Page 45 of A Real Goode Time
Time to go.
It was weird how fast I’d come to feel like this loft was home. What, two days? With a guy I’d known for the same length of time?
Was I absolutely insane for doing this?
Yeah. I was.
I took my bag and outside and, sitting on the steps, I called Leighton.
It rang twice and she answered. “It’s not nine yet, dingus.”
“I know. But I need you to give me a bad idea rating. Rhys has some time off, and he’s going to drive me part of the way to Alaska. Like a road trip. How far, I don’t know.”
She hummed a low, musing note. “Wow, that’s a tough one, actually. On the face of it, it’s a ten out of ten horrible idea. You barely know the guy. If he decides to show his wacko in the middle of BFE, you’re seriously screwed.” She paused, thinking. “But you’ve slept in his bed, alone, for two nights. He hasn’t made any inappropriate moves on you that felt creepy, or you’d have said so. You’d have booked it, more to the point. He’s respected your space and hasn’t tried to get into your pants. So, if he’s hiding secret serial killer slash rapist wacko tendencies, he’s hiding them pretty damn well.”
“Yeah, I don’t get any feelings like that from him at all. He seems to be a genuinely good person. A good man. He’s polite. He’s kind. He’s caring.” I swallowed. “He’s hot as hell. He likes me.”
“He likes you, huh?”
I sighed. “Yeah, there’s chemistry there. A lot of it, actually.”
“Which makes this road trip an even better idea. Takes it more to the other end of the good idea bad idea rating scale—into the good idea territory. He likes you, you like him. He’s hot, he’s good, what do you have to lose?”
I was silent a moment. I heard him inside, reached up, opened the door, peeked in at him, gestured at the phone and held up a finger. He nodded, shooting me a thumbs up.
“Well, what I have to lose is getting hurt. Because…Ley, Ireallylike him.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “He turns me on like nobody else ever has. I…I freakingwanthim, Ley. But…I’m scared to let anything happen. Because I’m going to Alaska, and the more time goes by, the more I feel like you and Jillie were right, that I’m probably not coming back to Connecticut. Which sucks because I love you guys and I’ll miss you like crazy. And…I just know myself well enough to know that for my first time, I’m just not capable of making it a one-time thing. A hookup. It doesn’t have to be, like,love, just…somewhere in the realm of meaningful.”
“I know, hon,” Leighton said, her voice uncharacteristically tender. “My advice, and this is advice I don’t give lightly, is to just take things as they happen with him. I got a good feeling from talking to him. I agree, I think he’s a good guy, and you for sure lucked out in him being the dude who picked you up. So, you could do a hell of a lot worse for your first time than him, if he’s genuinely as good and decent as he seems.” She hesitated. “Has anything…happened…with the two of you?”
I sighed. Laughed. “Sort of. His place is a loft, all open. Even the bathroom. Totally a bachelor pad for one guy. Which is cool for him, being a single guy. But anyway. I was changing, had my shirt off, about to put it on, and he walked in. And I just…froze. Totally topless. And he…he wasn’t in a hurry to look away.”
“Well, who would be? You’ve got fantastic tits.”
I laughed. “Why thank you, Leighton. Coming from someone with epic boobs herself, that means a lot.”
“I wouldn’t call them epic. They hang almost to my damn belly, and I’m not even twenty-one.”
“Because they’re freaking enormous, hon.”
She laughed. “Why are we talking about our boobs? To the point—what happened then?”
“Not much. He apologized, and left. Apologized again later, and it was kind of awkward.”
“And that was it? He saw you topless, nothing else?”
I laughed hesitantly. “Well? Not quite. He washed my clothes, right? Put them in the dryer later that night and went to bed. I woke up early, thought he’d still be asleep. The washer and dryer are downstairs, the loft is upstairs. So I went down, thinking I’d grab my clothes and change before he woke up.”
“And you saw something you weren’t supposed to.”
“Um, yeah, you could say that. I walked in on him jerking off.”
“No. No! You didnot.”
“Wait, it gets better. Or worse, not sure which.” I giggled. Caught my breath and finished the story. “I literally watched him finish. And…he was watching this video of a girl in a wet T-shirt. Who was kinda thin, with long black hair.”
“Um.”
“And guess what? The day he picked me up, we came back to his place and I took off my hoodie. And being soaked to the bone as I was, my shirt was see-through soaked. So that clearly must have turned him on, because he was watching a video of a girl who looked a hell of a lot like me in a wet T-shirt.” I paused for effect. “Ready for the most OMG part? He admitted he’d been thinking about me. Trying not to, he said, thus the video, but the video was as close to me as you could get.”