Jacqueline

I burst into Kayla’s office and shut her door behind me, a coffee in hand for each of us.

“Thought you could use a caffeine boost,” I announce as I place the Starbucks cup on her desk.

“When can’t I use a caffeine boost?” She accepts with a sip and a borderline orgasmic hum. “What is this?”

“It’s a caramel mocha latte with one pump vanilla and two pumps cinnamon.” I take a drink from my own cup and the sugar lights up my brain like a marquee. “It’s one of my greatest inventions.”

“I’ll say.” Kayla spins her chair to face me. “What gives? You never bring me coffee in the afternoon unless you want something.”

“Not true!” I argue, offended. Mostly because she guessed exactly right. I do want something.

“Jackie.” Her smile is that of a patient woman: wife and mother. And that’s exactly who I need to speak to right now.

“Okay, fine, I want something.” I drag a lightweight plastic guest chair from the wall to the corner of her desk and lean close. “Does great sex fix problems? I mean, I thought my ex-husband and I were having great sex, but then recently I had some actual great sex and learned that Lex and I were, in fact, not having great sex.” I scrunch my nose as Kayla’s eyebrows arch in curiosity. “Anyway, you and Kevin seem to have cracked the code. You have challenges, right?”

“Babe. We have challenges.” Her mouth slants to one side, suggesting I should know better.

“Of course. Yes. You can’t avoid the ‘challenges’ thing no matter what.” I pause, thinking of her son and his challenges, and how that must affect her and her husband. Kayla never lets anyone see her sweat. It’s easy to forget she has a life outside of these four walls. “Lex and I had challenges and his solution was to sleep with someone else. What is the secret to maintaining a healthy relationship when challenges come up? Does great sex hold you two together? Is it enough?”

“Similar interests help,” she says, then adds, “And some battery-operated bedroom toys.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Jackie. I’m teasing you.” Kayla sets aside her cup and puts her coffee-warmed hand over mine. “What’s really going on? Are you falling for the hot, hunky runner guy and you don’t want to? Is that what’s happening?”

I frown in confusion when Kayla refers to J.T.

“I’m not falling for him.” I hear the slightest tremor in my voice. Because I’m referring to Vince, and falling for Vince would be…unwise.

“Well, then enjoy the great sex and move on when you’re ready,” she advises with a shrug.

“Even though I see him every day?” Not going to lie, the fact that Vince and I work closely together plagues me. Over the past year we’ve coexisted in a lot of the same spaces. Now that we’ve merged the personal time with hot and sweaty kissing time and nine-to-five time, one or both of our co-VP positions could be at risk.

“You can find something else to do for the thirty to sixty seconds when he jogs by your window, can’t you? Until then, enjoy the view.”

“You’re right.” I offer a wan smile. I can’t tell her I’m referring to Vince. “Thanks, Kayla.” I take my coffee and replace her chair, promising to bring coffee without agenda next time. As I open the door to leave, I’m blocked by a tall, lean man who smells like a pine forest and made me come so hard last night I literally saw stars.

“Girl meeting?” Vince sends a searing gander down my body and up again before gracing Kayla with a polite smile.

The air between his body and mine is warm, and beneath my dress my nipples harden. I take a deliberate step away from him.

“What’s this? You didn’t bring me one?” He takes my coffee cup, drinks, and…makes a face. “Good God, Butler, did this come with an insulin shot?”

“Girls like sugar, Vince. It’s why we’re sweet,” Kayla says from behind me, but her tone is different. I consider how intimate Vince sipping from my cup must’ve looked. Did he give us away?

“I have a real work issue for you, if you and Butler are through gossiping,” Vince says to Kayla as he slides by me. I practically flatten my back to the open door so as not to touch him. He plops into the chair I just vacated. “Door open is fine. Kay and I aren’t going to share any secrets.”

“No?” The twinkle in Kayla’s eyes confirms she has picked up on the overly familiar interaction between Vince and me. “You’re not going to ask me if great sex can solve world peace?” she asks Vince.

“What?” Vince’s smile slips and I feel my face turning pink.

“Jackie and I were talking about really great sex and how it can overcome the biggest obstacles.”

Vince is frozen in place. He hasn’t looked over at me since Kayla said the word “sex.”

“Thanks for keeping that to yourself,” I tell Kayla flatly.

“Oh, it’s just Vince.” She throws a hand in dismissal. “He’s not going to tell the entire office about your sex-ploits with a hot, available man.” She tips her head, giving him a slow, knowing blink. “Are you, Vince?”

“Absolutely not.” His laugh is forced, but he recovers a millisecond later and fixes me with blue eyes that know way too much. Like the color of my underwear at this very moment. He commented about how black lace was his favorite when I slipped into them this morning. “You should keep doing what you’re doing with whomever you’re doing it, Butler. It’s working in your favor. You look incredible.”

Kayla’s grin matches his. I slink from the room and back to my own office.

Vince

Miller Grove is in full bloom. Flowers in every color dot bushes along the trails leading to the woods, to the butterfly house, and back the way we came: to the visitors’ center. A fat bumblebee hovers near Jackie for a second before she scares the shit out of it by swatting the air like a drugged break-dancer.

