by Virna DePaul
Lexi shrugged. “I had my daddy there. He looked out for me.”
Mrs. Gunderson surveyed her for another second. “So, you going to come by my porch and talk to me about rodeo sometime?”
“That an invitation?”
“Sure was.”
“Alright then,” Lexi rocked back on her heels. “I suppose I will.”
“That’s just fine,” Mrs. Gunderson said as she pushed the half drunk cup of coffee back into Eric’s hand. “But Mr. Gunderson and I are a bit formal when we have guests. Wear a dress.”
Lexi’s eyebrows raised and this time she was much more amused than offended. “And what if I don’t have a dress to wear?”
Mrs. Gunderson didn’t turn around, just kept striding toward the door. “Buy one,” she threw back over her shoulder before she left.
“That is one old school lady,” Lexi said, going up on her toes to watch her sway down the street. “Real country.”
Eric raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, unable to resist brushing her hair back from her shoulder. “Rodeo, huh?”
She shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta grow up somewhere.”
* * *
Time passed easily for Lexi that day. There was a lot to learn and always something to get done. She liked being busy. Since life was all about balance, she also liked taking breaks. She’d just put her feet up in the back room when she heard the bell ring above the door.
Figured. Barely three customers all day and then the second she took a break, somebody walked in. She’d just stood when a slinky, female voice made its way into the backroom.
“Hey there, Eric.”
“Afternoon, Sarah,” Eric said. “You need something fixed?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” the woman replied silkily, her tone making Lexi think, I just bet you need something fixed.
Unable to stop herself, Lexi peeked out the slightly open door.
She immediately spotted long silky blonde hair and a sliver of a powder pink dress.
“I’ve got a lamp that won’t turn on back home. I was wondering if you could come take a look at it.”
Eric cleared his throat. “Chances are you just need a new bulb. You know what wattage you’re looking for?” He started to guide the woman—Sarah—toward the lighting section of the store. She turned just enough for Lexi to get a load of her perfect D cup breasts.
“Well, wouldn’t you know it, it’s this funny little European thing that Daddy brought back from Venice for me. And I can’t for the life of me figure out what kind of bulb it’ll take. But I brought a picture of the lamp to show you. Maybe you can figure it out.”
Eric leaned closer to look at her phone, and Lexi watched his eyebrows lift up into his hairline. “Uh, Sarah, not sure that’s the picture you meant to show me.”
Sarah’s musical little laugh tinkled through the store, making Lexi’s fingernails bite into her palms where she clenched her fists.
“Oh my,” Sarah cooed. “Sorry about that.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. She swiped through a few pictures and Lexi could tell by the expression on Eric’s face that each was more explicit than the next. “Here’s the lamp.”
Eric cleared his throat. “Yeah. Um follow me, we’ve got a few of those bulbs left in stock.”
“Thank goodness,” Sarah replied. “It’s the lamp on my bedside table and I really like to keep the lights on when I’m in bed… for reading.”
Lexi clenched her fists. She was all for women expressing their sexuality. And as someone who’d fucked a near stranger in a barn two nights ago, she wasn’t trying to slut shame. But for the love of god! This was Eric’s place of work! Where a customer like Mrs. Gunderson could walk in any moment!
And even though she knew it was an utterly ridiculous thought, she couldn't help thinking of Eric as her man. And she certainly didn’t want Sarah with her D-cup breasts and whatever-naughty-pictures she had on her phone flirting with her man.
Eric didn’t say much else, just rang up her purchase, accepted the breathy little kiss on the cheek she gave him, and then let out one long breath when she trounced out the door.
Lexi leaned on the doorjamb of the break room and cleared her throat.
Eric turned to her. “Oh, hey. I suppose you saw all that?” He pointed his thumb toward the door that sweet little Sarah had just left through.
“Some of it,” Lexi said, jamming her hands in her pockets. “Though it seems you’re the one who got the eyeful.”
“Boy, did I.” Eric grimaced. “I think what she was doing in one of those pictures was technically illegal.”
