drink. “I don’t function before seven a.m.”
“‘Can you please drive the first leg, Jay?’” I say while walking to the back of the car to throw my bags in on top of the folded-down seats. “See? It’s not hard to ask nicely.”
She brushes past me just as I push the tailgate closed. “Okay, how about this? I’m so tired it’s not safe for me to be driving right now, so you need to do it.”
I let out a snort. “It’s never safe for you to be driving.”
“Right.” She makes a face at me over the roof of the car. “So you’re doing the world a favor, making it a better and safer place. That’s your thing, right?”
With a shake of my head, I reply, “Let’s go.”
We get in the car. I start adjusting the mirrors, and Mia sets her coffee down in her cup holder. On my side there’s a large, unopened bottle of water. Guess she got me something from Starbucks after all, which was thoughtful of her. Here’s some water for you, Jay. Now drive me to San Francisco.
As I turn the AC vents so they’ll hit me—it’s not warm in here, but I like having air blowing on my face when I’m in a car—I notice from the corner of my eye that she’s tapping around on the Internet radio app on her phone. She’s picking a station called Today’s Hits.
“Nope.” I snatch the phone out of her hand.
“Hey!” Lunging, she tries to grab the phone back, but I switch it to my left hand, out of her reach. I’m kind of hoping she’ll decide to crawl on top of me. Doesn’t mean she’ll get the phone, but it’ll be fun to have her try.
Sadly, she gives up.
“Driver gets to pick the music,” I tell her.
A noise of disgust comes from her throat. “Since when?”
“Since you apparently invited me along on this trip to be your personal chauffeur.” I scroll through the list of stations, almost choosing some kind of modern alternative. She might not mind that too much, though, so I type in “Grunge” instead. Just to annoy her.
A distorted guitar intro bleeds out of the speakers, and I turn it up before reaching for my seat belt. Making sure Mia is wearing hers, I put the car in Drive and hit the gas pedal.
Swiveling the steering wheel and heading out of the parking lot, I make a quick mental comparison of the different routes to get to the freeway. It’s early enough that we should beat the absolute worst of rush hour, and being able to use the carpool lane will help a lot, but I’m still in kind of a hurry. If we get stuck in morning traffic, it’s going to be a long damn drive.
“If I have to listen to that depressing music of yours, I’m probably gonna fall asleep,” she warns me as I’m slowing down for a red light.
“So go to sleep then. I’ll deal.”
She doesn’t answer, instead picking up her phone to start tapping and swiping away. The light turns green, and then we’re moving again. The few times I’ve driven her car, I’ve been surprised at how zippy it is. It accelerates well and handles like a go-cart. When she was buying it, I kind of hoped she’d pick the other MINI Cooper they had on the lot, the base model with the smallest engine, but she decided she could afford this one.
So this is the one she got. And I get to have an anxiety attack at work every time paramedics call in a Code 3 and it’s a young female crash victim.
It’s not that Mia is a bad driver. She’s not—though she’s quick to defend herself by pointing out that she’s never been in an accident, which to me is like saying there’s nothing wrong with smoking because you’ve never had cancer. No, the problem is she’s an aggressive driver. In her world, a yellow light means punch it, turn signals are for sissies, and speed limits are mere guidelines.
As I’m making the slight turn onto the freeway on-ramp, Mia asks me about my shift yesterday, and I share the most interesting parts, including the wanted-to-says, of which there were several. We talk about that for a while, and then she goes back to looking at her phone while I follow the thankfully steady flow of traffic.
At least this part of our relationship hasn’t changed. Talking about work is something we do a lot, I realize, but it’s not usually something we get emotional over. The toddler drowning case got to me, yeah, which happens now and then. But I never let it drag me down. I couldn’t do this job if I allowed that. Life is filled with heartache, tragedy, and cruelty. It’s shit piled on top of shit. I’ve learned, through necessity, how to cope.
Mia, though. She’s another story completely. Her breakdown a couple of weeks ago caught me completely off guard, and I’ve been trying to figure out how she’s dealing with it. She seems like she’s okay. Not that that means anything. You can never truly know what’s going on inside another person’s head, can you?
Why did she decide to attend that patient’s stillbirth? A patient who wasn’t even her patient, and Mia chose to spend her own time to stay by that woman’s side through such a god-awful ordeal. I was—and still am—surprised and confused by it.