My chuckling stops short when she slaps me on the arm. “Ow!”

“I could have died!”

“They don’t sting, Butler. He’s probably sweating his way through a panic attack as we speak. You were the one who wanted to come out here. It’s not my fault you don’t like the great out of doors.”

She may not have followed through with jogging, but she decided that she liked to walk. Where prettier to walk than the park? she asked me while naked and towel-drying her hair after our shared shower. She’s been spending more time at my house than her own, and I don’t mind. Or at least I didn’t think I minded. Today when I walked into my master bath to flip off the light she’d left on, I picked up her wet towel off the floor.

I stood there for I don’t know how long, wondering why my heart was hammering double time and my mind was blaring a warning siren that, if real, could’ve been heard for miles.

I didn’t figure out what caused that blare until this very second. Now it hits me.

Jackie and I are starting to feel awfully…couple-y. The wet towel on my floor, or her lecturing me to rinse my coffee cup while she did it for me this morning, weren’t enough to make me nervous on their own, but combined with other couple-y things, they’re making me twitch. Other things like, say, walking through Miller Grove en route to the butterfly house.

I stop short of entering the domed greenhouse where winged insects that don’t scare Butler into spasms are housed.

“Kayla knows,” I say aloud for the first time.

Jackie’s wearing a T-shirt from a coffee shop and a pair of shorts that expose her long, tanned legs. Her ponytail shifts as she shakes her head. “I didn’t mean for her to know. She assumed I was talking about J.T.”

She walks to me, tipping her face to take me in. I assume, anyway. I take her in—all of her. How cute she looks squinting in the sunshine. The memory of those plush pink lips moaning my name as I drove deep this morning. The way she giggled when she dropped the soap and I gripped her hips with both hands and dared her to bend over.

I swipe my brow, suddenly hot and uncomfortable, and not from the summer day.

“She won’t tell anyone,” Jackie says, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried,” I snap.

“Then what’s the problem?” She genuinely wants to know, but it doesn’t stop my brain from thinking about how she just asked a couple-y question during our couple-y outing.

“Nothing. I don’t want to see the butterflies. You go on.”

Her lips pull into a frown. “I don’t have to see them.”

“Jackie, you can do whatever you want. We don’t have to do exactly the same things at the same time. You don’t have to pick up your wet towel and I don’t have to rinse my coffee mug.”

Shit. That was a bit of a tirade.

“You’re mad because I forgot to pick up my towel this morning?”

“I’m not mad.” It’s the truth. I’m not. If I’m being honest, I resent feeling mired. It’s too soon to feel mired. To feel like I have to run things by someone else before I do them. Like now. “I’m hungry. Let’s grab lunch.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“You pick.” I shake my head. You can’t get more couple-y than this conversation.

I start away from her, walking toward the visitors’ center by the parking lot. She catches up with me and we continue to have a conversation every couple on this planet has every damn day.

What sounds good?

It doesn’t matter. Just pick somewhere.

I picked last time. You pick this time.

Wherever is fine. Just tell me so I know where to go.

Go anywhere you like. I can eat anything.

Fine. We’ll have pizza.

We ate pizza last night.

“Dammit, Leslie!” It’s out of my mouth so quickly, I hear it at the same time Jackie does. I stomp on the brakes at a red light, the entire car jerking to a halt.

A thumping car full of teenagers pulls up next to us, laughing and whooping like their whole goddamn lives are in front of them.

“Just you wait!” I shout out the window. One of the guys, in a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses, tells me to fuck off before they floor it and squeal through the light as it turns green.

“Great. I’m my dad,” I grumble.

I’m aware of Jackie’s eyes on me as I swing into the nearest restaurant—a Dairy Queen. I shut off the engine, resting my head back on the seat, and wait for Jackie to lay into me. She’s silent so long, I begin to wonder if she’s still sitting there. I turn my head. Yup. Still there.

“Hungry?” she asks.

“A little.” My stomach has been a barren plain for about an hour. It’s not the only thing wrong, and I suspect she knows that. But she lets me off the hook, which is decidedly not couple-y. Could I have overreacted more?

“Let’s go in and get chicken baskets and Blizzards.” She unhooks her seatbelt and climbs out, leaning back in to say, “I’m not sharing my fries.”

An hour later I deposit Jackie at her doorstep.

“Sorry, Butler. I was…” There’s no good excuse, so I don’t finish that sentence. The only truth I could offer would be to say that I was an asshole—as big of an asshole as any other guy who gets in too deep too fast and can’t deal with his emotions. We really are a bunch of apes sometimes.

“Thanks for lunch,” she says, her Reese’s Pieces Blizzard with peanut butter and chocolate swirls in hand.

“I’ll text you.”

I wait until she steps into her apartment to put my car in drive. As I pull away, I notice two things. One, J.T. is shuffling through a stack of mail in front of his apartment, and two, I didn’t kiss Jackie goodbye.