by Stacy Eaton
She turned toward me, her forehead lined. “Carrots? Why the hell would I need carrots?”
I fought not to laugh. “Not for you. I thought your rabbit might be hungry.”
Her jaw dropped, and if it were at all possible, her cheeks turned a brighter red as she spun on her heel and began to run up the steps. I couldn’t hold it back anymore and started to laugh as I yelled up the stairs, “I was joking, Lexi. I’m sorry.”
Her response was to hold her hand up and give me the finger over her shoulder before she hit the landing and spun to the next flight.
“I could do that, too,” I said softly to myself as I headed out of the building to go meet my buddy for a drink. I found myself grinning like a kid as I walked down the street. Yeah, that comment wasn’t very nice, but it was a joke. Maybe she didn’t have a sense of humor. Too bad, because it sure would have been nice if she did.
I made it to the tavern where I was meeting my buddy and grabbed two seats at the bar. It wasn’t quite happy hour, and I knew that it would soon get busier. A slap on my back caught my attention, and I got to my feet. “Jump! Man, it’s good to have you stateside again.”
“You have no idea how good it is to be back, Shadow.”
I’d met Paul, known to our buddies as Jump, during my second deployment overseas. He was new at that time, and I had tucked him under my wing the first time out as we went under heavy fire. We’d saved each other more times than I could count, and God knew I owed moments of my life to him, as he did to me.
Six months ago, I retired after doing my twenty. It was scary as hell to walk away from it, especially since it was all I knew—but I was ready. I’d seen enough to last me a couple lifetimes, and I was only thirty-eight. Now, I was working with another buddy, Jake, aka Screamer, who had started Safety Zone Security to give basic firearms and tactics training to civilian contractors who were being deployed overseas by their companies.
“Oh, I know how good it is, trust me, Jump. It’s nice not to live in that world anymore, while still having ties to some of my brothers.”
“Yeah, I get it, but,” he took a seat and looked around, “civilian life is weird.”
I chuckled as I flagged the bartender, and he grabbed another beer for Jump. “It does take some time to get used to, but you do.”
“Not everyone,” he commented. “I know a few guys who aren’t as fortunate as you are, and they don’t have half as many kills on their belt as you do.”
I shifted in my seat, not wanting to talk about the things I had to do overseas. “They just have to find a purpose. I found mine.”
“Yeah, things going well with the security company?”
“Yep, I finished all my local certifications about two weeks ago, so now I can officially start training. I am leading my first class next week, with Trevor.”
“Man, I wish I was still going to be around; I’d love to see you two in action.” He laughed as he straightened his shoulders and held his fingers out like it was a firearm. “This is a gun; this is the trigger; line it up and shoot, but don’t fucking shoot yourself.”
I laughed loudly. “There is a little more to it.”
“Yeah, but that’s how easy you make it seem. You are a natural, you know it. No one ever saw you coming, and you know you said that every time we ever went out on a mission, ‘don’t fucking shoot yourself,’ and everyone was saying it to themselves before you even could.”
I chuckled as I shrugged. “At least I am going to be able to use it for something.”
“True, man, look at me. I love to jump from planes, do crazy shit, but where is that going to take me in life?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Jump.”
“I’m not, but when I think back on my options, I should have chosen a different rating, like communications or some shit like that. At least I could use that in real life.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter right now, because I have another six years to play commando before I have to grow up and figure out what I want to be.”
We toasted to growing up and then spent an hour talking about other things. Jump glanced at his phone. “Man, I hate to do this, but I gotta bounce. I have a date, and I’m already late.”
“How much longer are you going to be in town?”
“Until Sunday. I’ll hit you up later this week; maybe we can have dinner Friday night or something.”
We stood and clasped hands, bumping shoulders again. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll fit you in, just give me a shout.”
“Look at that shit, fit you in. Pft—” He laughed. “Catch you on the flip side, Shadow.”
I watched him leave and noticed a woman stepping through the door. She was short, and with one look into her face, I saw joy. That was something that had taken a while to get used to when I returned to civilian life. Back in the service, joy centered around a hot shower, a dry cot, maybe an extra snack in the field.
Here, people smiled more often; laughter was more abundant, and they weren’t suspicious of every person they saw on the street. Shit, even now, I had my eyes glued to every car I walked past, waiting for one of them to explode. Hazards of the job, but I was done with that now.
The woman walked toward me, and I turned in my seat, drawing my attention back to my beer so as not to encourage her. Even though she was attractive with her round face and light-brown hair, I wasn’t really interested.
“Are these two seats taken?” she asked me as she leaned forward.
“No, help yourself.” I gave her a polite smile, noticing her bright-hazel eyes and then focused on the television over the bar where the news ticker was talking about the price of gas going up again.
“Hey, Clare,” the bartender said as he dropped a napkin in front of her. “Lexi coming?”
My ears perked up instantly. Lexi? As in Alex Miller?
“Hi, Simon. Yeah, she’s running late, but get her drink ready. She’s going to need it when she arrives.”
The bartender nodded, a knowing smile on his face as he walked away to prepare whatever drinks they were having.