Mia doesn’t like to step out of her comfort zone. It’d be pretty easy and fitting to call her privileged, sheltered, even kind of innocent. Not innocent in a way that makes her clueless about the uglier sides of life. More like an innocence based on lack of experience. She knows the shit exists. She just doesn’t have any idea what it’s like to be buried up to the neck in it.
I don’t begrudge her that naiveté. Mia wouldn’t be Mia if she hadn’t grown up secure in the bosom of her picture-perfect family, with her successful and loving parents, who gave their kids everything children need—and also a whole lot of what they strictly speaking don’t. Such as enough college savings to pay for each of the three siblings’ entire educations. Buying this car was the first time Mia took on any kind of debt.
Maybe I am just a little bitter about that. I’d love to be in that position, trying to build a career while owing nothing to anybody. She’s got a pretty sweet deal going there.
I’m pretty sure Fuckface cheating on her was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to Mia. Which either says a lot about how little experience she has with shit, because that asshole just wasn’t a great loss, to either of us. Or it shows how hung up she was on him.
How hung up she still is.
I glance sideways to see what she’s doing and find her with her hands and phone limp in her lap, her head lolled up against the car door. Wow. That looks seriously uncomfortable, but she’s out. Guess she wasn’t joking about being tired.
I alternate between keeping an eye on the road and looking at her. Sleeping with her lips slightly parted, she draws shallow breaths in through her mouth, her expression smooth and serene.
Beautiful Mia. Sharp-witted Mia. Passionate Mia.
Unspoiled Mia. That fits, too—and maybe that’s why I can’t make myself reveal the uglier parts of my past.
Because the shit? I don’t want it to touch her. I want her to stay just the way she is.
My Mia. In this moment, at least, I can call her that.
We’ve left the seemingly endless clusters of suburban housing developments and strip malls behind when Mia awakens, her head jerking upright. Straightening herself in the seat, she blinks out the window at the passing landscape.
If she’s trying to figure out where we’re at, good luck to her. Lining the road on either side are hills covered in light-brown dirt and dry, yellow grass and dotted with bushes and low trees, and this is pretty much going to be our view for the next few hours. The I-5 is not the scenic route.
She taps the power button on her phone and turns it off again right away, clearly checking the time. “Wow. Didn’t think I’d actually fall asleep.”
I throw a glance at her. She’s yawning and stretching, arms raised, her slender body arched away from the seat back. I turn the music down a bit and ask, “Late night?”
“Yeah, kinda.” From the corner of my eye I see her push her sunglasses up on her head, flip down the sun visor, and check her face in the mirror. “I went to a party at Angela’s.”
Who? I take my eyes off the road for a second to frown questioningly at her.
“Angela from work?” she clarifies while nudging the visor back into place.
Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Tightening my grip on the wheel, tilting it slightly to steer us through a curve, I state flatly, “The one who knows about us. And wanted to meet me?”
Mia is quiet for a second. Then she says with briskness that sounds kind of forced, “Right.”
Not for the first time I’m wondering why I agreed to go on this trip. I got a bad feeling about it the minute she mentioned it that night two weeks ago, and this reminder of her inability to control her mouth isn’t doing much to diminish my foreboding.
“Does Angela have a lot of Thursday night parties?” I ask just to keep the conversation going. If I made a Venn diagram with one circle representing this woman I’ve never met and the other circle being how much I care about her, the only thing filling the overlapping area would be exactly what Mia has told her friend about me. Finding that out might be interesting. But I’m probably better off not knowing.
“It was a home sale thing,” Mia explains, reaching for the water bottle in my cup holder. “Like Tupperware?”
Uh. What? I shoot her a look. “You went to a Tupperware party?”
Unscrewing the bottle cap, she says, “No, it was a Secrets party.”
“Which is?”
She tips her head back, her throat working as she swallows several mouthfuls of water. When she’s done, she holds the opened bottle out to me and replies, “Sex toys.”
What the…? I freeze in the middle of accepting the bottle from her. Alternating between watching the road and gaping at her, I ask, “Seriously? That’s a thing?”
She waves the bottle at me, and I grab it from her. As I gulp down some water, it occurs to me that this sharing drinks thing is new. I guess that’s expected to be okay when you’re swapping other body fluids on a regular basis?
