Hitched(25)

“We’re still practicing,” Blake says with a wink.

All three of the sun visor brigade fan themselves.

“I would be too if I was hitched up to you,” Eunice says.

“Mm-hmm,” the other two agree.

“That’s my son you’re talking to. In front of his wife,” Minnie O’Dell warns from the next table over.

“You think Tucker will ever propose?” Emma June asks Ruthie May with a sigh.

“Honey, I know what you see in that boy, but the smarts to buy a ring ain’t it.”

“We’re starting with the green cards,” Cassie yells, and the room falls silent as we all bend over our cards.

“Holy shit, we have like eight of these,” Blake mutters.

“Each,” I agree. “You don’t go to Happy Cat bingo and not play the hell out of Happy Cat bingo.”

“Usually I do sixteen on my own,” Greta says with a pout, “but they wouldn’t let me on account of there being so many people here tonight.”

“So you two haven’t ever played bingo together before?” Dean asks. “Interesting.”

“We haven’t gone bungee jumping or cow tipping together either, in case you’re taking notes,” Blake replies. “That’s next week.”

I almost poke him, but we’re playing happy newlyweds. “I can’t wait, honey-bear.”

“B-Four!” Cassie calls with the help of the snuffling hedgehogs.

“And after!” the whole room choruses back.

I should be up walking around with Ryan, Jace, and Olivia—and the baby, of course—making sure no one’s dabbers are out of ink or diving in with a towel if someone spills a drink on the cards or chasing George Cooney off the cake table, since the trash panda has just climbed up on top of it and looks ready to dive in.

George is a common sight around town, but I’ve never seen him at bingo before.

“Did Ryan mention if George Cooney was feeling better today?” I ask Blake as Ryan scoops the massive animal off the cake table and carries him to the door.

George chitters.

“Hush, you overgrown trash panda. We don’t eat other people’s wedding cake,” Ryan chides.

“Just said he had the burps,” Blake replies. “Why?”

“Cassie said he had too much peanut butter yesterday. We were worried.”

“Ah. Pretty sure he survived.”

“Shh!” the sun visor brigade hisses at us.

“G-Forty-seven!” Cassie says.

We manage to lose on the green cards, the red cards, the yellow cards, and the purple cards. Gordon wins a Sunshine Toys starter pack with a dildo, a vibrator, anal beads, and lube in it. Eunice wins a toy of the month subscription. Mrs. O’Dell wins the lube sample pack and a gift certificate to a lingerie store in Atlanta.

And while I’m sitting there with friends, playing bingo to win sex toys, I start to relax and slip into a new pattern with Blake.

He reaches over to mark an O-Sixty-nine that I missed. I press my red dabber to his nose, and soon we’re both laughing and acting like teenagers as he tries to pay me back.

But that’s not his end goal.

Oh, no.

The man fakes me out with the dabber and gets me with a sneak kiss attack while someone across the room yells out a loud Bingo!

“Hmm,” Dean mutters from the table behind us. “This is gonna be harder than Kyle said it would be.”

We’re doing it!

We’re selling our marriage.

That, as much as anything, puts a real smile on my face.

“Blue cards, people! Grand prize time,” Cassie calls.

Ryan struts to the front of the room and walks the purple dildo around, Vanna White-style.

“Somebody’s going home really lucky tonight,” Ruthie May says. “That’s our most popular vibrating dildo. It can really work out some kinks, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s totally my favorite,” Emma June agrees.

“I tried it once and it overheated my cooch,” Phoebe says. She’s the smallest of the bunch—no more than five feet tall, and maybe ninety-five pounds—with smile lines creasing her elfin face.

Ruthie May gasps. “Uh, it’s not supposed to do that. Do you still have it? Our lab technicians might need to take a look.”

“Wasn’t the dildo’s fault. I was storing it over my oven. I spent all day Thanksgiving baking. By the time everyone finally left, I was ready to de-stress. But the oven was still on, so that sucker was about a hundred and forty degrees when I stuck it up the ol’ biscuit basket.”

Now we all gasp.

And she grins. “Just kidding. Not a dildo girl, never have been. They aren’t up to handling all this sexiness.”

“I-Seventeen,” Cassie calls, and we all breathe a sigh of relief and turn our focus back to our bingo cards.

Blake absently rubs his thumb over my arm just below my shirt sleeve, and I’m not actually certain it’s absently. Because he has a gleam in his eyes, and he hasn’t asked me to say three more nice things about him, though I know he hasn’t forgotten.

He wouldn’t forget.

Blake remembers everything, which is one of the things I really like about him, though I’m not quite ready to confess that just yet.