Worth the Risk(33)

He takes a step forward. My breath hitches. My eyes close. My body anticipates his touch.

“Then don’t choose me,” he murmurs, but his words hold so much weight that I swear he’s talking about more than the damn contest.

I open my mouth to speak and then close it. The people around us are watching, and I don’t want to fuel the rumor mill that I just unthinkingly kicked into high gear. So, without another word, I turn on my heel and walk out of Hooligan’s.





Last night is a haze.

A goddamn haze in which I’m pretty sure I kissed Sidney. Then she kissed me back. And somewhere along the line, I agreed to be a willing participant in her whole contest.

“Then don’t choose me.”

“Christ.” I run a hand through my hair and sigh.

“You really shouldn’t say that.” I startle at his voice but shouldn’t expect any less. Luke and his habit of standing at the side of the bed and staring until I wake up. “You told me I wasn’t allowed to say that word, so I don’t think it’s fair if you do.”

I prop myself up on one elbow and look his way as I scrub a hand through my hair.

Shit, it’s bright in here.

Can’t say that aloud, either, or the bad-word police is going to get on me again.

“Can I say it?”

“No.” My voice sounds like I drank a fifth of Jack and smoked a pack of cigarettes. The drinking part was possible . . . I don’t quite remember.

“Give me one sec, buddy.” I shove up from the bed—slowly, just in case my stomach wants to retaliate—and then make my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take a piss. When I come back out, Luke has moved into my space on the bed, his black Star Wars pajamas stark against the white sheets.

“Are you stealing my spot?” I ask as I lie beside him. His belly laugh is instant, and he tries to squirm away from my fingers that tickle his sides and poke at his tummy.

“Just keeping it warm,” he says through his laughter.

He clings to me so I’ll stop tickling, and after a few more for good measure, I stop and hug him against me. When will he be too old to do this? When will he fight against hugs and tickling? When will he be too cool for his dad?

I close my eyes and breathe him in. The scent of his shampoo. The way his hair tickles my face. The way he tucks his hands between our chests instead of hugging me back.

And I know it’s going to kill me when that day comes.

“Did you have fun last night?” he asks. “Nana said you were out with a bunch of friends celebrating. What did you do?”

I nod as the fuzzy images clear some. “We, uh, just talked some with friends.”

“We? Were you with a girl?”

“A woman? No. Just friends.”

“Were there girls there?”

“Women,” I correct again. “There were a lot of women there, yes.”

“Did you find me a mom?”

I freeze. “No,” I say through a chuckle, “I didn’t find you a mom.”

“But there were a lot of women there. Did you not like any of their vaginas?”

If I had been drinking water, I would have accidentally just spit it all over the bed. “What?” I cough out the word as I push him away from me. No doubt I must have a crazy expression on my face as I try to control my laughter. “Did I what?” I finally manage.

“Their vaginas.” He says it so very casually, and I know I’ve gone so very wrong somewhere in the equation. “Did you not like them?”

I must open and close my mouth ten times as I follow his eight-year-old train of thought. “Where did you hear that?”

“At school, Sam said that when men like a woman’s vagina, they marry them.” Stupid Sam Hamner and his parents who don’t filter anything from him.

Jesus Christ. I didn’t have a dry mouth a minute ago, but it feels like I just swallowed a bag of cotton balls.

“Do you know what a vagina is?” I finally utter the word. I must turn a thousand shades of red when I do.

He tries to lean back so he can see me, but shit, I can’t look him in the eyes or he’s going to see right through me.

I can tell a woman her pussy feels like heaven. I can dirty talk with the best of them (or so I’ve been told). But having to ask my son if he knows what a vagina is makes me feel like I’m sixteen and fumbling in the dark as I try to figure out what exactly to do with one.

“I heard Sam at school saying women have vaginas and that’s why men marry them.”

“He’s right, girls have vaginas. But a man marries a woman because he loves her and trusts her . . . not because she has a vagina.”

“What does it do?”

I blink several times and realize this is a serious detriment to raising a kid on your own. You think you have it handled and then, wham, you realize you neglected a serious part of it.

“Well, just like boys have penises, girls have vaginas.” Let that be enough of a response that it ends this conversation.

“How are they different? What do they do with them? What are they for?” He leans back and looks me dead in the eyes, innocence shrouded in curiosity.

I clear my throat. And lie. “They are different because boys and girls have to have different parts for the different things they need them for later in life.”