And then Dylan stood, eyes flashing and intense, body aimed for Laura's booth, and Mike stopped breathing.
“Fuck,” Laura whispered.
“What?” Josie asked, sucking the last remnants of ice cream from her spoon.
“Fuck me, Josie!”
“I don't do girls. Well, except for that one time in college when – ”
Laura grabbed Josie's arm, her fingernails sinking in. “They're coming over here.”
“And you're surprised?” Josie looked at Laura like she had three heads.
Three.
As if he owned the joint – no, as if he owned her – Dylan slid into the booth right next to Laura, arm stretching across the back of the booth, his chest against her shoulder. Mike had the decency to stand at the side and look awkward. Because he was awkward. This much, she knew.
And Dylan was being a strutting ass because he was a strutting ass.
This she knew, too.
What she didn't know was why they had decided once again to come after her. One fuck. She had been just one fuck, right? They'd convinced her (you convinced yourself) to have her first threesome and she'd reveled in it. Still felt it on her skin, inside her, in her mouth, on her thighs – everywhere.
But this wasn't how she wanted it to go. Her guilt at dating two guys at once was bad enough. Learning they knew each other and were an item (sorta) that wanted her to complete them was too much to absorb at nearly 6 a.m. When she needed to go to work on zero hours of sleep. She still needed a shower, was starting to get a headache, and now six eyes stared at her with expectations that turned into a churning soup of hope and dread.
“Can you people pick one table and stick to it?” Madge croaked, refilling Laura's water glass. “Breakfast rush is about to start and I'll need the table.”
“We're over here now, Madge,” Dylan replied, winking at her.
“You done with your food?” She nodded at the half-full plates. Mike gave her a closed-mouth smile and nodded. “OK,” she sighed. “I'll bring your check here.” Laura pretended Madge was the most interesting sight ever and watched pointedly as the old woman cleared the table in about three seconds, delivered the checks, and pointed a new group to an empty table.
“Man, how old is she?” Josie asked, admiring her energy.
“She's been here at least since we were in college and put up old Warlock,” Dylan joked, nudging Laura. The heat from his chest made her feel like she couldn't breathe, as if the warmth itself, made true from his blood, his flesh, his movement and soul, were some sort of force field that stopped time, stopped her heart, stopped everything and made her want to bathe in him. His presence. His scent.
Wait. What?
She looked up at Dylan, the muscle of his upper arm poking through the thin lines of his cotton t-shirt. Could she lick it without being caught? Bad Laura. Bad.
“You made the Warlock Waitress?” Laura's hold on reality was tenuous at best. Learning these two had been responsible for a local culture legend would send her over the edge.
“Not quite,” Mike chuckled. “It was really Jill's idea.”
If Mike had thrown a bucket full of cold ice water on her head, he couldn't have jolted Laura out of her slump any faster. Jill. Of course. Of course it was Jill's idea. Some part of her that had been churning and unfocused came into play again, sharpened by competition. She wasn't seriously threatened by a dead woman, was she?
Even one who looked like she'd been hand-chiseled by Ralph Lauren?
Dead, Laura. Dead. You can't compete with the dead.
And maybe that was part of the problem here. Two very real, very alive men breathing next to her, both with heartbeats and fingers and raspy stubble and soft smiles. Both in love with a woman who had died not quite two years ago, someone they had spent early adulthood loving. Surfing and skiing and forging a very unique relationship that few would ever dare to try.
They had ten years of this to draw on.
She had a handful of hours. And was competing with a dead woman.
She wasn't feeling stifled for no good reason. And Josie saw something in her face, could read Laura so well, because before Laura could open her mouth to fumble through an explanation, Josie stood, ushering Mike away from the edge, and kicked Dylan in the shin.
“Hey! What was that for!” he shouted, rubbing his leg bone.
“Out. Give Laura some space.”
“But I – ” Her glare cut him off. Rolling his eyes, he huffed – but moved. Biceps flexing under that Rush t-shirt, Dylan's body moved away, leaving a vacancy, a coldness where he'd been, that made her feel a little bit abandoned. Ping-ponging back and forth emotionally like this wasn't her style at all, and she was weary. Just wrung out and ready for this night to end.
The sun blinded her out of the blue, the restaurant's windows unshaded. Madge went down the line lowering the blinds. Laura checked her phone. 6:07 a.m. Time to put the night to rest.
Scooching over, she stood, Mike's arm inches from her, his eyes purposefully not meeting hers. She smiled at Dylan and he took it as an opportunity, stepping closer to her until Josie blocked him with an arm the size of his –
Josie shook her head slowly, piercing him with her stare. “Don't be that guy.” She looked up at Mike, tipping her head way, way back. “Those guys.”
As the sun radiated through the filthy glass and illuminated Jeddy's, a renewed sense of...something struck Laura. She lacked the right word for it, but knew the feeling. Not hope. Not promise. Not quite possibility.
Willingness.