“And she just up and flashed them at you? Takes a lot gumption.” Lexi sauntered forward, her hands still in her pockets, a neutral expression on her face.
“Takes a lot of something.” He stared at her a second, tilted his head, then grinned. “You don’t seem particularly shocked at the idea of naked pictures. Is that because you’ve taken some yourself?”
She hadn’t, but instead of telling him that, she just shrugged. “It’s the age of the camera phone.”
Eric’s mouth dropped open. “Well, damn. Show me.”
Lexi pulled up short at how quickly his playful tone turned commanding. It reminded her of how dominant he’d been that night in the barn, pinning her hands to that beam. Afraid he’d see and correctly interpret the movement, she refused to press her legs together even though she desperately wanted to.
“I’m your employee, remember?”
“Fine. You’re fired. Now, show me.” He held his hand out for her phone, but his tone had tuned playful again, and he wore a small, friendly smile on his face.
Lexi couldn’t help but smile back. “I told you we’re not sleeping together again, Eric.”
“That’s fine, but you didn’t say we couldn’t flirt with each other. I might be able to handle not sleeping with you. But not flirting with you? You ask the impossible. That’s just fighting against biology.”
“Fair enough. Flirting? Fine. Fucking? Not fine.”
“Fine.” He grinned again, and God, he was so beautiful he was hard to look at sometimes. “And for the record, sexting, whether it comes in the form of pictures or text, counts as flirting, not fucking.”
She rolled her eyes. “It certainly does not.”
He opened his mouth to say something else but his phone buzzed with an incoming text. He checked it, then said, “My friend Jake wants to know if you want to come have a drink with us tonight. Maybe we can take a poll about the sexting debate. What do you say?”
Lexi stepped up to the check-out counter and fiddled with one of the key chains they sold. “Who’s us?”
“Me and Jake and Dylan. And maybe our friend Will. We meet each other at the bar a few times a week.”
“Skeeps?” Lexi asked, naming the bar where Marina worked.
He nodded.
“I’m already going,” Lexi responded. “Marina and I are celebrating our new living arrangement.”
She ignored the way his face lit up when she said that she was going to be there. It wasn’t good for the little erratic pitter patter in her heart.
“That’s great!”
“I’m not going to stay too long though,” she warned him. “I’ve got work in the morning.”
He smiled at her. “Me too. And a full day of flirting ahead of me.”
Lexi would never admit it, but Lord, she liked the sound of that. Somehow she managed to say, “Flirt all you want. But remember sexting is not flirting.”
Eric just laughed. “We’ll see about that.”
Chapter Six
Eric was screwed.
Why the hell had he agreed to keep his hands off Lexi? And why the hell had he told Dylan and Jake that they’d decided to be just friends?
Jake had gotten that shit eating grin on his face as he’d watched Lexi order a drink from Marina at the bar. “So the new girl’s up for grabs then?”
It had taken every ounce of self control that Eric had not to bac
khand Jake across his pretty, asshole face. Jesus, first the Fed Ex guy. Now Jake. Eric had never had a problem with feeling proprietary over a woman.
Not until Lexi.
Dylan had clapped a hand on Eric’s shoulder. “Y’all don’t look like ‘just friends’, but whatever you gotta tell yourself, brother.”
And now they were all sitting in a booth in the back of Skeeps, Jake and Eric on one side and Dylan and Lexi on the other.
Dylan had been quietly talking with Lexi for the last twenty minutes and Eric was getting in an increasingly bad mood just watching them.
He sipped his beer and turned to Jake. “Jake,” he said, loud enough for them to hear across the booth. “In your expert opinion, is sexting filed under the ‘flirting’ category or the ‘sex’ category.”
Jake grinned, tipped back his baseball cap, and took a long, meditative sip of beer. “Interesting question, my dude.” He squinted his eyes and seemed to look off into the distance.
Lexi’s face was neutral across the table, but Eric was almost positive she was about to break into either a scowl or a smile.
