Jacqueline

“ ‘He’s down at the creek. Walking on water,’ ” I drawl in my best Doc Holliday impersonation. As usual, Vince and I are sacked out on his couch watching a movie. Tombstone. Unlike usual, my legs are draped over his, the popcorn is in my lap, and he hasn’t stopped touching me.

It’s fantastic.

After sex on the stairs, he helped me stand and we finished our trek to the upstairs master bathroom, where we showered and soaped each other, sexually satisfied grins on our faces. I praised his ability to maneuver expertly on the staircase and he assured me that was a first for him, which I found sweet. It was for me too.

We toweled off and I slipped into one of his T-shirts and a pair of boxers and, without discussing it, we came back downstairs for popcorn and a movie. It’s like things haven’t changed, which is awkward…because sex should change everything.

Right?

Vince yawns and I follow suit, fatigue from the busy day walloping me all at once.

“I should go,” I say, stretching my legs.

His palm glides up my thigh and down again, beckoning goosebumps to the bared skin. “Nah. You should stay.”

I watch him for a few seconds, my mind fast-forwarding through sleeping in bed next to him to waking in the morning, brushing my teeth with toothpaste on my finger…

“Butler.” His eyebrows go up in that disarming way he has. “Don’t overthink it. Your hair is wet, you’re in my clothes, and if I’m being honest, I’d like the opportunity to do you again come morning.”

I feel my mouth drop open.

“What? You wouldn’t?” he challenges.

“I…um.” I dig through the popcorn for a piece that’s not a kernel. When I find one, I put it in my mouth and chew so I don’t have to answer. Would I like that?

Hell, yes. But there are implications…right?

He offers what looks like a sad smile before turning back to the movie. A few minutes later, I decide I am overthinking and that I would like to do it again. If I’m taking after my sister and not worrying about the future, it’d do me good not to worry about the future. I sure as heck don’t owe J.T. an explanation. I don’t owe anyone anything. I can do whatever I want.

I want Vince.

“Be forewarned,” I say, my eyes on Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell. “I’m a blanket hog.”

When I hazard a gaze at Vince, his grin is one for the books.

It’s a morning like none other I’ve experienced. I wake up in Vince’s bed and—

Hold on. Back up. Back all the way up.

I wake up in Vince Carson’s bed. I curl my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around them and the thin comforter, and enjoy the sun streaming through his upstairs window. I can feel how wide my smile is and my host confirms it when he enters the room a moment later.

“That’s a look I like to see.” Vince wears…almost nothing. A pair of fitted boxer briefs and a smile. He’s carrying two steaming white mugs and hands one over. “Coffee.”

“Always.” My eyes dance along the tats on his arm. I have always liked them, but until just now wouldn’t allow myself to openly admire them.

I accept the cup, careful not to spill my morning beverage on myself or his pristine bedding. It’s hotel-like. White sheets, white duvet. Four white pillows.

“You know, your bedding reminds me of a luxury hotel.”

His smile isn’t as wide as he sits on top of said bedding and sips his coffee. “I’m bad at picking colors. Leslie had all this red and gold foofy bullshit, and I knew I didn’t want that. But I didn’t know what I liked and I worried about matching things, so I went with all white.”

He’s adorably male right now.

“You seem to do okay with your clothes.”

“I buy what’s on the mannequin.”

“What?” I laugh.

“It’s true. I buy either what’s on the mannequin at the store or what’s on the catalog page. Exactly that, in my size. It’s like having a personal stylist.”

“Vince! That’s ridiculous.”

“It may be, but I look good most of the time.”

Incorrect. He looks good all of the time. He looks pretty damn good right now—the best I’ve seen him look. The swirls and patterns on his tatted arm are no less attractive now than they were before. His disheveled hair infinitely hotter because I know who tousled it in that pattern with her fingertips.

This girl!

“We’re spending the day together,” he announces. “So when you’re up and moving, you’ll have to get some clothes from your apartment. I’ll follow you, though, because I’m driving.”

He says this so casually, I’m speechless.

“Breakfast, some outdoor happening like a fair or a park, maybe.” He glances out the window at the gorgeous sunny day. A leaf-covered tree blows in the gentle summer breeze. “Do you like to hike?”

“We’re spending the day together?” I ask.

“You want your next lesson, don’t you?”

“My next lesson?” I laugh. “Vince, your coaching duties are over. I failed. Technically, you failed me. Lessons over.”

“Excuse me.” He sets his mug aside to lean over to me. I’m eye to eye with his flooring blues and my breath catches. The mug in my hand shimmies and I have to make a conscious effort not to spill it. His voice low and sensual, he continues. “You got laid, Butler. Twice. Not only did you not fail. You won.”

He sits up quickly and in the lust-thickened air I struggle to take in a breath.

“But it doesn’t mean you’re done learning.”

