“Before we fucked. It’s okay to say it, you know.”
“Before we fucked,” I say, trying to say every syllable as precisely as I can to show I’m unafraid. “I understand how to talk to you. But I don’t know what the rules are for the physical parts of this. How do we know if or when we’re going to do it again? Who can touch whom and in what contexts? I’ve never done the casual-sex thing. And you do it constantly. I need guidance so I don’t get it wrong and do irreparable damage to our friendship.”
“I do itconstantly?” He huff-laughs. “Just how much game do you think I have?”
“Hollis. Please. Tell me the rules.”
“The rules?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He dips his head to position his lips close to my ear. His voice is low, intimate. “Rule one. Open communication—always. For example, if I want to get you out of this nice dress that Connie thought you might want to wear for the parade today, and then make you come on my tongue, I will communicate that to you and ask if that’s something you’re up for. And then you will say yes or no or maybe propose something different. Consent is never assumed, and we can each change our minds at any time and for any reason.”
“W-what’s rule two?”
“Rule two is be safe. And rule three is have fun. That’s about it.” He lightly nibbles my earlobe. “So what do you say, Mill? Can I find out how you taste?”
I squeeze my eyes closed, overwhelmed by the liquid heat pooling between my legs. “Oh. Shit. I thought that was hypothetical.”
“No, I meant it as an actual right-now proposition.”
“Oh.”It’s only complicated if you make it complicated. Dani’s text flashes in my brain. I wait for Mrs. Nash’s words to do the same, my memory searching for some past advice that might apply enough to act as the angel to the devil Dani on my shoulder. But the only thing I find isalways do what is right for you.And what is right for me at this moment—according to my body, if not my brain—is Hollis’s mouth. I reach back and grab his wrist, then turn it so I can read the time on his watch. Hours and hours still before I have to be ready for the parade. “Yes, I am amenable to that.”
The dress’s zipper slides back down, this time with Hollis’s lips on the back of my neck and his other hand caressing my exposed skin. With a little shimmying, the green fabric puddles at my feet.
“Is this you finally being nice?” I ask.
“No,” he whispers into my ear. “This is me being extremely, extremely selfish.”
I’m fully naked with little fanfare, Hollis pausing only long enough to confirm that yes, those are dogs wearing sunglasses printed on my underwear. He guides me toward the bed, gently pushing me onto my back before dragging me by the hips to the edge of the mattress. After setting his glasses on the chest at the foot of the bed, his tongue skims along my inner thigh and makes my legs turn to jelly in anticipation. But inches from his ultimate destination, he pauses and stands abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. This is really not the reaction you want someone having when confronted with your vagina.
“Sorry. I was raised Southern Baptist and I...” Hollis mutters as he climbs onto the bed behind me and reaches up. “Can’t with the... them staring.” He flips the Jesus paintings over, thenmoves on to the next grouping of them, and the next, until all twenty-five have been forced to avert their eyes.
I laugh the entire time, deep belly laughs as he frowns in his very Hollis way as he encounters each one. “Now,” he says when he sinks to his knees beside the bed again, “let’s make that worth the trouble it’s going to be to flip them all back around again.”
13
•••••
My two favorite things about the Gadsley Broccoli Festival parade are that the procession is short, so I will be able to hear the marching band playing “Tusk” behind me the entire time, and that someone has given me a silkyParade Grand Marshalsash and a flower crown with broccoli florets tucked into the arrangement.
“Look!” I call to Hollis from my place in the back of the white convertible as we wait in the staging area. I point to my head. “Do you get it?”
“No,” he says. He’s standing a few feet away on the sidewalk, his arms crossed over his chest, frown firmly in place. For a man who got laid not two hours ago, he sure looks grumpy again. It’s actually kind of impressive how dedicated he is to being a curmudgeon.
“It’s abroccoli crown!”
He shrugs as if to sayso what?
“The way broccoli is harvested, you know, like the bunches. That’s called a crown. So it’s a pun.”
Hollis rolls his eyes.
“Maybe you’d have known that if you hadn’t unsubscribed from Broccoli Facts,” I say just as the car dealership owner driving the convertible turns the key in the ignition. That at least tugs at the corners of Hollis’s lips.
No doubt he’s remembering this morning. After he brought me to orgasm with his mouth, he told me not to worry about him even though it was obvious he was hard. So when he began turning the paintings above the bed back around, I grabbed for my phone and texted him that California is the United States’s primary producer of broccoli. He read the text and got the stormiest, sexiest look on his face.
