LoveLines

by S. Walden

  “How long were you together?”

  “Two years, give or take,” Bailey replied.

  “Why did it end?”

  “He couldn’t handle my condition. It just became too much. He said I had issues he wasn’t willing to deal with in the long term.”

  “Asshole.”

  Bailey smiled. “It hurt my feelings, but it made sense, too. I know I’m not the easiest person to love . . .”

  “Are you kidding me?” Reece hopped up from the desk and took hold of Bailey’s shoulders. “You’re too easy to love. That’s your real problem. You know how I know that? Because I can’t stay away from you. I just wanna be with you all the time. You’re my favorite person, Bailey. That’s not hard. That’s a cakewalk.”

  “I’m gonna remember those words when you start seeing all of it,” she replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when you move in. And you really see. You may find you’ll have an entirely new perspective about me.”

  “I’ll just love you even more,” Reece said.

  She flooded his heart with those words: “When you move in.” He thought he wouldn’t mind drowning in them. She could hop on her surfboard and paddle out to save him.

  “Do you mean it?” he asked.

  “Mean what?”

  “That I can move in. I mean, do you really want me to?”

  Bailey nodded. “More than anything.”

  “And you promise to give me all the details of this engagement? Because I gotta admit I’m still thrown.”

  She laughed. “Well, it’s not my favorite thing to talk about, but I think you deserve to know. I mean, now that we’re living together.”

  Reece led her out of the office doors.

  “I’m particular,” Bailey said as they stood in the parking lot. “But if we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this right.”

  “Okay.” Reece had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You’re not moving into my house. You’re moving into our house. And I know you don’t have much furniture or anything, but I want what’s important to you to fill the spaces in our home.”

  “That’s really just a tackle box and some books,” Reece said.

  “And that’s fine,” Bailey replied. “What about your stuff in storage?”

  “My tools?”

  Bailey nodded.

  “Where would I put them?”

  “I have a shed. Remember the shed you rebuilt for me? Our shed. Why don’t you move your tools in there?”

  He nodded.

  She could say it and hope it wouldn’t offend him. “I’m . . . I’m adopting you.”

  He stared at her—quiet, serious—and she wished she could take it back.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Say it again,” he demanded.

  She furrowed her brows and repeated the words: “I’m adopting you.”

  “For good?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and picked her up, twirling her in circles in the office parking lot. She laughed and squealed, then sighed into his mouth as he kissed her deeply. Right there. At work. Where they weren’t supposed to be kissing. Where they weren’t supposed to be together at all. He kissed her with one thought: how he would make love to her tonight—do anything she wanted—worship her—because she loved him and wanted to give him a home.

  He set her on her feet and pulled his car keys from his bag.

  “I’ll see you at home,” he said as he walked to his car.

  She stood outside her car, watching as he pulled out of the parking lot. She thought about sharing her world with him, the changes that would come, and she anticipated nothing but fun. That was Reece. Fun. They were about to have so much fun together. But first, she needed to get home. Hers was the only house key.

  But that was about to change.

  ***

  “Can I just say that I’m in love with your boyfriend?” Erica said, rinsing the tomatoes in my kitchen sink.

  She and Noah came over to celebrate Reece moving in. There wasn’t much that was actually moved in considering Reece owned very little, but Noah did help load my storage shed with Reece’s tools, and Erica helped me organize his clothes in my closet. Our closet.

  “I know,” I replied. “He’s pretty great.”

  “He turned me into a professional. I really feel like a businesswoman now,” she said.

  “He’s good like that.”

  Erica’s business, Coastal Color Custom Airbrush Tanning, was in its fourth month of operation. She started slowly by tanning her friends and then using them as referrals to pick up more clients. Once she felt comfortable turning her “little home business” into something more professional, she asked Reece to create an ad campaign for her. She needed a slogan. She needed some advertising posters and banners. She needed a social media presence to spread the word. He helped her with it all, telling her his only payment was that she had to take his side in any future arguments he had with me. She agreed. The bitch.

  “What happens when you get too many clients?” I asked.

  “I hire help,” Erica replied. “Like you.”

  “No way. With my perfectionism, it’d take me five hours to tan someone,” I said.

  Erica chuckled. “You’re right. You’d be awful at it.”

  “I’m just glad you got better,” I said. “I was worried there for a second. How much did you pay for that tanning system, anyway?”

  “You don’t wanna know,” Erica replied.

  We grabbed the salad bowl and potatoes and headed outside. Reece and Noah were at the grill, drinking beer and cooking ribs.

  “About done,” Reece said, tossing his empty bottle in a recycling bin near the back door.

  “Good, ‘cause I’m starved,” Erica replied.

  We sat down to a Southern feast: grilled barbeque ribs, potato salad, fried okra, and a spinach salad on Erica’s insistence.

  “Only healthy thing at this table,” she pointed out.

  We dug into the food while Reece decided it was the perfect time to dig into my past.

  “You three are close, right?” he asked, stabbing a potato with his fork.

  “Sure,” Noah replied. “I’m fucking this one—” He nudged his wife. “—and that one’s practically my sister.” He jabbed a thumb in my direction.

