Second Time's the Charm

Taking her hand, he led her to the couch, relieved to see that she followed him easily.

“Look,” he said right off. “I don’t want you to feel pressured at all. If this isn’t right for you, that’s okay. We don’t have to sleep together.” He meant every word.

“But—”

“No,” he interrupted her. “We can be as close as you’re comfortable with. Physically or not. We’re friends either way.”

“I want to have sex.” Her smile was tinged with sadness as she ran her fingers gently across his face. Jon turned and kissed them. “I guess I’m just not as ready as I thought I was.”

“Then we’ll wait.”

“Not too long,” she said, her eyes getting that hungry look again, confusing him with her mixed messages. “I’m... I just wasn’t prepared tonight and?”

Remembering the months he’d spent with Kate, prior to the pregnancy, he wondered if she was having that time of the month.

“I don’t want you to think I’m rushing things,” he told her again in case his first impression was accurate and she just wasn’t ready.

He could manage fine without sex.

At least, he’d been doing all right without it before she’d come waltzing into his life, a human aphrodisiac that just didn’t quit.

“I also want you to know that I just bought the condoms today. I haven’t had sex since before Abe was born,” he continued, holding her hand and hating that his body was still begging him to do so much more.

“I got them in Phoenix,” he added. “So no one here could see me buying them and draw conclusions about us.”

Lillie leaned into him and pressed her lips to his. “I wasn’t worried,” she said. “I trust you, Jon. Implicitly. And if people think we’re having sex, that’s okay, too.”

The rush those words brought was almost better than sex itself.

* * *

IN BETWEEN HER early-morning bike ride and work, Lillie managed to make a phone call to her doctor on Tuesday morning. She reassured Lillie that while the first time she and Jon made love might be a little uncomfortable for her, she would be just fine.

And while it was possible to tell if a woman had given birth—more so if the man in question had been versed in the physical intimacies of a particular woman’s body before the baby—it was unlikely in her case, as she and Jon had never made love before.

Dr. Jordon had also suggested, not lightly, that if Lillie were embarking on a serious relationship, she should tell the man that she’d had a son. And lost him just days after his birth.

Assuring the doctor that if she was seriously considering a long-term relationship, she would do so, Lillie hung up, relieved. And almost called Jon to tell him the good news.

Then she remembered that he hadn’t known there’d been a problem.

She hadn’t, either, until the night before, when they’d been seconds away from taking off their clothes.

When he called her later that afternoon, offering to get started on the tiling that evening—with Abraham in tow—she agreed immediately.

That night, as well as the two nights after that, she spent the early part of the evening looking after the little boy who was quickly tunneling his way into her heart, and then, after eight when she’d settled him into her bed, she spent the rest of the time working beside Jon.

By ten o’clock on Thursday night, Lillie was pretty well tied up in knots.

“Do you like it?” In his old work jeans and a T-shirt, with grout dust covering his hands and a portion of his cheek, Jon surveyed the new backsplash in her bathroom—the last of his tiling projects.

“I love it!” The glossy beige and tan and crystal squares looked even better than she’d hoped against the off-white walls and beige granite sinks. She was covered in grout, too, although she’d washed her hands.

“Good.” Putting the lid back on the almost-empty container of grout, he dropped his dirty trowels in the bucket of warm water he’d brought in with him and put the lid on that, too. “I’ll get this stuff out to the truck and be right back for Abe,” he said.

Reaching out a hand, Lillie grabbed his arm. “Don’t go.”

He froze, the few inches he had on her seeming more like ten as he looked down at her. “Don’t go?” he repeated.