“It doesn’t?” I’m not sure what more there is to learn, since we already had sex.

“Given we’ve crossed a line, this is the perfect opportunity to continue what we started. No pressure. You learn, I teach, and each of us gets a much-needed reprieve from relationship land.”

“You mean you can take a break from sneaking out of the beds of underwhelming women in the middle of the night?” I tease.

“Yes. And you can avoid dealing with a guy who is two-timing you.”

“He never even one-timed me,” I grumble.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” Vince’s eyes dash to my mouth, then away so quickly, I can’t discern what he’s thinking. He doesn’t seem to be interested in pushing the topic. “Finish your coffee, then we’ll head back to your place, and then we get your learnin’ on.”

“Get my learnin’ on?” I repeat with a giggle.

“Yeah.” His eyes wander over my face again, but he doesn’t sit forward to kiss me like I want. Instead he climbs out of bed and starts pulling open drawers searching for his catalog-approved outfit of the day.

Vince

Credit where credit is due: Jackie doesn’t take long getting ready. When she steps out her door in a short pair of pink shorts and a white tank top with pink lip prints on the front, she looks nothing short of amazing. Right down to her sensible leather sandals and pale pink toenails.

That polish drove me crazy last night. Watching her walk barefoot and naked to the bed, those pink flashes from her toes both feminine and soft.

Not that I can tell her I’m admiring her toenails, for God’s sake. I’m trying not to epically tank everything now that Jaundice did a good job of ousting himself from the race. I came too close to losing Jackie to that crap-bag. I’m not going to risk it again.

I drive to a street fair off Bleaker Avenue. It sits between a funky brewery and boutiques and mom-and-pop-style restaurants. Because the area is way laid-back, the brewery has a license to sell you beer to go.

“To-go beer. This is utopia.” I sip my ale and Jackie palms a pear cider. Way too sweet for me, but she insists it’s “summery.” I forgive her this once, though I argue with myself that I’d forgive her one hundred times over.

Paintings and wood carvings hang inside individual tents, hopeful artists sitting at tables and smiling cautiously at everyone who ambles by. Lots of people stop and admire the wares, but the real winners are the line of food trucks at the back.

“Funnel cakes,” Jackie moans, and her moan catapults me back to last night on the stairs. I know some of her more intimate sounds now and it’s taking everything in me to play it way cooler than I feel. The fire between us last night is a heat I want to stoke. The problem? Jackie was cautious before, and since J.T. proved to be a cheating bastard she’s even more cautious.

In bed this morning, I contemplated the best way to proceed now that we’d had some seriously fun naked time, and the only answer I came up with was to keep up the ruse. I was her coach, and as long as I continue coaching her, she’ll willingly overstep all sorts of boundary lines she’s drawn for herself.

I feel like I tapped into my inner Davis.

Jackie is a planner, an overthinker. She tries to do the right thing, and stepping out of the box isn’t a pastime for her like it is for me. Ergo, she needs to live in a bit of a fantasy land to be brave. It’s the nudge she needs and an excuse I’m happy to provide.

We come to a stop in front of a canvas that is probably seven feet tall and just as wide. The colors remind me of every sick day I’ve ever had. Pea green and shit brown, swirled with mustard yellow and little flecks of red. I read the information card dangling from the top of the tent expecting the title to be “Diarrhea,” but instead it says “Euphoria.” I was way off on that one.

“Jesus,” I mutter.

“Really?” Jackie shakes her head. “I don’t see Jesus. Looks like a swamp.”

I chuckle but she’s not joking.

“It looks like the result of not being vaccinated,” I say.

The clearing of a throat interrupts our comments. A woman steps from behind the canvas, another smaller painting in hand. She has spiky black hair and pursed red lips, and if her outfit was chosen off a mannequin, it was one dressed by a blind person. Flaming red and neon green and a mess of colors that are too bright in natural light.

“May I help you?” she clips.

“We were just admiring your work,” Jackie, the beautiful liar, says.

I smile, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

“This one makes me happy,” the other woman says. She waves her hand in front of the canvas and describes euphoria in her terms. Things like “soft cheese” and “Sunday kisses” and “comfort in the masses,” whatever the hell that means. “It’s a bargain at seventeen hundred.”

“Pesos?” I ask, because surely she couldn’t mean dollars.

“Oh, we couldn’t fit this beauty into our tiny house.” Jackie grabs my hand and weaves our fingers together and I feel every digit sliding home in that comfortable way we have. “Three hundred square feet and nary a bit of wall space. Thank you, though. It’s truly…” She pauses and takes in the monstrosity before us one last time. “Unique.”

From there we edge along the other booths, more careful than before about engaging the artists, though I see lots of good work ranging from charcoal portraits to really cool metal yard displays bent into the shapes of animals.

“Badass,” I say, standing in front of a metal alligator, its jaws gaping.