Mike took a microstep toward her. “When you're ready,” he said, echoing his earlier words.
“Can we make you dinner some night this week?” Dylan asked, pushing – ever pushing.
She made a mirthless laugh. “Last time Mike did that, dinner wasn't just dinner.”
“We swear,” the men said in unison.
“Unreal,” Josie muttered.
Laura grabbed the rubber balls from the table, where Josie had propped them up against the jukebox. Fishing a quarter out of her purse, she leaned over, giving anyone who walked by a nice money shot of her ample ass. She knew both men were staring and she cared – more than she knew.
Plunking the quarter in and making a choice, she turned and attached the balls to the cardboard cutout's crotch. Giving them a squeeze, she and Josie sauntered out as the opening chords of “Call Me, Maybe?” wended their way through the early breakfast crowd.
Calling in sick was the best decision Laura had made in the past five days. Not that this was a week for exhibiting stellar judgment, though. As her fingers punched in the number for her boss's personal cell phone, though, she felt legitimately ill. So ill, he just said, “Do what you have to do to recover” and made sympathetic noises.
Off the hook for the day, she stared dully at the back of her front door. “Do what you have to do to recover” was easier said than done.
Josie came out of the kitchen using one talon to peel a clementine. “And?”
“I'm off for the day.”
“Cool. I don't work until three, but I need some sleep.” Yawn. “For once, I won't ask you to make me coffee.”
Laura was too tired to smile. “Help me, Josie. What the hell do I do?”
“You're asking the woman who hasn't been laid for seven months for romance advice?” She shoved a wedge of citrus in her mouth. “I'll tell you what I would do.”
“That's what I'm asking!”
“I would hear them out. Let them make you dinner. Spend time with them – together. Don't f**k them, though.”
“Josie!”
“You can't blame me for saying that, Laura. 'Cause you did. Fuck them. And it freaked you out. They caught you off guard and I'll bet it was the hot Italian dude who made it all happen.”
Laura's face must have revealed all, because Josie pointed and said, “I knew it,” as she shoved the rest of the clementine in her mouth, standing and crossing the room to throw the peels away.
“He's a charmer,” Laura answered. Choke. Not that Mike wasn't, but Dylan. He could talk the pants off a prison guard.
“And the other one – Jesus, Laura. Did you need stilts and a stool to f**k him?” Josie cringed and held up one hand, fingernails radiating from her palm like a metal sun sculpture. “TMI. Don't answer that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because I have no filter. Duh. You're my filter. And I have no filter when I'm talking to my filter about her positions when f**king a guy the size of a streetlamp.”
Laura pretended to mull that one over, then threw a couch pillow at Josie, who seemed to know it was coming and ducked well ahead of time. “Dinner? Really?”
Josie blinked hard, rubbing one eye. “Yeah. I think you need to just get to know these guys. Spend time with them. Not the kind of time where you sit there, all anxiety-filled, wondering when you'll end up in bed. I mean the pal-around, cuddle on the couch, watch a movie and cook dinner for each other kind of time.”
“That's called a date.”
“Yes. You need to date them.”
“Date them. Double date by myself?” Both laughed. “Josie, I don't even have a language for this!” she wailed.
“That's the problem, hon. No one does. And I think,” she added, pensive suddenly, “I think that's why they care so much about you. Because you are the first person they've met in a long time who is even willing to learn whatever rare language they speak. So far, most people don't even view it as words. Just offensive gibberish.”
“I find it lovely,” Laura whispered. Yawn.
Josie laughed quietly, grabbing another clementine and her purse. “I know you do, sweets. But right now the only language you need to speak involves a lot of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Go to bed.”
“I need a shower.” Laura sniffed one armpit. “God, that bad?”
“Sleep first. Shower after.”
By the time she heard the door click as Josie left, Laura's living room was spinning, the air washing before her like waves of water, her eyes heavy and lids drooping. As she heard footsteps waning down the hall, before she knew it she was fast asleep, vulnerable now only to whatever her subconscious conjured for her in her dreams.
Chapter Two
She knew he was there long before her eyes, her nose, or her skin registered him, ears perked and hearing an unspoken need that shouted through the silence. Her neck shifted to the left, open for his lips, and he did not disappoint. As if forged by God for his very shape, the touch of his mouth on the nape of her neck seemed divine, shaped for this moment, the two parts of flesh melding into one through the sigh that escaped her, unbidden and knowing.
When Mike's hands slid over her shoulders, down to her elbows, then effortlessly transitioned to her hips, the two slipping into a V that traveled to her womanhood and stroked out to her thighs, his c*ck hard against the cleft of her ass as the shower spray poured down on them, the sigh that came from her was like a prayer. Spinning around, she took his face in her hands and kissed him, hard, the sudden, fierce uprising in her needing as much of him now, right now, hard and fast and tough and quick and in and out immediately. His tongue matched hers, all fire and taking, as his knees parted her legs, then let her go with a tight nip to her lower lip, turning her around and bending her down.