The woman removed her coat, bumping my arm, and then quickly apologizing. “I’m so sorry.”
“No problem. I guess you and your friend are regulars here.” She had a pretty smile, but her hazel eyes were not anywhere as captivating as Lexi’s big brown ones were.
“We do, every Tuesday. I live about two hours away, but on Tuesdays I have to be in town, so we always have drinks and dinner before I grab the train back home.”
“That’s nice.”
Her drink was put down in front of her and another one on the napkin next to her. It looked like rum and Coke, but I didn’t ask. I was impressed, not a girlie kind of drink, nice.
“Are you here alone?” she asked as she eyed me appreciatively.
“My buddy just left. I was gonna finish my beer and then head out.”
“Oh, well, maybe you’ll still be here when Lexi arrives. You can meet her. Do you live close by? She lives only a couple blocks away.”
I bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t laugh. “Yeah, I live close by.”
“Then you should stay and join us. I keep telling Lexi that she needs to meet more people. All she ever does is work.”
Oh, I wasn’t going anywhere. “Maybe I’ll stick around and say hello.”
The two of us made small talk for a few minutes, and she told me about the nursing classes she was taking. She came back to town to do her internship, and I listened patiently while I kept one eye on the door.
A few minutes into our conversation, I saw Lexi outside the front window. “Will you excuse me for a moment? I want to hit the head.”
“Sure.” She smiled broadly at me.
I disappeared before Lexi could see me, afraid that she would bolt the moment she did. She was guzzling her drink when I came out of the bathroom, and I smiled to myself. Oh, I liked a woman who enjoyed her liquor. I wondered how many it would take to get h
er to loosen up.
I slipped back into my seat, and Clare turned to me. “You’re back. I’m sorry, I never even asked your name.”
Lexi peered around her friend, our eyes clashing, and her mouth dropped. “You!”
Her friend’s head snapped around quickly, and then she looked back at me. “Do you two know each other?”
“Briefly,” I replied and held my hand out to Clare. “I’m Alex Miller, the one that opened her package yesterday.”
Chapter Three
Lexi
Of all the people to run into, I had to see Alex downstairs. How long had he lived in the building? I’d been here for almost a year, and I’d never seen him before. I could have gone another year without seeing him again, but no—he had to walk into the vestibule just as my key was stuck in my mailbox.
The moment I saw him, heat flooded my cheeks. It only made it worse when he took over my task, and his heady aftershave wafted over me, making me slightly dizzy. As much as I didn’t want to check him out, my mind had other plans. He was dressed in old jeans, a hole over the left knee, and a long-sleeve navy t-shirt that stretched tightly over his shoulders. This close to him I could see a few gray hairs filtered among the dark strands.
My brain was mentally calculating all the numbers, but even with all pluses, he was still in the hole. When I stepped away from him, and he called out to me about carrots, I was utterly befuddled. The last thing I had been thinking about was food.
“Carrots? Why the hell would I need carrots?” Did he think I was fat? Was he suggesting that I needed to go on a diet? I turned slowly to face him, and the next words out of his mouth made me wish I hadn’t even stopped.
“Not for you. I thought your rabbit might be hungry.”
Oh—my—god! I spun away, feeling the blood explode into my cheeks as I rushed up the steps. I should have stood my ground, should have told him, sorry, buddy, but my rabbit was well fed. It wasn’t though. I hadn’t touched it since I’d turned it on, and I had no intention of doing so. I’d already realized that using that would give ‘love you to the moon and back’ a whole new meaning. The best I could do was flip him the bird before I ran all the way to my apartment.
I leaned back against the inside of my door and dropped my head. I really was going to need to find a new place to live. There was no way I could keep living here and run into him again. I set my laptop and the mail on the counter and eyed the offending box. Maybe I should leave the box outside his door. He seemed more interested in it than I was.
I sighed as I went to change clothes and get ready to meet Clare. I was about to leave when I got a phone call from work and got stuck dragging my laptop out to answer a few questions for my boss. I was finishing up when someone knocked on my door, and it opened.
There were only two people who ever did that, Clare and Connie. I peered up to see Connie coming in and figured she needed something from my kitchen. She was notorious for raiding my fridge, but I didn’t mind. I waved to her and went back to my conversation as I told my boss I would get the rest of the information over to him in the morning.
As I set my phone down, I heard a rustling behind me and turned just in time to see Connie pull the rabbit out of the box. I froze, but it wasn’t because she found it; no, it was because she looked enthralled by the kinky device in her hand. Her gaze lifted to mine. “Oh, you have one of these, too? Mine is purple; aren’t they fantastic? I have to keep a stash of batteries around; I just wear them out so quickly.”
Too—damn—much—information! I started to head toward her before she could pull the rest out of the box, but I was too late, and she held the anal plug in her hand.
She lifted her joy-filled eyes my way. “Do you like these? If you do, I’ll have to show you the one I have; it’s a lot bigger, vibrates and everything.”
My jaw dropped to the floor. Connie was in her late fifties, and the idea of her using these kinds of sexual aids was mind-boggling. How did she even know what they were? Did women near sixty still like to have sex? I’d always heard that after menopause, women no longer had a sex drive.