“It was actually a lot of fun,” she says as I hand the bottle back to her. “Food, drinks, and games. Their slogan is ‘The Ultimate Girls’ Night In.’”
Wow. The things women do. I let out a disbelieving laugh. “So you go to this party, and there’s a lady there who sells you sex toys?”
“She had other stuff, too.” Putting the water back in the cup holder, Mia unbuckles her seat belt and starts shrugging out of her jacket. “Like creams and lubes, beauty products, and lingerie. But, yeah.”
My mind. It’s boggled. “And you actually bought something?”
“It’s kind of expected. If I wasn’t interested in buying, I wouldn’t have gone.” Tossing her jacket into the backseat, she tugs the seat belt back down, snapping it into the buckle.
I give her another look. She gives me a shit-eating grin, her pretty green eyes crinkling mischievously.
Feeling compelled by some involuntary curiosity, I ask, “What did you buy?”
“Well.” She stretches the word out just as she’s doing the same to her long, slim legs. “Picking stuff out of the catalog felt like too much work, so I just went with what she had in stock with her. Something called a Survival Kit. I didn’t look too closely at what was in it.”
Typical Mia. Oh, of course she’ll buy some sex toys. Doesn’t matter what kind. She’ll find a use for it regardless.
Jesus.
And then I’m lost. It’s like my brain short-circuits, and all I can do is picture Mia using those toys to get herself off. The mental images won’t stop. It’s like click, click, click—a high-speed series of snapshots of her masturbating, all of them dirty and sexy and such a goddamn turn-on. My dick springs to life, starts growing hard.
“What?” Her voice is part chuckle, part challenge, so I guess my thoughts are showing on my face.
I shake my head slowly. Give a small cough. No way am I sharing what’s on my mind, so I say, “Could you imagine if guys had parties like that? Women would think it was disgusting.”
She lets out a snort-laugh. “Gender inequality is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but women complain about it a lot more.” As I come up on an old, beat-up Toyota Camry going way too slow, I signal to move into the left lane so I can pass it. Driving with an erection is kind of uncomfortable, and I’m resisting the urge to reach down and tug on my shorts.
“Oh, give me a break.” Mia doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Tell you what: if you want to host a party for your buddies, I’m more than happy to get Rachel the Secrets lady’s contact info from Angela for you.”
Rolling my eyes, I let that go without comment. My thoughts refuse to be redirected, though. I’m picturing a group of women gathered in a living room, nice-smelling women, dressed up and made-up, because their appearance is just as much about impressing each other as it is for men, right? I see brightly painted nails wrapped around colorful cocktails. And a lot of giggling as they pass around the goods. Most of it phallic-shaped and battery-powered.
Jesus Christ.
“You played games?” I ask because I’m a fucking idiot and just can’t help myself. “Like what?”
She’s silent for a moment, and I sneak a peek at her. Her head is tilted back against the headrest, and she’s squinting into the air, like she’s conjuring memories.
“First we introduced ourselves by saying our names,” she starts, “and how old we were when we lost our virginity…”
I shift in my seat. Glance at the speedometer, making sure my distraction’s not giving me a lead foot.
“Then a little later we all made a list of the different locations where we’ve had sex, and the person with the longest list won this little tube of flavored lube.”
Yup. That’s it. It’s not safe for me to stay in the fast lane anymore. I signal and turn back into the right lane, setting cruise control while I’m at a good distance from the car in front of us. There are dark clouds up ahead, looming over the hills in the distance. Looks like we’re going to run into some nasty weather soon.
“Did you win?” I ask, trying to sound casual, disinterested. Probably failing.
“Didn’t even come close. I think I was the second youngest guest, so it wasn’t really fair, though.”
I swallow hard. Stare at her longer than I should while in control of this little bullet of a car. Telling her with my eyes that it would be my privilege to help her make her list longer. Was a car on there? It should be. Not this one, though. Something roomier. Parked someplace private.
Leaning on the headrest and watching me, the playfulness gone from her expression, she says, “At the end of the night we did this game where we were all supposed to anonymously write down our dirtiest fantasy on a piece of paper, and then Rachel read them aloud, and we all had to guess whose fantasy it was.”
I hesitate. My mouth feels dry. There’s a pulsing in my groin that’s absolutely impossible to ignore. “What did you write on yours?”