“In my extremely expert opinion,” Jake started. “After years of research, focus groups, test after test—”
“Jesus Christ,” Dylan grumbled before taking the last swig of his beer and motioning for more from Marina.
“I would have to say that as you can’t get somebody pregnant from sexting, it is firmly in the category of flirting.” Jake tapped his beer on the table like a judge tapping a gavel to signal the end of court.
Eric raised an eyebrow at Lexi across the booth who raised one right back.
“Still, there are degrees of flirting, wouldn’t you say?” Dylan said in his lazy drawl, eyeing Marina as she approached the table with another round for everybody. “Flirting between strangers. Flirting between friends. Flirting between people who have far more in mind. Wouldn’t you say that sexting is flirting with a definite destination?”
Marina’s hands bobbled her tray before she quickly righted it. Dylan’s gaze stayed fixated on her face, but she staunchly ignored him, setting the drinks down in front of everybody.
For the hundredth time in the last few days, Eric wondered what was going on between his two friends. And even though he knew she should let Marina off the hook, what with the way she was blushing, he also couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she and Dylan could have something special, if only they were given half the chance.
“What do you think, Marina?” he asked her. “Is sexting just flirting?”
She pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t know.”
Jake leaned back in his seat. “You’ve never sexted anybody before?”
“I…” Marina’s cheeks flamed as she stared resolutely at the table. “I, well, I guess I’m not sure how you’d define sexting.”
“Well,” Jake said, “sexting is defined as one, naked pictures; two, dirty words; three—”
“Intentionally trying to get the person you’re texting all worked up,” Dylan cut in.
Marina’s cheeks flamed even harder before she narrowed her eyes at Dylan and raised her chin. “Well I guess maybe I have sexted before.”
“So, what do you think? Is sexting just harmless flirting?” Eric asked again.
“Flirting is never harmless if it could ruin a friendship,” Marina answered, tucking her empty tray under her arm and hurrying back toward the safety of the bar.
“I guess the jury’s still out on that one,” Lexi muttered as she watched Marina’s retreating back. A tense silence came over the table. Suddenly, Dylan cursed. When he slid out of the booth to go after her, Lexi suddenly pressed a hand to his arm, stopping him.
“Do you mind if I talk to her?” she asked.
Dylan opened his mouth to argue, his eyes flitting back to Marina. Then he glanced at Eric.
Eric nodded. “You can trust Lexi. I do.”
With that, Dylan reluctantly settled back into the booth.
Lexi mouthed, “Thank you,” then headed after Marina.
* * *
Lexi patted Tulip on his big, grinning skull as soon as she entered the backroom where Marina was sitting on a case of bottled water in the back corner.
“Hey, girl,” Lexi said, turning over a bucket to sit on and taking a seat next to her. “Look, I know we don’t know one another very well. And subtlety isn’t exactly my strong suit. But I don’t ever lie and I don’t ever tell secrets. So, if you want to talk about it, whatever it was out there, the buck stops with me.”
Marina took a deep breath and immediately Tulip was there, pushing his head under her hand and letting his tongue loll to one side. “I don’t know what the hell that was either. I…” She took another deep breath. “I was happy being just friends, you know. I don’t need a man. I don’t want one. Not after…”
Lexi gently laid a hand on Tulip’s head. Marina’s eye followed Lexi’s movements like a bird following a fly swatter. It made something bone deep and awful cry out inside Lexi. It was obvious someone had hurt Marina and once again, Lexi wanted to ask, but Marina was trembling like the last leaf on a branch and Lexi didn’t want to tip her over the edge.
“You don’t have to tell me everything but just to tell me about one thing, Marina,” Lexi said softly. “Tell me about Dylan.”
Marina sighed softly and Lexi wondered if she knew how much longing was in that sound. “We’ve been friends our whole lives. And actually, he was the one who saved me from… something really bad. The worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And since then, he’s been my best friend. But lately, he wants more than I can give.”