“Clare bought them for me for my birthday,” I told her, and I removed the items from her hands, shoving them back inside the cardboard box.
“So, you haven’t tried them yet?”
“No!” I said a little too forcefully as I carried the package to my bedroom and literally tossed it inside. “And I don’t plan on it either.”
She laughed. “Lexi, you need to try them out. They are fantastic. Clare picked out the perfect ones for you.”
“There is nothing perfect about your best friend buying you a vibrator, Connie.”
“Of course, there is. I should have thought of that myself. When is the last time you were with a man? If you aren’t going to have sex regularly, you need to use those. They keep you young.”
A strangled laugh left my throat. “I’m only thirty-three, Connie.”
“That’s right, you are still so young, but you need to keep yourself happy. It makes life so much more enjoyable.”
The mental image of Connie on her back with a bright-pink rabbit between her legs caused me to shiver as I spun away to collect my phone. I really didn’t need that image in my mind. I had enough trouble picturing myself using those items.
“Did you need something? I’m getting ready to head out to meet Clare.”
“I wanted to ask you about Alex. I saw him at your door last night. He lives down in 106; isn’t he gorgeous?”
I almost choked on my own spit and coughed to clear my throat. “You know him?”
“Of course, I know him. I see him all the time around the complex. He’s been one of my many fantasies while—”
I put my hand up to stop her, closing my eyes. “Please, don’t. Please don’t share that with me. I already know more than I care to.”
She laughed heartily. “You know, sometimes I think you are the one that is fifty-eight, and I’m the one in my thirties.” She went toward the door. “You really should get to know him; he’s a very nice man.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Connie.”
“Tell Clare I said hello,” she called over her shoulder and was gone.
I collected my cellphone and typed a message to Clare. I kind of really hate you right now.
Her reply was a laughing emoji. It figures that she would find all of this funny.
I let myself out of the apartment, and as I went down the stairs, I hesitated and listened carefully. The last thing I needed to do was run into Alex again. As luck would have it, the coast was clear, and I was out on the street a few moments later.
When I arrived at the tavern, I slipped into the seat next to Clare and downed half of my drink. Between work and my gift, my nerves were stretched thin.
“You are so funny. You really need to ease up,” Clare said as I set my glass down.
I gave her the stink eye and muttered, “Shut up.”
Someone took a seat next to her as I was taking another drink, and she turned to speak to them. I glanced past her, and my heart skipped over itself! Oh, my god, I could not get away from this man.
“You!” I snapped without meaning to.
“Do you two know each other?” Clare asked in surprise.
“Briefly, I’m Alex Miller, the one that opened her package yesterday.”
I couldn’t see Clare’s face as she shook his hand, but her entire body began to vibrate, and then laughter exploded out of her like a volcano. Her head was thrown back, her mouth wide open as she continued to cackle at my expense. I chanced a look at Alex and saw him watching her with approval. Good, maybe he was interested in her.
He shifted his focus to me, and I quickly looked away, muttering, “I’m so glad you two are enjoying my mortification.”
Clare grabbed my arm, wiping tears from under her eyes. “Come on, Lex! This is hysterical!” I saw her glance toward him and then lean my way. “And he is totally not in the negative.”
“Negative?” he ask
ed, and his deep voice slithered down my spine as I closed my eyes and shifted in my seat. Was it too early to leave?
Clare spoke. “Yeah, she has this system of judging people by numbers. It’s pretty silly, but she adds up your points to see if you fit her standards.”
He chuckled as I looked everywhere but at him, ready to bolt from my chair. Clare must have known it too because she grabbed my arm.
“You are not going anywhere, so don’t even try.”
I rolled my eyes and downed the rest of my drink, holding my hand up to Simon to get a refill. I had a feeling I was going to be half in the bag by the time the evening was over.
“Don’t let it bother you,” Clare was saying to Alex, “I was like negative three hundred before we became friends.”
“Yeah, well, you’re more like negative five thousand right now,” I told her, forcing my eyes to look at only her and not Alex to see what he was thinking.
“Why am I negative five thousand? Because I laughed? Or because I bought you things that could help ease all that sexual tension you have?”
I glared at her for a moment as my drink was put down in front of me, and I took another hefty sip.
“Good selection, by the way,” Alex said to Clare. My earlier thought of giving the package to him was confirmed.
“I know, right?” She shook her head. “Lexi thinks that I’m crazy for using those things.” She paused and leaned toward him. “What do you think about them? Do you like using toys in the bedroom?”
“Clare!” I hissed toward her, and she batted a hand at me to shut me up as Alex grinned.
“I think it’s great. I love it when a woman is comfortable enough to enjoy her own pleasure.”
“Do you like to watch a woman get herself off?” she asked seriously, and I wanted to slide right off the barstool and disappear.
His deep chuckle oozed down my spine. “What man doesn’t want to watch a woman get off? It’s sexy as hell.”
“Right!” Clare pounded a fist on the bar, and I jumped slightly.
“You’re both crazy,” I said.