Page 5 of I Do, or Dye Trying
“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t cook in the nude,” Gabe grumbled.
“Now that’s just gross,” I told him. “Nobody wants pubes in their food, Gabriel. I adore you naked, but not around my food.”
“You didn’t seem to worry about pubes when you deep-throated my dick covered with whipped cream on vacation,” Gabe said to me.
“That was different,” I said defensively.
“How was that different? Your lips were against my pubes,” he pointed out.
“It was dessert,” I said like that explained it. “No one is going to eat lobster bisque soup off your crotch.”
“Ouch,” Gabe said.
“Yeah, multiply that times a thousand to imagine how bad hot grease would feel,” I told him. The grease popped just then as if fate wanted to emphasize just how right I was about the dangers of frying bacon while scantily clad—no matter how good, or sexy, the intention.
Gabe jumped back and yelled, “Son of a bitch!” Then he looked at me accusingly as if I made it happen. He moved the skillet off the burner and turned to face me fully.
“Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” Savage repeated while flapping his wings.
“Just great,” I said. “Savage is going to be saying that nonstop.”
“As if he doesn’t already say worse,” Gabe replied. “I seem to remember him propositioning me for a blow job the first night I was here. You can’t blame me for that one.”
“Maybe he was channeling my thoughts,” I confessed a little shyly. I had mentioned to Gabe once that I had noticed him around town, but I never fully admitted to him—or myself for that matter—just how much I wanted him from the moment I laid eyes on him. I looped my finger in the waistband of his undies and pulled him even closer to me. “Do you want to know who my celebrity crushwas?”
“No,” Gabe said petulantly like he couldn’t stand the thought of my attention directed toward anyone but him.
“Anderson Cooperwasmy celebrity crush,” I told him, making sure to stress the word was.
“The news guy?” he asked.
“Yes, him. I love a silver fox.” I placed my hand over Gabe’s heart and said, “I forgot all about him the moment I laid eyes on you. It’s a fucking miracle I didn’t shave Kyle Vaughn bald when he sat in my salon chair, and believe me when I say it crossed my mind.”
“Are you saying that you crushed on me for a long time?” He didn’t sound very convinced because I played my cards so well when we began interacting that I almost convinced myself I wasn’t crazy about him.
“It’s embarrassing how much you starred in my fantasies or how badly I wanted you to be different from any other man I had met. It’s why I reacted so harshly when you were about to say I was too feminine for you. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much had I not cared what you thought about me.”
“We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we?” Gabe asked. “There’s no more hiding our feelings behind snark,” I knew his remark was mostly aimed at me, “or pretending that we don’t want to just crawl inside one another every free second of the day.”
“No more games,” I replied. I raised up on my toes and pressed my lips to Gabe’s for a quick kiss. “Now feed me and fuck me so we can get on with our day. We need to go to the clinic for our tests before we stop at the grocery store to prepare for Gabe’s Big Barbecue Night.”
Gabe tilted his head to the side and looked at me suspiciously. “You doubt my abilities.”
“I do not,” I said honestly. “I know it’s going to be great. It’s our first big barbecue with all of our friends invited, so it’s an event worthy of a name.”
“I’m going to show you just how good I am,” he promised in a rumbling, sexy voice. “Which do you want first—food or a fuck?”
I knew I was in for a treat, regardless which of the F’s came first, which would set the tone for a day that held so much promise. I smiled up into the eyes of the man I loved more than my next breath and said, “Surprise me.”
OH,ISURPRISED HIMall right. He was expecting me to throw him over my shoulder and carry him off to have my way with him, and under normal circumstances that would’ve been the case, but that day was different. I couldn’t stop thinking about being bare inside him once we had the sex without condoms talk. It wasn’t like we practiced abstinence while we were on vacation—quite the opposite actually—but I was hours away from having not even a thin layer of latex separate us. So, I chose to feed him before we headed out to run our errands to prepare for the barbecue.
It should’ve been a crime that it took longer to drive to the closest clinic that offered HIV testing than it did for the rapid test results to come back. There was no excuse for making it harder for people to be responsible and get tested. As irritated as it made me, I focused on the delights that lay in wait for me that evening. I had another surprise for Josh up my sleeve, but I wouldn’t be sharing it with him until after the last guest left.
Luckily for us, we got to the grocery store before church let out and back home in plenty of time to let my granny’s Coca-Cola barbecue sauce simmer on the stove for a bit before I refrigerated it to thicken. I heard Josh mumbling about something thickening as he put the potato salad together, but I ignored his complaints. Some things were worth waiting for, as he should damn well know since he tortured me for the longest time.
I wasn’t the only one with surprises that morning. I expected to find Josh at the dining room table hard at work planning our wedding when I woke up, but instead he was out running. I had also expected a little less calmness out of him about Emory’s gloomy, albeit vague, premonition. Once I caught onto the inner workings of Josh Roman’s mind, he wasn’t so hard to figure out, but every once in a while, he puzzled me. I could reason that Josh had become close friends with a group of people to help him plan our wedding, which I suspected was the reason he wasn’t making seating charts the second we got home from the store. It was his laid-back attitude about Emory’s visit that had me stumped. I tried my hardest to sort it out on my own, but after a few hours I gave up.
“Why are you so calm about Emory’s vision?” I asked him while he spread a checkered tablecloth over one of the fold-up tables he’d set up beneath the shade trees in his yard.