The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(41)

“Don’t start. Oatmeal’s a good, solid breakfast. Protein and fiber. You can’t get that from a pancake or a waffle, and if I start my day with syrup, I’m falling asleep by ten. I miss when my body was in its twenties.”

Now I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. “How old—”

“Don’t finish that question.”

“—is the rest of you?”

“Dammit, I told you not to finish that question.”

“Are you an old soul?”

“No. I’m actually a very young soul, but life is working very hard to beat it out of me.” She sighs. “And apparently I’m feeling dramatic this—ow! Bad Skippy.”

“Did he bite you?”

“No. Just a scratch. Like I said. Feeling dramatic. Might do some King Lear on the storytime rug later.”

“Or maybe you need someone to take some stress off you.”

“Sometimes I think letting someone else help run my life would be more stressful. It’s easier to go grab Hudson’s Mr. Axolotl when you know the four places he’s most likely to have tossed it aside than it is to walk someone through which corner in the living room or which cabinet in the kitchen he’s likely to have tossed his favorite stuffy. Assuming he hasn’t flushed it down the toilet, since his preschool teacher told him axolotls are amphibians.”

“Ingrid?”

“Yes?”

“I wasn’t talking about someone managing your kids or your life. I was talking about private grown-up time.”

“I—oh.”

There’s a wispy, yearning quality to that oh, and where my cock was semi-hard before, he’s surging to full attention now.

“My kids are going to wake up any minute,” she whispers.

“It’s barely five AM. How early do they usually get up?”

“Six-thirty, but they’ll know.”

“What will they know?”

“If we start having phone sex.”

Yep. Raging hard-on. “That’s an excellent idea.”

“For you,” she grumbles.

“I do the talking. You do the touching.”

“Wait—what?”

“What do you sleep in, Ingrid?”

“I—a T-shirt.”

“What color?”

“It used to be light blue, before The Great School Spirit T-shirt debacle in the wash. Now it’s a dirty gray. Lesson for the ages—never trust black T-shirts that come home from school.”

I love that she has a story for everything. “What does it say?”

“Fuck off, I’m sleeping.”

My dick is raging and trapped in denim because I’m the dumbass who hasn’t changed into my sweats yet—don’t ask—and I’m still smiling like the happiest dude on the planet. “What does it really say?”

She sighs. “It says Mommy Loves You. Zoe’s school did this thing where the kids could go into a bazaar with ten dollars before the holidays her kindergarten year, and she came home with this shirt big enough to fit a grizzly bear, and it’s getting threadbare but it’s legit the softest shirt I’ve ever owned, and—and this is why I never have sex, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry. Dr. Levi’s here to address all your sexual needs.”

There’s a muffled noise, and yeah, I know she’s laughing, and no, I don’t care.

Make a woman come, she’ll remember your name.

Make a woman laugh and come, and you’ve set the standard by which she’ll judge every other man.

I’m not just here for the pussy.

I’m here for the whole package.

There’s a different muffled noise, and it strikes me that she quite possibly has a squirrel watching her as I try to talk my way into phone sex.

Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Got lost in Georgia once and saw a raccoon pulling a dildo down the road.

“Sorry,” Ingrid whispers, though she doesn’t sound sorry in the least. “You caught me off guard. I’m not exactly in practice.”

“I love practice.”

“Maybe you can talk to Piper. She wants to be the next Ares Berger without putting in the—sorry. Not sexy to talk about my kids, is it?”

“They’re your world. But right now, you need to be your world.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“Want help?”

“I’m completely serious. They could walk in any time.”

“If you want to tell me no, tell me no. I promise, I won’t push you. But if you’re using them as an excuse because you’re afraid of wanting something for you…”

I wish I could see her. I want to see her eyes. Her lips. Her body language. Is she quiet because I hit a nerve?

Her breath comes softly over the phone. “That’s a remarkably deeper sentiment than I expected at five in the morning.”

She doesn’t add from you, but I assume it’s there.

Much as she’s willing to talk to me like I’m just a regular guy, there’s no hiding the whole traveled-the-world, got-rich, dated-superstars, lives-large thing.

“My mom still breaks up with guys if she doesn’t think they’re good enough for Tripp and me,” I say.