Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“I thought I heard you pull in,” Naomi said as she came in the side door, rubbing her hands. “Jeremiah and Dad—”
“I need you for a second.” I grabbed her hand and tugged her into the laundry room, shutting the door behind us.
“You need me to do laundry?” she asked with a furrowed brow.
“What? No. But now that you say it…” I grabbed the basket Mom always kept of household wash, threw it in, and started the machine, then nodded when the sound of rushing water filled the room. Hopefully it would give us another layer of privacy. “I need to ask you something.”
“Go for it.”
“I…uh…hmmm.” Now that I had her here, the question seemed, well, stupid.
“Zoe, I work in the world’s smallest health clinic, and we’ve been friends since we were five. Whatever you need to ask, trust me, I’ve been asked worse.” She leaned back against the washer.
“I somehow doubt that.” This was a level beyond embarrassing.
“Does it burn when you pee?”
“What? No!” I shot her a what-the-hell look, and she shrugged.
“See? Already not the worst.”
“Can you keep a secret?”
She arched a brow. “Have I ever not kept one of our secrets?”
“Even from Jeremiah?”
“As long as you’re not asking me to break my wedding vows, I think we’re in the clear. What’s up?”
I glanced at the closed door, then took a deep breath. “Hypothetically, is it possible to be so bad at sex…well, not even sex, it didn’t get that far. Let me rephrase.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Is it possible to be so bad at foreplay that your…partner,” I enunciated that word to keep from saying Nixon’s name on accident, “runs away and locks himself in a bathroom until the pilot orders him into a seat because the plane is getting ready to—”
“Nixon did what?” Her mouth dropped open a good two inches.
“I didn’t say it was Nixon,” I whispered in a hiss.
“Yeah, okay.” She rolled her eyes. “Because you spend so much time flying around with other people.”
I glared at her.
She cringed. “Sorry, you were saying something about the plane?”
“It landed. And…the partner…hasn’t spoken more than four consecutive words to me since then, and it’s been a week.” I hopped up onto the dryer.
“He seriously ran off and hid in the bathroom?” she questioned.
“It would almost be funny if it hadn’t happened to me.” I nodded.
She bit back a smile. “Oh, it’s—”
My eyes narrowed.
“Not funny in the least,” she managed to finish with a straight face.
“Seriously, Naomi. I’m probably violating about a dozen NDA’s just asking you.” I ran my hands over my face.
“Well, since it’s not Nixon, then that’s impossible, right? What might the name of this hypothetical partner be?”
Mom’s North Face jacket stared me in the face. “North,” I answered.
“Okay, then. Was there any pain involved in this foreplay session with…North?” She turned toward me, her nurse face firmly in place.
“No. I mean, not on my end, and he wasn’t exactly complaining either. It’s not like I’m a virgin. I’m well aware of what an erection feels like, and trust me—he had one.” My face heated at the memory.
“Did anything…weird happen?”
“Unless you’d call having the fastest orgasm of my life weird, then no.” My stomach twisted. “Maybe that freaked him out?”
She scoffed. “Trust me, no guy is going to run out because he gets a woman off too fast. Had it been the other way around, that’s another story.”
My shoulders dipped. “I don’t know. He’s the one who started it, and then—” I froze.
“Then?” she prompted, but there was concern in her eyes, not a need for entertainment.
“Maybe I pushed him too far,” I admitted. “We’d just had this giant discussion on why we shouldn’t be doing anything, and then I decided to risk it without letting him in on that choice. Maybe he didn’t really want what ended up happening, and he sure as hell didn’t want anything else. Or maybe he realized I’m just not what he’s used to. Maybe something’s wrong with me.”
“Look, Zoe. I’ve seen the way…North looks at you. I would find it really hard to believe that he wasn’t interested.”
“Well, he sure got uninterested very quickly.”
“And locked himself in the bathroom.”
“Yep.”
“And won’t talk to you.”
“Nope.”
“Which makes living with him exactly how awkward? On a scale of one to ten.” She lifted a corner of her mouth.
“About a billion,” I admitted. “And we’re supposed to leave in two days for the next show. I don’t know. Maybe he’s used to girls who…you know…take care of him first.”
Now I was the one getting a what-the-hell look. “No. Any guy who expects to come first doesn’t get to come at all. Those are the rules.”
“I think I missed the handbook.”
“You were busy taking on the world.” She grasped my hands in hers. “I could be wrong, but I’d bet a million bucks that this isn’t about you, Zo. It’s about him.”