Part of Your World(12)

I was still laughing about the funeral flowers. “I didn’t even get his number,” I said.

“You get his name?”

“Yeah. His first one.”

She shrugged. “So go find him. You said the town is small. How hard can it be?”

I didn’t answer her.

“Was the sex good?” she asked.

I scoffed. “The sex was incredible. In-credible. He did this thing where he lifted me against a wall,” I whispered. “We went three times. He was back up in under two minutes flat. I got tired before he did, and he was doing all the work.”

“See, that’s some twenty-eight-year-old shit right there. You think your cognac-drinking, receding-hairline, pushing-fifty-year-old Our Time date is gonna give you that acrobatic sex? He’s not. He threw his back out playing golf.”

I laughed so hard a nurse wheeling someone into a room turned to look at me.

I was still snickering. “Okay, but really though. I can’t. I mean, what the hell am I even doing? What does he have in common with my friends? My family?”

She looked me dead in the eye. “You know you can just fuck him, right?”

I gasped.

“I’m serious. You do not need to marry this man. You can just use him for sex. You are aware of this option?”

“Of course I’m aware of the option,” I whispered. “But it wasn’t like that though. I kind of liked him. He was charming.”

“You had a one-night stand with a man you knew for how long?”

She waited.

“Well?”

I glanced at her. “Three hours.”

She nodded. “Three hours. And it wasn’t like that?” Her face called bullshit. “You are very capable of casual sex, I promise you.”

I blew a breath through my lips.

“So what’s this guy look like?” she asked.

I scoffed. “Scott Eastwood in The Longest Ride, only with a beard. Oh, and he had a baby goat in pajamas.”

“He didn’t.”

“He did.”

Her eyes were wide. “I’d follow a clown into a storm drain if he had a baby goat in pajamas.”

“His hands were rough,” I said, somewhat distantly. “I know it’s weird to say, but I really liked it. He smelled good too. I stole his hoodie.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You stole the man’s hoodie? That’s a serious crime.”

“I’m going to hell, I know.”

I couldn’t stop wearing it. It smelled like him and it smelled good.

My friend Gabby told me once that she sent a blanket over to the breeder where she got her Lab, so the puppy could get used to her smell before he came home. I felt like it was like that. Like I was getting used to Daniel via his sweatshirt pheromones, and he wasn’t even here.

I’d be lying if I said the fading scent wasn’t making me want to go back and smell the real thing…

I seriously couldn’t stop thinking about the sex. I was thinking about it more now, almost a week later, than I had the day after it happened, like I’d developed a taste for it and now I was craving it.

“How old do you have to be to be a cougar?” I asked.

She laughed. “Older than you.”

“I can’t believe I had a one-night stand,” I whispered. “Who am I?”

“You know, it’s only a one-night stand if you don’t go back and do him again.”

I had to cover a snort, and she laughed.

“What? It’s true,” she said.

I shook my head. “There has to be science behind that kind of attraction,” I said quietly. “Something with the genes.”

“That good, huh?”

“That good,” I said, turning to look at her. “And it felt extremely mutual.”

It had been so long since I’d been made to feel like I was irresistible. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I ever had.

I was never this horny with Neil. Well, not unprovoked anyway. Our sexual relationship had always required lots of lead-up. Foreplay and wining and dining. But with Daniel…

It didn’t escape me that I’d wanted to see him naked an hour after meeting him.

I’d pulled out my vibrator last night. The one that a week ago I was perfectly satisfied using as a full replacement for an actual sex life. I stared at that little pink contraption and realized that the one reason why I’d been ready to hang up my dating belt was because I’d never had sex good enough for me to go in pursuit of it. Now I had, and a vibrator wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

It sort of made me wish I’d stayed blissfully ignorant.

“You should have seen how I came home,” I whispered. “I got accosted by a loose pig while I was there—don’t ask. My dress was caked in mud. I had a snout print directly on my ass, goat fur all over me. Then I stepped in a pile of dog poop in my black Manolos. The motion sensor lights went on and I panicked, so I ran and left it there.”

“You left your shoe,” she deadpanned. “Like Cinderella.”

“Yeah. I did. And the hoodie I was wearing was camouflage.”

“So you came home in a muddy two-thousand-dollar dress wearing one shoe and your fuck buddy’s camo hoodie.”