  “So we can talk openly?” Reece asked.

  “What do you mean by ‘openly’?” I replied, feeling a little wary.

  Reece paused and shoved more potato salad in his mouth, holding up his fork while he chewed. The rest of us waited, intrigued.

  He swallowed and continued. “Thirty-one.”

  Noah, Erica, and I all looked at one another.

  “Huh?”

  “The number thirty-one,” he said, looking at me. “You never told me why you dislike it so much.”

  My eyes went wide. “Can we talk about this another time?”

  “Why? Noah and Erica know you better than anyone else, am I right?” Reece asked.

  “That’s true,” Erica said.

  “So I’m sure they already know. But you never told me. And you never gave me details about your fiancé,” Reece said.

  “Bailey!” Erica admonished. “You’ve been dating the man for months!”

  I scowled. “Why are you bringing this up right now?” I bore my eyes into Reece’s face. Completely ineffectual. He just kept right on talking.

  “I thought I’m owed these details about you. Like Erica said, we’re living together now. Every time I try to bring it up, you evade the topic.”

  “Gee, Reece, maybe that’s because I don’t wanna talk about it!” I spat.

  “But I’m owed the details,” he persisted.

  What the fuck with this guy?

  “You’re not owed anything!” I cried.

  “Okay,” Erica said. “Enough. We didn’t help you move in today and get a much-needed babysitter so that we could hang out t
onight and listen to this bullshit.”

  I dropped my fork and folded my arms over my chest, leaning back into my chair.

  Reece shrugged.

  “How many beers have you had, Reece?” Erica asked.

  “Two.”

  “Okay, so then we can’t blame alcohol for your douchebag behavior right now,” she went on.

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  “Shutty,” Erica said. “This is private shit that you oughta ask Bailey when the two of you are alone. Doesn’t matter that Noah and I already know. But since we already know, and since she’s trying to keep stuff from you she shouldn’t—” I made some sort of squeaky noise in protest. “—we’ll fill you in. Honey, go ahead.”

  “Bailey isn’t a fan of the number thirty-one for a few reasons,” Noah offered.

  “Noah!” I yelled.

  Erica swatted my thigh.

  “It’s her bad luck number. She discovered it on her thirty-first birthday,” Noah said.

  “Well, what’s so bad about it?” Reece asked. He directed the question to me, who sat with lips sealed in a thin, tight line.

  “She collected thirty-one rocks when she was six years old,” Erica explained. “She organized them all on the kitchen steps, and her mother discovered them.”

  Reece crinkled his brow. “I don’t get it.”

  I huffed.

  “That’s when her mother discovered that she’d inherited OCD from her father,” Erica said.

  “Ohhhh,” Reece replied.

  “Because of the way she categorized them and lined them up,” Erica went on. “Her mother just knew. And I guess you could say she was devastated.”

  Erica glanced at me. I averted my eyes and glued them to my beer bottle.

  “Bailey, why don’t you explain the rest?” Erica offered.

  “Why?” I asked. “You and Noah are doing such an outstanding job.”

  “Because I’d rather hear it from you,” Reece said gently. “And these people are your best friends. You’ve got nothing to hide from them. Why are you so mad?”

  “Because it’s a buzzkill,” I said. “And I don’t like being put on the spot. Time and place, Reece. You know what I’m sayin’? There’s a time and a place.”

  “Bailey,” he replied, “you didn’t give me a choice. You never wanna talk about it. I know this was kind of a bullshit thing to do—”

  “I’ve gone through thirty-one boyfriends, okay?!” I blurted.

  “Okay,” he replied.

  “Brian was thirty-one when he broke off our engagement!”

  Reece listened closely.

  “Mom decided I was a hopeless cause after seeing those thirty-one rocks!”

  Reece reached across the table for my hand. I pulled away.

  “Before you, I was thirty-one and single! And not by choice! I don’t have the best track record with that number. Happy?”

  Silence.

  “Have you ever considered the tide might be changing?” Reece asked.

  “Is that, like, a beach quip?” I asked.

  Erica laughed.

  “It just happened that way,” Reece said patiently.

  “Well, do tell me how the tide is changing,” I said.

  “You’re thirty-one, and you met me,” Reece pointed out.

  I snorted. “You really think you’re something, huh?”

  He grinned. “I must be if you adopted me.”

  “Wait, what?” Noah asked. “Adopted?”

  “Bailey didn’t tell you I’m a foster kid?” Reece asked. He cleaned a rib bone in three bites.

  “Umm, noooo,” Erica said. She stared at me.

  “Yeah. I’m a foster kid. And she adopted me,” Reece explained, pointing the bone at me.

  “Oh my God,” Erica whispered. “Oh my God, it’s so sweet!”

  “I know, right?” Reece said.

  I considered him. “Are you always this open with people?”

  “These aren’t people. These are my friends,” he countered.

  “Fine. Are you always so open with friends you’re still getting to know?” I asked.

