Jane Doe(50)

“I think it would be nice to be a wife. And a mom. My mom never got to stay home with me.”

“Yeah, she probably put you right into day care, huh?”

“She had to work.”

“Sure. But if you had a good, steady guy like me, you’d want to do it right, wouldn’t you? Take care of our kids. Take care of my house.”

His house. Of course. “I’d love that,” I whisper.

He sets down his beer to frame my face with his hands, and the fingers on my left cheek are freezing and wet. I try my best to look dreamy. “You deserve that, Jane. You just need the right guy to make it happen.”

“Is that you?” I ask softly.

“I think it could be. Are you the right girl?”

I sigh. “I hope so.”

“Demure,” he says, then kisses me gently. “Sweet.” Another kiss. “Godly.”

A strange thing to say when I can feel his erection against my belly, but everyone has their turn-ons.

“I love you,” I murmur against his mouth.

He kisses me again, then heads out to cook up some red meat.

I take my second beer to the couch and put my feet up. We’ll both enjoy this more if I’m tipsy. He’ll feel like he’s taking advantage of me, and I might be drunk enough to enjoy it.

The pills won’t hit him for an hour. We’ll have plenty of time to consummate our love.

Sure enough, we’re done with our burgers in fifteen minutes and Steven is giving me a tour of his house. It’s obviously going to end with his bedroom. I ooh and aah over the judo memorabilia and ask if I can come watch him spar sometime. “It must be so sexy,” I purr, “watching you fight another man like that.”

“Then you can definitely come watch sometime.”

He leads me to the bedroom and begins edging me toward the bed as he kisses me. His hands go for the flimsy buttons of my dress, and I remember that I had to find a new button for that last one he popped. “Let me see you, baby,” he whispers. He sits on the end of the mattress and unfastens two more buttons.

I ease my dress off my shoulders, still holding it up, as if I’m shy.

“That’s it. Take it off.”

I let it drop to the floor.

“Oh yeah. Look at you.” He’s still fully dressed, and if I were really as shy as I pretend to be, I’d feel vulnerable right now, presenting my body to him for approval. “God, these panties.” He slides his hands around my back and straight down my underwear to cup my ass. “So hot,” he whispers.

“You like them?”

“Hell yeah I do. Did you pick them out for me?”

I nod.

“A dirty little secret for your man?”

“That’s right.”

“Take off your bra.”

I reach back and unclasp the strap, then cup the fabric to me and wait for him to push my hands aside. He does. He doesn’t compliment my breasts; he just paws at them for a while. I know they’re not exactly what he likes, but they’re here, so good enough.

Surprise, surprise, there’s not much foreplay. We climb under the covers and we have sex. I try for hesitant warmth, eager to please him even though I feel ashamed about it all.

He’s not the worst I’ve had, but he’s in the bottom quarter. Halfway decent lay, terrible lover. He doesn’t even make a reluctant offer to go down on me.

Afterward I snuggle close and stroke the sparse hairs of his chest as if I can’t get enough of touching him. One minute later he’s snoring.

Unsure if it’s the drugs or just a male postcoital nap, I say his name a few times. He grunts something as if he’s trying to answer but can’t rouse himself. I nudge him. He snorts and then settles back into a deep sleep.

The pills were only antihistamines, but allergy drugs are a surprisingly effective sedative when you mix them with alcohol. There are warnings about it on the package, but the mixture is one of my favorite antidotes to my own bouts of restlessness. I only take two, though, and I chase mine with cocktails instead of dropping them in beer. He’ll hopefully sleep like an exhausted child for a good eight hours and wake pretty refreshed. Unless he has a heart condition.

I get up and walk naked through his house to retrieve his phone from the living room. I’ll enjoy this video later, watching myself move free and languid like a feline through his rooms. I take the phone back to bed and use his limp hand to access the fingerprint lock. It’s cozy here, and I settle beneath the sheets to explore his life as he sleeps deeply beside me.

Text messages first.

I read through several weeks’ worth of conversations with his dad, but they’re all wholesome as hell. Nothing good there, aside from access to his dad’s number, which I transfer to my own phone.

There’s no need to view my own conversations with him, so I move on to “Ted.” It looks like Ted is his little brother. I don’t remember hearing his name, but the texts are mostly about Dad, with Steven haranguing his brother for not bringing his kids to the church often enough. Ted wants to, but it’s nearly an hour drive for them, and Bethenny is still struggling with the postpartum even though the little one is ten months old now.

Steven helpfully advises that spending time praying with Dad could go a long way toward helping her buck up. So understanding.