With half an eye on the road, I see her flash a tiny smile, looking almost embarrassed as she answers, “Double penetration.”
Say what? Air whooshes from my lungs. She’s messing with me, right? “As in a threesome?” I ask incredulously.
Heaving a big sigh, she puts her elbow on the ledge by her window and rests her head in her hand, staring out the windshield. “See, that’s the part I don’t know about. Two guys at once kind of seems like too much work. I’m not the best at multitasking.”
What the hell? I just blink and say nothing, focused on keeping the car on the road. She sounds one hundred percent serious.
“Maybe if they were both just focused on getting me off,” she muses. “I wouldn’t want two Ds in my P, though. Maybe if I’d had kids I could handle that, but now, no way.”
Pressure builds inside my head. I still have a hard-on. Even though the scene she’s describing is not appealing to me. Not even a little bit. In fact, it’s kind of pissing me off.
She continues with, “Plus it’d be kind of weird. I think I’d be worried that they’d start enjoying it a little too much, if you know what I mean.”
I look sideways. She’s watching me with raised eyebrows, but I keep my mouth shut. Yeah, I do know what she means. And she’s given this whole thing a lot of thought, apparently.
“Oh,” she says, pointing a finger at me, “and I definitely wouldn’t want to be giving one guy head while the other one’s fucking me. For the same reason I don’t like doing a sixty-nine.”
Okay, enough. “I don’t think this is an appropriate topic of conversation for the car.”
I glance at her long enough to catch her giving a shrug as she says, “You’re the one who asked.”
She’s got me there. We drive in silence for a while. Raindrops start splattering the windshield as we catch up to those storm clouds, picking up in frequency until they’re drumming and pounding on the glass. I turn the wipers on high.
From the corner of my eye I see Mia scoot her seat back, kick off her shoes, and raise her white-sock-clad feet up to rest on the dash, crossed at the ankles. I’m so glad she’s able to make herself comfortable.
Meanwhile I’m sitting here with an iron grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, driving on the freeway toward her parents’ house in an epic downpour, and all I can think about is Mia getting screwed by two guys at the same time. Neither one of them being me. Goddamn her.
Then I mentally replay the last thing she said, and before I can stop myself, the question is coming out of my mouth. “What’s wrong with a sixty-nine?”
“I told you,” she says nonchalantly. “I’m not great at multitasking.”
Okay. That’s fine. She can just sit on my face then.
And there’s another mental image that makes me twitchy.
“Besides,” she goes on. “A blow job is an art form. It takes skill and concentration.”
I take my eyes off the road long enough to toss a doubtful look her way. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“And how would you know?” she challenges teasingly.
“Dicks just aren’t that complicated. I know because I’ve got one.”
She lets out a laugh that sounds breathless and sexy. Bracing a hand on the emergency brake, she leans closer to me, so close her arm is up against mine. Her voice sounds husky as she says, “I guess you just haven’t been with the right women then, Jay.”
My pulse starts pounding. What the hell is she doing? I get that she’s flirting, but right here and right now? What’s her endgame?
“Yeah,” I fire back at her, “guess I should’ve been hooking up with art majors.”
“Nah,” she responds with another throaty laugh. “Just girls who know what to do and aren’t afraid to.”
I frown in her direction just as she reaches over and puts her hand on my thigh.
Aw, shit. I tense up, my back going ramrod straight. “Mia…”
Tugging on her seat belt to loosen it, she shifts even closer. With her breasts pressed into my arm and her teeth grazing my earlobe, she murmurs, “You want an art lesson?”
Is she seriously doing this to me? My brain is sounding all kinds of alarms while my dick is happy dancing. Somehow sanity prevails and I manage to grind out, “Not while I’m driving seventy-five miles an hour on the freeway. In pouring rain.”
“Pull over then.” She sucks my earlobe into her mouth, and her hand slides up my thigh, up and up until she meets resistance.
My breath hisses out. “We’re on the freeway.”
“I’m pretty sure this qualifies as an emergency.” Her words sound like a seductive song in my ear, and I smell the faintly floral scent of her shampoo, which sparks memories of her naked in the shower. And me in there with her.
Without further ado, she grabs my crotch. Pushes down firmly but gently with the ball of her hand. A groan escapes me. Shit, that feels good. I should tell her to stop. There’s no way I’m telling her to stop. This would be one hell of a way to die, and right now it almost seems worth it.
