“Hey, we’re not talking aboutmyboyfriend. We’re talking about yours.” Praying the ibuprofen kicks in soon, I shift on the couch, my hips and lower back now grouchy. My mouth curves into a wide smile, hopefully hiding my physical discomfort.
I put my laptop on the coffee table and push to my feet. I need to get moving, and then I’ll be fine. “I’m going to check on things out front. Enjoy your break.”
I hurry from the room before she can say anything more about Joseph or Garrett.
It’s midafternoon, and the café is still busy. And once tourist season is in full force, Picnic & Treats will only get that much crazier—the ultimate dream of every small-business owner.
The tables along one wall have been rearranged for the weekly book club meeting currently underway. But the group of ten women has grown steadily in the past few months, resulting in the noise level, with everyone in the café competing to be heard, increasing exponentially.
What I need is a separate room for small groups like the book club, but there’s no space for one.
I walk to the tables by the window to see how Rose, Delores, and Samantha are doing. They like to sit near the book club to listen in, even though they aren’t members of it. I’ve known the three women for most of my life, and they are regular fixtures here. Rose is the grandmother of one of my closest female friends, and she’s currently wearing a hot-pink T-shirt proclaiming that she’s The Hot Grandmother.
Mimi would have loved the three women if she had ever ventured to Oregon. She’d preferred life in New Orleans and Louisiana, even after Katrina’s devastation. “Nothin’ like the vengeance of an angry woman to put a man in his place,” she would frequently say.
I chuckle to myself at the memory. A woman walks past the window, her red umbrella protecting her from the light rain. She’s probably happy Mother Nature isn’t being vengeful right now.
“How’s it going?” I ask Rose, Delores, and Samantha. My voice is loud enough to be heard over the book club’s discussion, the pitch suitably low for the women’s age-diminished hearing.
Mischief sparkles in their eyes, and I brace myself for whatever they’re going to say. You never know with them. “Have you read the book they’re talking about?Before I Let Goby Kennedy Ryan.” Rose directs the question to me, referring to the novel the book club is discussing.
“Yes. I love anything by Kennedy.” No one knows how to write spicy scenes like she does. Her stories are Kahlua in hot chocolate, like cozying up under a blanket on a rainy day.
“So you know Yasmen, the heroine, does yoga?” Delores pipes in.
I nod, unsure where any of this is going.
“Did you know yoga is great for improving your sex life?” Rose’s eyebrows bounce up her forehead.
“Er…sure,” is all I can think to say. Joseph and I haven’t had sex yet. He told me he’s waiting for the right time; he’s old-fashioned that way.
Keshia’s words from the staff room flash in my head like a flickering neon sign.Boring. That’s what she’d called him.
Oh, Lord, please tell me he’s not that way in bed.
I pick up Rose’s empty coffee mug. “Are you telling me I should practice yoga?”
Rose flashes me a sassy grin. “Do you want to have a great sex life?”
A hearty laugh erupts over my lips. “I’ll take that into consideration. You make a compelling argument for slotting it into my schedule. Yoga, I mean.” My busy schedule doesn’t exactly have time for things like yoga.
Or sex, apparently.
I return to the kitchen with their empty mugs and place them in the dishwasher. Two years ago. That was the last time I had sex, if I don’t count the vibrator stored in my bedside drawer, which died a year ago. I can’t even remember the last time I had an orgasm.
Joesph and I have been dating for two months now. How much longer will we have to wait for the perfect time? Surely he can find the romance in consummating our relationship if he can find excitement in fixing accounting errors.
Maybe it’s time we move things up a notch—starting tonight. Maybe it’s time the drought finally comes to an end.
3
GARRETT
“She’s absolutely, definitely,notmine.”Anger and annoyance heat my words, bring them to a boil.
The toddler whimpers, her eyes round, and she buries her face in the woman’s chest again.
Shit. I hadn’t meant to scare her.
