Stripped Down (Tap That)

Eight

“Finn, look at Aunt Sloane.” Sloane covered her face with her hands, on the grass at her father’s house with her nephew plopped across from her. She pulled her hands away quickly. “Hi, Finnie!” He gave her a drooling smile that melted her heart.

This was what it was all about. Being part of Finn’s life.

Making sure her father wasn’t lonely.

Keeping an eye on Sullivan.

Not having sex with Rick.

The thought made her cheeks warm and she couldn’t help but dart a glance over to the firepit where he was sitting in an Adirondack chair drinking a beer. Looking casual and cool. As if he hadn’t been buried inside her the night before. She envied him his complete control over his emotions and facial expressions.

He had entered the back yard with River and had given her a wave and an easy, “Hey, Sloane,” before heading right into the house to deposit a six pack in the fridge.

Finn reached for her with his plump little fingers. He touched her cheeks, s

queezed his fingers into a fist, pinching her skin. “Ow,” she said, pretending to be hurt. “Owie, zowie.” She made a funny face and he laughed, that hearty belly baby laugh that could bring world peace if anyone ever thought to bottle it up. Forget waterboarding. They needed to make prisoners listen to baby belly laughs in a total opposite approach.

Sloane was exhausted, but she realized she was bone-deep content. She’d survived her thirtieth birthday. Had actually ended it with a bang, in the truest sense of the word. Sex with Rick had been beyond anything she had ever experienced and she realized at some point, when she was ready, she could have that in a relationship. If Rick had gotten her off, someone else could, right? In theory. It wasn’t like he was a unicorn. Surely other men existed who knew how to please a woman.

It had been a long day at the groomers after a night filled more with sex than sleep, but she loved dogs so much being able to pet and cuddle them while working had refilled her well, which lately had been so damn empty.

Now she had baby Finn and her family and friends around her. Both Becca and Emily were here at her father’s request to do a low-key birthday cookout, along with Sullivan’s buddies and Lilly, who was everyone’s friend. It warmed her heart that they still wanted to be a part of her life after all these years. A woman couldn’t ask for much more.

Her eyes wandered to Rick again.

Well.

She could ask for that again.

She hadn’t known sex could be that intense. That deep and satisfying. It had popped in and out of her head all day, making her nipples harden at totally inappropriate times. But she had shown Rick to the door and they hadn’t discussed anything other than that she had demanded it wouldn’t be weird or awkward.

Finn gave a happy shriek and crawled up onto her legs, which were sprawled out in front of her. Then without warning, he reached out and squeezed her breast like he had her cheek, which he seemed to think was hilarious.

“Kid knows a good thing when he sees it,” Rick said, as he moved past them, an empty beer in his hand.

“Stop it!” she said. “He’s a baby.” She moved Finn’s surprisingly tight grip down to her stomach.

Rick didn’t say anything else, he just disappeared into the house. She bounced Finn on her legs and held his little hands in her own.

The house was the one she had grown up in and she was right next to the brick patio her father had installed when she was in her teens. The firepit had been there longer and she and Sullivan also had friends over for bonfires back in the day. The house itself was a standard colonial in a suburban neighborhood, one of the few planned developments in Beaver Bend. In a way, it surprised her that her father still lived there. It wasn’t really a house for a tattooed bar owner with an empty nest.

But at the same time, she knew why he didn’t leave. It was the house her mother had wanted. The house that was supposed to make her happy and hadn’t. It hadn’t been the solution to her discontent. If anything, from what her father said, it just amplified it because then she couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t happy.

Then one day Sloane had gotten up and instead of her mother in the kitchen it had been her father. He had poured cereal in a bowl for her and plunked her down in front of cartoons on the TV and told her that her mother had left and wasn’t coming home.

It hadn’t made any sense to her then and it still didn’t now. Sloane should have more memories of her mother given she was five when she left, but she really didn’t. She remembered being cared for by her father while her mother was either gone or sitting talking on the cordless phone in their family room, laughing with her girlfriends. Sloane would attempt to climb on her lap and mostly get shooed away. She didn’t remember her mother being cruel to her, just disinterested.

But even though she barely remembered her, sometimes she wondered if she was a lot like her mother. Take what you want. Attempt to twist it to what you want it to be. There was something similar to that in her marriage to Tom. But Sloane hadn’t, and never would, just roll out on of her family’s life. Ill-suited or not, she’d been committed to Tom, and if she ever got married again and had kids, she’d be the same way.

She felt Rick’s presence and knew it was him before she even saw him drop down onto the grass beside her. Funny how after just a few hours she could recognize his movements, his presence, his smell. But it had been a very intimate few hours. She glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow in question.

He was holding his beer by the neck of the bottle and he raised it to his lips and took a sip. Then he said, “You look tired.”

Sloane rolled her eyes. “I think you’re renowned flirting skills are slipping. No woman wants to hear she looks tired.”

His eyebrows shot up. “I meant it as concern.”