Mister Moneybags(53)

“Do you sleep in the same bed?”

My eyes widened. “Faith! What kind of a question is that?”

She ignored me and continued to speak to Dex. “When I go to Aunt Bee’s house, she lets me sleep in her bed. When Daddy goes away for work, Mommy lets me sleep in her bed. If you’re going to sleep in Aunt Bee’s bed, then I’m going to have to sleep on the floor.”

Dex’s lip twitched, but he answered her with sincerity. “You won’t have to sleep on the floor.”

“Are you going to marry Aunt Bee?”

Dex responded before I could. “If I’m lucky, maybe someday.”

“Could I be the flower girl? Cause there’s only one, and my sister picks her nose. So you don’t want her.”

I started to laugh, until I realized that Hope had walked in and overheard her sister. “I do not pick my nose anymore!”

Faith leaned in with a devilish smile and whispered to Dex, “She stopped yesterday.” These girls were going to be hellions when they were teenagers.

Dinner was a myriad of spills and arguments between the angel and devil. In between, Mom and Dex talked a lot. He was definitely a charmer, and it was interesting to see him in action. She’d put on an old Duke Ellington CD for background music during dinner, and he’d quickly picked up on her affinity for jazz music. Then he won her over by spouting off his favorite songs by jazz artists like Lester Young and Bill Evans, both of whom I’d never heard of. By the time dinner was over, Dex’s last name could have been Manson, and I wouldn’t have been worried. He’d insisted that Mom and I sit down while he and the girls cleaned up. The entire scene was comical to watch. We sipped wine while he took turns lifting the girls to put dishes up in the cabinets. If I didn’t know better, I’d have even thought he had the ability to tame wild beast four-year-olds.

“I like him. He seems genuine,” Mom said.

Dex was bending over to load something into the dishwasher, and my eyes were glued to the way his jeans hugged his firm ass. “I like him, too.”

I was mid-sip, still ogling the view when Mom sighed. “Does he have a nice father for your dear old mom?”

I choked, coughing some of my wine through my nose. It burned like hell.

Mom laughed when I finally stopped sputtering and caught my breath. “What? I’m old. Not dead.”

On the ride back to my apartment, I let Dex get to second base. We laughed as he discreetly felt me up in the back of the Town Car. He even managed to drop his head and take the taste he wanted while somehow shielding me from the driver and passing vehicles. Who knew how many uses a sports jacket could have?

When we pulled up to my apartment, I noticed there was a considerable bulge in his pants. “Do you want to…come inside?”

“That depends on what you’re inviting me to come inside of. Are you asking me up and I’m not allowed to touch you, or are you asking me to come inside.”

My body wanted the latter more than I could explain. I squeezed my thighs together to quell the desire burning between my own legs. Yet…I just wasn’t ready to go there with Dex. It wasn’t that I was holding back because I didn’t trust him anymore—my heart seemed to have moved past the distrust that he’d initially made me feel. Instead…I was realizing that having sex with Dex was going to mean something…possibly something monumental in my life. And maybe I was just a little scared. I turned to him. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone.”

Dex looked into my eyes. “That’s good. Because the feeling is mutual. Although I’m sensing that wasn’t the end of your statement. That there’s a but coming…”

I smiled. “I wish there wasn’t. It’s just…” I had no idea how to put what I was feeling inside into words. I was confused by my own emotions, so it made explaining things pretty difficult.

I’d looked down, trying to gather my thoughts into coherent sentences, and Dex put two fingers under my chin and lifted until our eyes met. “I’ll wait as long as it takes. It doesn’t matter why you aren’t ready. I’ll be here when you are.”

“Thank you.”

We made out for a while after Dex walked me to the door, but he made no attempt to come in. When we finally said goodbye, I leaned my head against the closed door and listened to his footsteps as they walked away until I couldn’t hear them anymore. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but a flash of my dad the night he moved out came back to me in that moment. I was sitting in my room crying while he was making trips back and forth carrying boxes to his car. I didn’t want to see him, but I also couldn’t bring myself to stop listening for him either. I remembered listening to his feet clank against the tile of the hall floor with every trip he made. The last time he went out to his car, I didn’t realize it would be his last trip. I’d listened to his footsteps as he walked to the door, the sound becoming more and more distant. Then I waited for the sound to come back again. It never did. He never walked into our house again. He was gone.