From there we hit the food trucks—funnel cake for her, chili cheese fries for me. She steals several, of which I approve and tell her as much.

“Any guy you date, Butler, should share his food. If he’s selfish with a few fries, imagine what he’ll be like in two years.”

She nods, considering. “J.T. offered me a few bites of his food.”

“He also offered bites to another woman.” Maybe more than one woman, but I don’t want to talk about him.

“The last thing he said to me was that he wanted to have lunch on Tuesday.” She offers me the last bite of her funnel cake and I let her feed it to me, my heart tugging at the way she tenderly brushes the powdered sugar from my mouth. Because distance is a hard thing between us, I kiss her once, then twice before taking our empty plates and tossing them into the nearest bee-swarmed trash can.

“You dated more than one girl at a time,” she says. “How’d it work out?”

Groan. Raise your hand if you don’t want have this conversation.

“I didn’t date more than one girl at a time.”

“So you ended things with them? Or did they end it with you?”

Ah, Jackie. She really isn’t like anyone else I know.

“Sometimes. Mostly we had that conversation up front.”

“And if you didn’t have it up front?”

“We didn’t have it at all.” I shrug.

“So…you blew them off?”

“No, I didn’t blow them off. Usually they’d text or I would and it never went further.”

“What did the texts say?”

I sure as hell wasn’t telling her that. Typically, they said things like I had a great time. Call me if you want a repeat. Keep my number. One was a blow-off, but she was cool about it. It read, I don’t make this a habit. You were great, but this can’t go further.

“It doesn’t matter what they said,” I tell Jackie.

She’s puzzling over what this means, and I have to stop that train of thought before she continues digging. I’m not fast enough.

“Well, J.T. and I didn’t have that conversation before we started, so now it’s up to me to tell him I saw him with another woman and I know he’s not interested in seeing me any longer.”

“That you’re not interested in seeing him any longer,” I correct firmly. We stop walking when Jackie turns her eyes up to mine.

“Right.”

“These dating lessons I’m offering don’t include you winning Jaundice back.”

“I don’t want him back.” She’s frowning. Good. I like her frowning when she thinks of him. “I just don’t know how to untangle what we have.”

“You don’t have anything.” I want to add You have something with me, but that’s not the truth either, is it? She and I are…I don’t know what. She’s confused and trying to cross her t’s and dot her i’s, and I’m playing the role of coach so that she doesn’t scurry away from me and regret last night forever.

My throat closes at that unpleasant thought.

I don’t regret last night. I’d like another shot at it, since this morning we didn’t get a repeat. Fail on my part, but I knew I needed a strategy.

Now who’s overthinking?

“Look.” She takes a step closer to me and lowers her voice. “You may be okay with the blow-off text message, but I need to have a real conversation. One where I’m looking right at him. I need to know if I didn’t measure up, or if what I was seeing through his balcony window was a mirage.”

I’m hit with a blast of jealousy so acute, it burns going down.

“Fine. Well. Go over and talk to him tomorrow.” That burns too. Big time.

She nods. Slowly. “Yeah. I’ll tell him what I saw and let him know that I would’ve appreciated him being honest. I can’t avoid him if he lives in my complex, so talking to him frankly is the smartest course of action.”

She has a point, which I hate, because I’d rather she never lay eyes on him again.

“Now, on with the lesson. Dating at the art fair.” I take her hand because I can, and we start walking by booths again. I stop in front of one selling wind chimes. “If he buys one of these for his mother, run.”

She giggles, and I like it way too much. Relaxed Jackie is better than tense Jackie.

The next booth features jewelry. “Beware the second-date jewelry guy.”

Gold and silver chains hang from metal hooks and wink in the streaming sunlight. More expensive baubles, faux diamonds, and stones are secured in a glass case with a lock. I retreat a step when the woman running the booth greets us with a smile.

“Why? Jewelry is a nice gift,” Jackie argues.

“Jewelry means the guy is serious about you.”

“Not always.” She pulls me closer to the booth and my arm goes taut between us before I trudge the reluctant steps to follow. She fingers a delicate necklace with a cross pendent. “Necklaces don’t mean marriage.”

“It all means marriage. Every piece of shining metal is synonymous with the biggie.” I lower my voice and say “The ring” in as foreboding a tone as I can manage.

She laughs but allows me to tug her away from the tent of doom.

“That’s stupid.”

“Maybe,” I admit, “but no less true.” I bought Leslie earrings on our second date and look how that turned out. We were doomed from the start. Even as I have the bitter thought, I question if that’s true. Maybe things turned out exactly as they should have.

“Okay, okay. No jewelry.” Jackie waves her hands in front of her as she tells me she’s not going to ask for a trinket from the vendor we just passed. But as we part the crowd, her hand again in mine, I realize there’s a small part of me that would buy her any twinkly item from the table that she wanted.