Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 106538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Two girls and a guy. He couldn’t stick to vanilla porn. How am I supposed to have a talk about the birds and the bees with a bee and two birds?
“Before I talk about sex with you, maybe I should ask how much you already know.”
“I know about sex.” She rolls her eyes.
Do I quiz her to make sure? Do I ask where she learned it?
With a slow nod, I map out this conversation when I should be punting it to Amos. “Well, sex is how babies are made—”
“Dad! Duh.”
“You didn’t let me finish.” I cross my arms over my chest. “People—adults—married adults sometimes have sex because they love each other, and it’s a way to bond.” I uncross my arms and lace my fingers behind my head. This is not what I had planned for today. “And it can feel good,” I continue. “However, some people also enjoy watching it, like how I used to play football, but now I just watch it.”
Dear god. Did I just make sex a spectator sport in my daughter’s eyes?
“What I mean is—”
“So Pa doesn’t have sex anymore, he just watches it?”
Make it stop!
“Sometimes. Not very often. And only when he’s alone and needs to”—I rub my forehead—“relax.”
When this train wreck of a conversation ends, I need to clear shelf space for my Worst Dad of the Year trophy. She’s ten. I’m sure there are books on this, but what should I say? I’ll get back to you.
“Okay,” Lola says with a shrug.
Okay? That’s it? We’re done?
“Are you going to help me do yard work today?” I ask, grasping for any change in subject.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
She frowns.
“Do you want me to heat a breakfast burrito for you?”
“Dad, I think doughnuts go with yard work.”
“Nice try. What if pizza for dinner goes with yard work?”
“Cinnamon breadsticks for dessert?”
“That can be arranged.”
“Fine. I’ll help.”
“Attagirl.” I shut her door and head upstairs to kill Amos.
Chapter Seven
Maren
“We need to clean the house,” Calvin “Fitz” Fitzgerald says the second I open my bedroom door in the morning. With the bucket of supplies in his hand, he rounds the corner into his and Will’s bathroom. He’s my grumpy roommate, but he’s marrying a sunshine, so he’ll even out.
“This means my BFF is coming home!” I clap my hands several times before propping myself against the doorframe.
Fitz eyes me over his shoulder while squeezing cleaner into the toilet bowl. Over six feet tall, with thick brown hair, blue eyes, and a sexy scowl, Fitz could be a centerfold for a firefighter calendar, just like Will. But his personality isn’t as sexy. He’s a smoke jumper who would rather read a book than socialize.
“I think she’s my BFF,” he mumbles.
“She’s your fiancée.”
“Can’t she be both?”
“No.” I smirk. “When will she be here?”
“Any minute.”
I laugh. “Thanks for the short notice. She’s going to have to deal with my messy bathroom mirror. Is Will awake?”
“He didn’t come home last night.” Fitz scrubs the hell out of the toilet. His fiancée, Jamie, loves a clean house. When she lived here full time, she was the cleaning drill sergeant.
“Are we worried that he’s been in a car accident, or are we happy he got laid?” I ask.
“Nah, we would have heard about an accident by now. He probably stayed at the firehouse to make us think he got laid.”
I giggle. “You’re so mean.”
The front door creaks open.
“She’s here,” I whisper, eyes wide.
Fitz stands, drops the toilet brush into the bucket of supplies, and quickly washes his hands. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce for an hour or two?”
“Why?”
He glances up at my reflection in the mirror and smirks. “It’s about to get loud.”
I roll my eyes. “Why don’t you have your loud sex in the shed?”
“My bed is bigger.”
The creaky stairs alert us to Jamie’s proximity.
“There’s my BFF!” I meet her at the top of the stairs with a bear hug. Jamie’s a travel nurse, enjoying the rest of her twenties and the opportunity to explore new places before marrying Fitz and starting a family. They spend most of the winter together; then she takes assignments when it’s fire season. But she agreed to a six-week position at a psych hospital in Seattle before the start of fire season because the pay was too good to pass up.
And because I like to make my friends squirm, I keep a firm hold on Jamie, knowing she’s dying to be in Fitz’s arms and his bed after six weeks apart.
Fitz pries her from my hold.
Jamie giggles. “Missed you, too, Maren. How have—”
Fitz smashes his mouth to hers, hands tangled in her long black hair, a few inches longer than when I met her.
She moans, and he walks her backward into his bedroom and kicks the door shut. Then the door makes a thunk sound like something hit it.