But just almost. So with a sharp turn of the wheel, I steer the car onto the shoulder. Slam the brake too hard, and when we start skidding on the slick asphalt, I ease up and let us slowly coast to a halt instead, at the bottom of a slope in the middle of a long and gentle curve. The wipers are going too fast now that we’re stopped, scraping back and forth on the windshield with a squeaky, rubbery whine.
My heart is thumping, my breaths coming out in harsh, panting gulps. Mia moves away to unsnap her seat belt, next doing the same to mine. Goddamn. I’m staring at her as she leans over and undoes the belt on my shorts. Button and zipper follow in one, two, three seconds. Drawing my underwear out of the way, she wraps her hand around the base of my cock, and then she takes it into her mouth.
A choked moan comes out from deep in my chest. Holy mother of— Is this actually happening? I look down for visual confirmation. One hand supporting herself on the emergency brake, she’s bent over my lap, and all I see is her mass of brown hair fallen down to hide her face. Her mouth is so damn hot and so damn wet, and she slowly slides it down my length, her tongue stroking the sensitive underside.
Muted music plays through the speakers, a hoarse voice crying out unintelligible lyrics above the muddy, dissonant sounds of electric instruments. Rain whips the windows all around us, and the rubbery grating of the wipers swinging swiftly back and forth is the loudest noise in here, next to my rasping breaths.
Running her mouth up and down my erection, Mia reaches in to cup my balls. I’m panting, gasping. Through the windshield I can see cars shooting past us. Feeling like my hand is operating independently, I reach up and twist the lever to turn off the wipers. Immediately rivulets of water cover all the windows, and we’re hidden from the outside. And I can relax just a little bit.
Resting with her right arm above my knees, Mia tilts her head back and releases me, pushing her hair away from her face. While locking her gaze onto mine, she touches the head of my dick with the tip of her tongue. Swirls it around, tasting and teasing. Her eyes are dancing, sparking with a dark fire and something else—something that seems almost like possessiveness.
Holy hell. She’s enjoying it. Loving it. And she wants me to see it, that she’s not doing this because she feels she has to or as a favor or to score points. She’s doing it because she wants to. It’s stupefyingly amazing, so arousing that any minute now I’m going to crack and burst.
Closing her eyes, she plunges down again, drawing me all the way into her slippery mouth. As my cock hits the back of her throat, my breath rushes out with a groan. Arching up into her, I bury my hand in her thick hair, curling the smooth strands around my fingers as her head slowly bobs.
She takes her time, using her mouth, tongue, lips, hand, and even her teeth—carefully, leisurely. Over and over she pushes me close to the edge, pulling back at the last moment, driving me crazy. Just as I’m about to lose it and start begging, her movements change.
Grasping me tightly, she starts rubbing in a twisting motion, her mouth following along each time she dips down. No more teasing. She sucks faster, clenches my shaft with firm confidence, her other hand tugging gently on my balls, and just like that, I lose control. The pressure boils over. She slows down and eases her grip as I’m coming, coming so fucking hard, first with tingly, shooting sparks, and then with a hot surge deep into her mouth.
She stays there while my brain goes numb and that sense of utter and complete release is coursing through me, that feeling of everything being right with the world. Then she lets go and pushes herself up so she has one hand braced on the emergency brake and the other on my thigh. My eyes still blurred with hazy euphoria, I see her watching me with a tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth. And I notice her throat working as she swallows.
Holy shit. What the hell did she just do to me? If that was art, she’s Picasso. It’s like the ground has shifted below me, my perspective now skewed. I’ll never be the same. I have a new definition of ecstasy, and Mia’s mouth on my dick is going to haunt my dreams. Forever.
Inching up so that we’re face-to-face, she tilts her head and presses her lips against mine, nudging with her tongue until I open my mouth and let her inside. I put my hands on the curve of her hips, pull her close as we kiss slowly and thoroughly.
She breaks it off and pulls back far enough that her face comes into focus—the pale-green eyes, the long and straight nose, and the wide and full lips, swollen a deep dark pink.
Her voice a strong, provocative whisper, she says, “That’s what you taste like.”
Hearing my own words echoed back at me brings me back to the first time I saw her naked, the first time I had my face between her thighs, the first time I heard her high-pitched whimpers while my fingers stroked inside her.
