Dance Away with Me(72)

She sneaked into the bathroom. Her reflection stared back at her: dull skin, bloodshot eyes, tense jaw. She looked like hell. She tried to wash away her ballpoint wedding ring, but the ink was too stubborn.

She carried the monitor downstairs and found Ian slouched into the couch with a full tumbler of whiskey. He lifted it toward her in a mock toast. “This is it. You understand that, right? You and Wren are no longer my responsibility.”

She felt an odd tenderness toward him. “Absolutely,” she said. “You’ve done more than enough. I’ll take it from here.”

It was her turn to make a grand gesture. She sat next to him on the couch. Always the seductress. Never the seduced. She slipped one leg over his thighs and straddled him. He curled his palms around her waist. “This would be so much better if you’d stop frowning.”

“I’m not frowning!” Crap. She was frowning. And he was hard. She forced her face to relax. “Better?”

“Marginally.” One of his hands strayed to her hip. “But, Tess, this isn’t a job.”

A loud rap sounded at the door. She jumped, and he glowered. “What now?”

It was nearly ten o’clock. Too late for casual visitors. She gritted her teeth and extracted herself from his lap. “You answer and tell them I’m not a doctor!”

He stalked to the door and opened it.

“Is . . . Tess here?”

The voice was young and male. She looked over Ian’s shoulder and saw four teenage boys standing on the other side. She recognized Ava’s boyfriend, Connor, a good-looking, blond, athletic kid, and Imani’s tall, bespectacled boyfriend, Anthony. The other two she vaguely remembered from the Broken Chimney, a slightly built kid named Noah and a redheaded giant everybody called Psycho.

Connor shoved his hand in his pockets. “Ava . . . She . . . like sent us.”

Tonight? Tess had to do this tonight at the end of what was surely the longest day in history?

“It’s late,” Ian said.

“Could you come back maybe tomorrow?” Tess asked. “Or the next day?”

“Oh, sure . . . Yeah.” They backed off so quickly she knew they’d never come back.

“Wait.” They were already at the end of the walk.

Ian groaned. At the same time, he moved aside, whispering in her ear as he let them in. “Worst idea yet.”

*

They shuffled toward the two couches but jammed themselves into only one of them. The four of them were all gangly legs and arms they didn’t seem to know what to do with. Ian was right. This would only bring her more trouble. “Do your parents know you’re here? Never mind. Of course they don’t.”

Each of them developed a passionate interest in his feet.

She struggled between her duty and her sense of self-preservation. Duty won. Unlike the girls, this might be her only chance with these boys, and she needed a quick icebreaker. “Let’s get this out of the way first. Stop worrying about your penis size, okay? Bigger isn’t always better. Right, Ian?”

He came to a screeching halt in his stealthy journey toward the stairs. The grooves in his forehead grew into highway ditches. She must be punch-drunk from the day because she didn’t have much trouble mustering her brightest, most chipper smile. “Bigger, smaller . . . Everyone’s is different, and they all tend to work equally well, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t dream of contradicting you,” he said, in a way that told he’d very much like to contradict her about a lot of things, especially her intention to draw him into this discussion.

“Could you find some paper and pencils for these guys.”

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.” He didn’t even try to rein in his sarcasm.

The boys would be more reticent to open up than the girls, and she needed an efficient way to cover the essentials and get them out of here. “Write down all your questions, no matter how stupid you think they might be. Disguise your handwriting if you want.”

The giant who called himself Psycho snorted, but after Ian handed them paper from the kitchen grocery pad, they began scribbling. She picked up the monitor to check on Wren and heard the reassuring sound of baby snorts. She walked across the room and positioned herself between Ian and the stairs so he couldn’t escape. He saw her game and bent down to whisper in her ear. “I have a couple of questions.”

“I’ll give you a copy of my pamphlet,” she whispered back.

“That’s nice of you, but . . . I was wondering . . .” His gaze was deliberately perverse. “How big is too big?”

He’d gotten the best of her, and she hurried over to collect the boys’ questions.

What if your penis gets stuck?

How many inches really is too small? For real?

Is it bad if you fart when you’re doing it?

How do lesbians have sex?

How many times can you jack off without being a pervert?

“Great questions, guys,” she said with a straight face. “But too much for us to cover tonight, so let’s start with the most important stuff.” She sat on the couch across from them. “First. You don’t have to do it just because you think you should or because you think everybody else is. Having sex before you’re ready is a sign of immaturity. There are a thousand good reasons to wait.”