“Maybe you just think you can’t give more,” Lexi said.
Marina looked into Lexi’s eyes and gave her the most solid, direct look that she’d seen from her yet. “No. That part of me is dead. It has been for a long time. And Dylan looking all handsome and talking all sweet and coming around with rides home and texting me when he thinks about me… He’s trying to resurrect something that’s better off dead. And it’s causing me to do things. Things I shouldn’t do, that just give him false hope…”
“Well,” Lexi said, scratching Tulip under his chin. “If you don’t want him, you don’t want him. And that’s something he better come to terms with quick.”
Marina winced. “It’s not that easy. Sometimes you can want something and just have to accept you can’t have it. No matter how much you wish things were different. Sometimes we have to make the difficult choice and live by that choice. Do you know what I mean?”
Lexi stared at Marina, thinking of the choice she’d made to keep her heart safe from Eric, then nodded. “Yes, I know what you mean.” She wished she didn’t. She wished she could contradict Marina and tell her that no matter what happened in the past, she didn’t have to deprive herself of what could make her happy in the present. But that would be hypocritical on Lexi’s part. She knew all about having to make the difficult choice. In Lexi’s case, the difficult choice was to avoid any emotional ties that would get in the way with her dreams. In Marina’s case? If she wanted to choose feelings of safety and piece-of-mind over what Dylan could give her, then who was Lexi to argue with her?
Marina suddenly stood. “I should get back out there. But Lexi?”
Lexi looked up at her new friend. “Yes?”
“You and Eric. I…sense something between the two of you. And I want you to know, the same’s true with me. If you ever want to talk, the buck stops here.”
Lexi smiled. “Thank you, Marina.”
Marina left and for a moment, Lexi just sat there. Then she followed Marina out to the bar, stopping to order a glass of water to bring back to the table.
When her phone buzzed in her pocket, she knew immediately who was texting her.
She bit her lip and replayed all that had just happened. She’d made her difficult choice.
She had, but she also wasn’t Marina. She didn’t have to draw such hard lines when it came to her attraction to a handsome man who clearl
y wanted her.
No, she couldn’t have Eric, not without risking her dreams of moving to L.A. and becoming a screenwriter. But so long as she didn’t get too involved, as long as she didn’t sleep with him again, would it really be so bad to continue enjoying some harmless flirting? After all, she hadn’t been hurt, not like Marina. She was thinking far more clearly. And Eric knew exactly how things were. That she wasn’t staying. That the last thing she wanted was quicksand.
So…
Unable to resist, she slid her phone out of her pocket and sure enough, there was a text from Eric.
-See? Even Marina sexts. And she was a band geek in high school.
Lexi couldn’t help but laugh. She turned and flashed a smile over her shoulder at Eric. He sat with one arm over the back of the booth, talking with Dylan, but her smile caught his eye and pretty soon he was grinning and shrugging right back at her.
Lexi faced back toward the bar in time to see Marina sliding over a bright red drink with a little sprig of green poking out of it. Lexi raised an eyebrow and tossed some of her hair back over her shoulder.
“I know I look like a total girly girl,” Lexi joked, “but I draw the line at fruity drinks.”
“Trust me,” Marina responded easily. “This isn’t too girly. I made it up. It’s hibiscus, rosemary iced tea with vodka and just a kiss of lime. Not sweet at all.”
With one eyebrow still raised, Lexi leaned in and took a sip. The flavor exploded in her mouth. “Holy shit, Mari.”
Marina grinned. “Told ya.”
“Fuck Dylan,” Lexi said, taking another drink. “You’re my girlfriend now.”
For a second, Lexi bit her tongue, worrying that she’d gone too far, but Marina only laughed. A little delighted sound. She moved down the bar to take another patron’s order and Lexi found herself eyeing her phone again.
Either it was the vodka in the drink or Lexi was really trying to walk the walk, but she took a deep breath. Honesty time.
-Flirting/sexting sounds fun. But it also sounds like another word for quicksand.