And I’m gutted by the realization that I want her more now, more than ever. She really is like an addiction. She’s in my veins. Wild, uninhibited, carefree Mia. They almost gush out of me, the words that are ballooning up from my chest and into my mind, where they take on a recognizable shape.
A recognizable and terrifying shape. I catch only a glimpse of the feeling before I push it away, bury it deep.
And because I need to make sure it stays there, I grip her by the upper arms and grind out, “You’re a fucking menace.”
She jerks back, her eyebrows knitting. “Are you actually mad at me?”
“No.” The admission escapes before I can pull it back. Then I amend it with, “Maybe a little bit.”
She tugs on her arms, and as I let her go, she shoves herself back into her own seat. Where she sits and stares at me, her eyes big and naked. “I’m sorry. I guess. It won’t happen again.”
“Okay, that’s not what I—” Heaving an aggressive sigh, I start putting my clothes to right again. “If a cop happened to drive by and decided to stop and check on us, we could’ve been arrested. Do you understand?”
I give her a hard look as I slide the end of my belt into the loop and let my shirt fall down over it.
Her gaze flashes with annoyance and obstinacy. “Why didn’t you stop me then?”
My breath rushes out with a humorless laugh. “You made it kind of difficult to think clearly.”
The irritation leaves her expression, replaced by smugness. “Told you it’s an art form.”
Yeah, and she’s a freaking master artist. I have to look away from her. Because I’m not sure if I stand a chance of getting through to her, and it’s making me want to punch something.
“You know,” I say, reaching up to flip on the windshield wipers again, “you’ve never been arrested, so take it from me. It’s not a joke.”
In fact, it’s terrifying, confusing, and humiliating. You have no idea what’s going to happen to you, how long you’ll be locked up, or if you just made the one stupid choice that’s going to ruin the rest of your life. I can still remember how I couldn’t stop shaking, can still smell the rank bodies in the crowded holding cell and the mix of disinfectant and shit and piss from the toilet in our midst. Can feel the pain of my bladder about to burst because there was no way I was going to relieve myself in front of that audience. Can taste the “food” on my breakfast tray.
So, yeah. Getting arrested is definitely not a fucking joke.
She’s quiet for so long that I have no choice but to turn back toward her again. Somberly, she repeats, “Take it from you? What do you mean?”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I can’t believe I said that. She noticed, and she’s curious, and my mind is flailing, searching frantically for a good cover-up. Kind of like when she asked me about my tattoo.
“It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?” I say quickly. “That getting arrested would suck?”
Regarding me with narrowed eyes, she says nothing at first. And then she mumbles, “I guess.”
Okay. She doesn’t sound entirely convinced, but as long as she lets it go, it’s not a problem.
And I can leave it at that. She understands. Innocent Mia, inexperienced with all the shit. And that’s perfectly okay.
But my inner asshole isn’t done. He takes over. Opens my mouth, engages my vocal cords. Pushes the words out, darkly and nastily. “At some point you might want to consider if it’s time to start acting like a grown-up.”
Her face goes blank. I see her jaw flexing as she clenches her teeth. “All right,” she says in a toneless voice. “Got it. No more blow jobs.”
We stare at each other. Time stops. The back of my neck feels like it’s on fire. I don’t need to see her silent hurt and disappointment to know I’m being a jerk. Don’t need to do any deep soul-searching to know I should apologize. But I just can’t do it. Can’t make myself say the words and leave myself that vulnerable, not right now.
Swallowing hard, I decide to take the less painful route. Softening my voice, I say, “That seems a little drastic. How about no blow jobs in public.”
She looks tense and defensive for a few moments longer, seeming hesitant. Then she sinks back against her seat, arching her eyebrows at me.
So I complete my peace offering with, “Unless it’s a lot more secluded than the shoulder on the freeway.”
Thankfully, she lets out a chuckle under her breath. “That’s fine.”
As she starts pulling down her seat belt to fasten it again, I say, “Hey.”
While snapping the belt into her buckle, she looks at me with a question in her eyes, so I lean over. Cup the back of her head, pulling her toward me and capturing her lips. Giving her a firm, lingering kiss. When I pull back, I tell her, “That was the best art lesson of my life.”
“Of course it was,” she replies, her mouth curved up seductively. “You’re welcome.”