Laura tried pointedly to ignore her but couldn’t help it. “It itches.”
“Oh, Laura, that is awful. On your boob.”
“Yeah, I know.” She pulled her pants up and went over to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. “How do you think it feels?”
“Well, I don’t know how it feels. I’ve never fucked somebody on the top of a mountain where a bunch of mosquitoes decided to feast on me.” She snickered. “If a mosquito bites you in the ass is that some way...is that nature’s version of oral sex?”
“Oh, stop it.”
“You don’t have any on your, you know—on your hoo-ha?”
“Hoo-ha? Who calls it a hoo-ha?”
Josie fanned herself and faked a southern accent. “You know me. I was raised in Virginia, I’m a good old Southern lady.”
“You’re from Ohio.”
“I was joking.”
“And besides....Lady? Yeah, right. Like you’re a lady.”
“Take some Benadryl for that, you’ll thank me.”
“But Benadryl makes me sleepy.”
“Really? I mean, because, if you don’t do something more drastic you’re going to go to work and you’re going to look like a hyena who ate twenty-five Mexican jumping beans. You’re a lot better off looking like you’re just a little sleepy or hung over on antihistamines.”
Laura thought about that one for a minute. It’s not like she had a really busy work day. Could she just call in sick? Oh, no. The monthly management meeting was today. Shouldn’t really have to do anything, but she had to be there.
“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe if I take some Benadryl, it’ll make it easier to get through the monthly meeting anyhow.”
Josie nodded. “So, Laura,” she laughed. “Was it worth it?”
Laura reached down her V-neck into her bra and found the offending bite, scratching it furiously, knowing full well that at this rate, she was going to break the skin but at least that would give her some sweet relief. “Yeah. It was worth it, but next time I’ll wear a bug spray instead of perfume.”
Mike sat in bed staring up at the ceiling, counting the little holes in the tiles yet again, for what felt like the thousandth time. Actually, it probably was the thousandth time. He’d done it over and over and over ever since Jill died a year and a half ago. Except this time, he was doing it to keep his mind occupied, not to keep his mind distracted.
He was doing it because it was something habitual, something rote, something that he could just slip into so that he didn’t have to deal with the actually messy emotional aftermath of his date with Laura. It had gone so much better than he ever could have expected. He never intended to sleep with her. And he certainly never intended to make love to her at the top of that mountain on that blanket.
Yet he had and he was glad.
The last time he and Jill had made love had been right there. While he wanted to reclaim the space with someone new, he hadn’t planned to do it in quite that manner. Laura moved something inside of him. Her soft curves, her joyful laugh, the way that she focused and her face melted into passion as she came. It all was so overwhelming and too intense.
Mike needed to talk to someone about Laura. How intoxicating. How calm. How lush. How sweet. How—him. It was as if someone had hand-sculpted the perfect woman for him and forgotten to tell him that this was what he really wanted. No, she wasn’t Jill. And no one ever would be Jill. That was OK, because it had to be OK. He didn’t have a choice.
Always assuming he would never, ever fall in love again, Mike hadn’t considered the idea that he might find a different love—one that was no more, nor less, than what he and Dylan had with Jill. Could life with Laura be as good? Better? Different? The sex had been astounding, though he could do without the damn mosquito bites. Next time he would take her to his cabin.
Next time. He didn’t care that he was getting ahead of himself. But then...Dylan probably thought he had a next time, and Laura had shut him out. What was that about? He knew Dylan was tormented by her silence, but he couldn’t exactly ask her about it, now, could he? Not without blowing his cover. Cover? What the hell, Mike? he asked himself. This wasn’t some CIA movie or FBI plot. He wasn’t the center of a sting operation or an undercover drug bust.
He was, however, being deceitful, and that felt very, very wrong. Laura had no idea that he and Dylan were a— what? What were they, exactly? Explaining their relationship hadn’t been an issue with Jill. They just fell into their life as a threesome, as uncomplicated and easily as any other twosome. He and Dylan weren’t gay. Not quite. But they weren’t straight, either. They had tried, before Jill, to each date separate women but that first encounter, back in high school, where they both lost their virginity to the same girl, had cemented their needs. What they wanted was the power of three, and it made them both complete.