Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
And now I needed to warn him what was coming.
CHAPTER 6
THE KITTENS
Tom
Tom tossed the ball up in the air.
And then put everything he had into whacking the fuck out of it, sending it over the net.
It skimmed the center service line then slammed into the chain link fence, embedding itself there.
There were four of his balls embedded in the fence.
That was his mood that morning.
Another few dozen balls were littering the area in front of the fence. He had half a bucket left, sitting beside him on the baseline.
He was practicing his serve.
He should be calling Mika, apologizing for acting like a child, and getting the details about whatever she had on Andrew so he could help her decide what to do about it.
Actually, first, he should be calling Paloma and embarking on the difficult conversation that included explaining that he didn’t feel they were at a place in their relationship where he was ready for them to move in together.
And further explaining that he didn’t feel they’d ever get to that place.
Neither call was something he was chomping at the bit to do, which was why he was taking his foul mood out on a court.
Unusually for him, he was procrastinating.
The moving-in-together proposal was Paloma’s, something that caught him off guard.
She lived in New York, though she spent quite a bit of time in LA and Europe, mostly in Spain with her mother, or Denmark, with her father.
Phoenix was not on her normal trajectory.
However now, she’d visit when she was going to or leaving LA. And if he thought about it, which he hadn’t until she made her request, those visits had been coming more frequently lately.
But the fact that she wanted to move there, into his house, with him, was not something he was expecting.
And he felt like an ass, because he was assuming she was where he was in their relationship, and clearly, that was not the case.
He enjoyed her company. When they spent time together, it was good, easy, undemanding. They had some of the same friends and some of the same interests, which was always beneficial when you spent time with someone.
But it wasn’t serious.
She was company, not a partner. He wouldn’t even describe her as a companion in the strictest sense of that concept.
When they were apart, they texted sparingly, spoke on the phone even less, simply remaining in touch and loosely connected. For the most part, their relationship was one contacting the other because there was an event, and they’d fallen into a pattern of attending those together, or they were going to be in the same town, and they were arranging to see one another.
And that time together was spent having sex, going out to dinner when Tom didn’t want to cook because Paloma simply didn’t cook, and him doing his thing while she did hers at a spa or Scottsdale Fashion Square or sitting with a magazine by his pool.
He thought he was company for her as well. Their paths crossed when there was a reason for them to cross or they were in one or the other’s zone.
And nothing more.
They’d never even discussed the concept exclusive, because that wasn’t where at least he thought they were heading.
Further, there was no passion. Nothing deep nor meaningful. She wasn’t a deep person. Some people weren’t and that didn’t make them bad people, it was just not the kind of person that Tom would commit to. They’d shared some history, but no hopes or desires, regrets, dreams.
She was an only child with no children, and considering she was fifty-one years old, would likely not be starting a family.
And she’d been in his life for nearly a year, and he didn’t know if she’d ever wanted a child, or even if she’d hit menopause. She’d sidestepped his question about family when he’d asked, and thinking it might be a sensitive question, he didn’t ask again. And she kept personal things to herself like they’d just started seeing each other, rather than them being comfortable around each other.
Which, Tom felt, said a lot about their relationship. Not everyone was free with using the bathroom with the door open or asking their man to go out and buy them tampons or stowing some in his bathroom should the need arise or sharing they didn’t need them anymore. But all were certainly indicators of what level of intimacy you felt you had with a lover.
She was a good person, however. Attentive, quiet, pleasant. She was beautiful to look at and good in bed, the last in a practiced way that was enjoyable, but never fiery or explosive. Not only in the way he responded to her, but in the way she responded to him.
To end, he liked her, he’d enjoyed the time they spent together, but moving in together was out of the question.