  “I just wanna belong, Bailey,” he said softly. “I wanna belong in your world with your friends and your hobbies and your gardens. That’s all. I wanna know everything about you, even if I have to bully it out of you. Put you on the spot. Make you uncomfortable. ‘Cause I can’t get enough of you.”

  Noah instinctively put his arm around Erica’s shoulder. He pulled her close and kissed her temple.

  “All right,” I sighed. “We’re all friends here. Ask me anything you wanna know.”

  ***

  “How were your urges today?” Reece asked later that night as we watched TV.

  I noticed the glint in his green eyes. I’m no fool. He was itching for me to tell him I tapped something so that he could tap my ass. Hard.

  “What urges?” I replied, affecting confusion.

  “That’s cute,” he said. “Now tell me.”

  “It was a good day,” I replied. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “That doesn’t disappoint me at all. I want you to have good days. I want every day to be a good day.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder. It wasn’t in my nature to cuddle, but something about the way he interacted with me compelled this new urge to touch him. Constantly.

  I voiced my discovery.

  “I want to touch you all the time,” I said. “You’ve made me develop a new urge.”

  “Well, that’s a good one, though. Right?”

  “I’m not sure I know the difference,” I confessed. “All of them feel good when I’m succumbing to them because they ease my anxiety.”

  He kissed my forehead. “Are you still feeling anxious all the time?”

  “No, not lately.”

  “Then I think it’s a good urge. But just to be safe, we’ll play it both ways,” he said.

  I lifted my face to his. “What do you mean?”

  He stood up and pulled me off the couch.

  “Reece?”

  He knelt in front of me and unbuttoned my pants.

  “Reece, I’m not really in the mood.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  My mouth dropped open. I watched him slide my pants down my legs. I stepped out when he instructed. I just did what he said, just like that, because somewhere along the line it became easier to not make decisions. Perhaps that was why my OCD was becoming more manageable. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to make the decision not to tic. Not to arrange and sort and categorize. I simply let Reece take the lead.

  “So this is something new,” Reece said, looking up at me.

  “What’s new?”

  “What I’m about to do to you,” he replied.

  My heartbeat quickened.

  “You developed an urge, see? And that’s not good for your OCD. You don’t need to keep stacking the deck. You need to be eliminating.”

  My mouth quirked up.

  “Buuuuut,” he went on, “the urge is a rather good one. Since it involves me. You touching me, to be exact. So you see how this is quite the conundrum? Do I reward you or punish you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah, I think it’s gonna have to be both,” he decided, just as he ripped my panties off.

  “Please don’t spank me,” I pleaded. “It’s too cold, and my ass will burn, like, double.”

  “Oh, I’m not spanking you,” he replied. “Now go climb up on that table.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “You know, other women would tell you to fuck off,” I said.

  “You aren’t other women. Plus, you know you’re gonna get something out of it, too. I’m wise to you, missy. You like to play victim, but I make you come every time.”

  Point taken. I walked to the kitchen and climbed on the table, crisscrossing my legs Indian style.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Is what?”

  “You�
�re not sitting like that,” Reece said.

  “Well, you didn’t tell me how to position myself,” I argued.

  “Get on your hands and knees,” he said.

  “But Reece, that’ll hurt my knees,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  I sighed and pulled myself up on my hands and knees. I blushed at the blatant exposure of my bare ass in the air. Reece flipped the switch in the kitchen, and suddenly my modesty multiplied by a hundred. I moved to sit down again.

  “Don’t you dare,” he warned.

  I froze. “I’m feeling vulnerable,” I whispered.

  “Good,” he said.

  “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  Every subsequent statement sounded like a plea: Let me sit down. Don’t look at me. Turn off the light.

  “Why?” he asked. “You’re so beautiful. If I were you, I’d walk around naked showing that off all the time.”

  I smiled uneasily.

  “Your pussy is so pink,” he observed. “I like that.”

  “Reece . . .”

  He gently touched my soft folds, and then I felt his mouth on them. A light kiss.

  “I like you in this position. I can see everything. Your ass spread wide. It’s—” I yelped when his hands grabbed my ass. “—perfection.”

  I squirmed against him.

  “I make no apologies for loving your ass so much,” he continued, kneading my cheeks and pushing more blood to my face where it stained my other cheeks bright red.

  “Reece, I . . .”

  He licked me. Licked me. I didn’t know what to do. I seized up, trapped on the table, though I wasn’t tied down. I could move. I could scurry across the tabletop to the other side. Then run out the back door and never return.

  “Bailey?” I heard from behind.

  I couldn’t answer. I had no words. What does a person say to that? How does a person react to that?

  “Let’s talk about it,” Reece said.

  “No!”

  “Bailey, let’s talk about how I just licked your ass.”

  “No!”

  “Do you think I’m a sexual deviant?” he asked.

  I remained silent. He did it again.

  “Reece!”

  “Hmm?”

  “I . . . what the hell . . . why do you . . .”

  “Like licking your ass?” he finished.

  I said nothing.

  “Because I do. And something tells me you do, too,” he said.

  I shook my head furiously, but my body told another story. He slipped his finger in me and grunted his satisfaction.