She picked up Mick, who was yipping happily at her feet and wagging his entire butt, and started kissing his head and…Was he jealous of a dog?
“A pumpkin chiffon pie from Pearl’s, a bottle of wine, some doggie treats, and…” She nodded toward the bag in his right hand. “Look in that one.”
He pulled out a box of condoms and chuckled. “Extra large. You flatter me.”
“Oh, come on.”
He shrugged. He had bought some, too. The same kind, in fact.
“I’m actually a little scared of that thing.”
Was she talking about his dick? He furrowed his brow.
“I mean, I’m kind of shrimpy.” She laughed, but not like she had yesterday. This laughter seemed a bit forced. “And you’re kind of…not shrimpy.” She grimaced jokingly. “And it’s been a while.”
“Nora.” He stepped in front of her so he could look at her. God. He would attend the Mermaid Parade every day for the rest of his life and make small talk with the whole goddamn town before he would want Nora to do something she didn’t want to do. “You’re here for dinner. Nothing else has to happen.”
“I know.” She rolled her eyes as she came to a halt—he was blocking her path. “I mean, I’m here for dinner and for…everything else. I really am. I’m just…”
He didn’t like this. The Nora he knew was decisive. She didn’t let sentences trail off. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. “What?” he said, as gently as he could. Then, realizing that staring at her super intensely probably wasn’t helping the cause of getting her to feel comfortable talking about what was bothering her, he continued walking toward the cottage.
He wanted to grab her hand, but that was another thing that wasn’t called for. They’d only done it last time as a practical means to keep together as they’d run away from Karl. They were friends who were sleeping together—or friends who had slept together once, past tense, because he wasn’t going to push her here—and there was no reason to hold hands.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as gently as he could.
She blew out a breath. “I’m having a crisis of confidence, to be honest. I was with Rufus for five years.” She snorted. “And unlike him, I never slept with anyone else in those five years.”
He held up his free hand, but in a joking way, because he thought it would lighten the mood and that she might appreciate that. “Do not speak her name. You are way perkier than she is.”
She smiled. “Anyway, yesterday just sort of happened, but this is…premeditated. Which has left a lot of space for me to ponder the idea that I haven’t slept with anyone else besides Rufus for five years, and you know…” More trailing off. He hated that. But he had to let her finish. “In retrospect, I guess I wasn’t doing it for him.”
Oh God. Someone should just reach into his chest and pull his heart out right now. Stomp on it and throw it in the trash. Because this woman thought she was not sexy. He tilted his head and his neck cracked. Which seemed appropriate because he felt like he was going into battle.
“Yesterday aside, I haven’t slept with anyone since my ex-wife.” He wasn’t sure what his point was. Unlike her, he wasn’t feeling insecure so much as incredibly turned on, but he wanted her to know that this was a big deal for him, too.
Even though it wasn’t a big deal. Because they were just friends.
It had been a while for him, was the point. A long while. “And we didn’t sleep together in the six months between when Jude died and she left. So it’s been almost four years for me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“How come?”
“How come we didn’t sleep together the last six months, or how come I haven’t slept with anyone since?”
“Either. Both.” She stopped walking, so he did, too. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“No, I’ll tell you the whole sordid story if you want to hear it.”
That seemed to cheer her. She smiled and started walking again. “Can we grill fish and talk about our sexual insecurities?”
“We can.” The answer was immediate and instinctive, which was weird because if you had asked him to make a list of things he wanted to talk about with Nora or anyone else, sexual insecurities would have been dead last.
“I mean, is that allowed? Even if we’re going to be friends with benefits, we’re still friends, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And friends talk about this stuff.”
He shrugged. He didn’t talk about this stuff with Sawyer and Law, at least since the ill-fated get-a-phone-so-you-can-get-on-hookup-apps intervention of two years ago.
“You’re thinking you don’t talk about this stuff with Sawyer and Law.” She was reading his mind. He chuckled. She kept talking. “Yeah. Don’t listen to me. I don’t even know what the bases are.”
“I already told you, first base is rolling around nearly naked in a pink room. Second base is talking about your sexual insecurities while grilling fish.”
“I thought second base was sex on the beach with condoms.”
He made a face. “Who told you that? That’s not right. Second base is talking about your sexual insecurities while grilling fish. Everybody knows that.” Mick, who had run ahead of them, circled back and started barking. “See, even Mick knows that.”
If someone had asked Nora, yesterday morning during the Anti-Festival, what she would be doing the following evening, the last thing she would have said was that she would be grilling fish with Jake Ramsey and talking about how they lost their virginity.
“I had some girlfriends when I was younger,” Jake said as he laid the fish on the grill. “Like, high school stuff. But really, it all started with Mrs. Robinson.”
“She wasn’t really named Mrs. Robinson, was she?”
He smiled. “No. Her name was Sarah. And she wasn’t that old. I was seventeen, and she was thirty-four.”
“That’s twice your age! You were a child! Isn’t that technically statutory rape?” She sounded like a scandalized old lady, but she couldn’t help it.
He shrugged. “All I know is I had the summer of my life. And then I took what I’d learned and became a slut.”
Nora cracked up—so much for scandalized. “What does that mean?”
“She was here the summer before my junior year of high school. I met Kerrie the spring of my senior year when her family moved here. But before that, let’s just say I put my Mrs. Robinson–instilled skills to good use.” He came over and sat next to her. “To frequent use.”
“You are terrible!”
“Well, maybe, but I never heard any complaints, if you know what I mean.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Mrs. Robinson taught me well. I got kind of a reputation.”
“So you were a playboy. A player.” He smirked but didn’t deny it. “A slut, like you said.” She cocked her head. “Why do men get to be playboys, but women have to be sluts?”
“That question is above my pay grade, Doc.”
She smiled. “So then what? Kerrie arrives and suddenly you’re cured of your slutty ways?”