“But you just said—”
“That you should write about sex. But sex ultimately has to be about self before it can be about the other person, right?”
Riley gave Camille a look. “Are you talking about masturbation again?”
Her boss tapped a maroon fingernail against the back of Riley’s hand. “I’m talking about the difference between being a girl and a woman.”
“Wonderful,” Riley muttered. “Whisky makes her deep.”
“Go ahead and sass,” Camille said. “But I’ve accumulated some wisdom along with the hot flashes and sagging tits. You think that sex is all about the right position and the flexibility?”
“Um …”
“Wrong,” Camille retorted. “It’s about knowing yourself enough to know which positions work for you, and to know that you like your men with a little paunch around the belly, and about leaving the blindfolds and the feathers to the other ladies if you don’t like it.”
Riley looked around desperately. “Is there, like, a safe word I can use to escape this conversation?”
Her boss shrugged. “Hey, not my fault you’re taking tiny sips of that drink.”
Riley lifted the cocktail glass and took a healthy gulp.
“So you’re good on the story, then?” Camille said, gesturing to the bartender for the check.
Riley stared at her, flabbergasted. “How would I be good on the story? I told you what I wanted to write, you said no. Then you started talking about sagging boobs and hot flashes, and I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
Camille patted her hand as she dropped her corporate card into her billfold. “Sure you do. You’re just pretending you don’t know, because you don’t want to do what you have to do.”
“Which is …”
“You tell him. How you feel.”
Riley nodded once. “Yeah. Yeah, I kind of knew you were going to say that.”
She tossed back the rest of her drink.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.” Riley leaned forward to turn up the heat that he’d turned down five seconds earlier. His eyes flicked from the road down to his truck’s thermostat, but instead of giving the expected my car, my rules lecture, he merely turned his eyes back to the road with a resigned look.
Riley didn’t like that. Not one bit.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t liking the way he’d been acting the past few days. He wasn’t quite distant. He wasn’t quite grumpy. But he was different.
He was careful. And no matter how much she smiled—no matter how hard she tried to get him to smile—she was desperately afraid that things were shifting in the wrong direction. She sensed he was pushing her away, and desperate times called for desperate measures.
And desperate measures meant going with him to visit her.
“Did you tell your mom I was coming?” Riley asked, turning to stare out the window.
“Nope. Because until you climbed into my car an hour ago, I didn’t know you were coming.”
She turned to look at him. “I told you yesterday I would.”
“And I told you yesterday that I didn’t want you to,” he snapped.
Sam still wouldn’t look at her, but it didn’t take a genius to see he was pissed. His jaw was tight, his knuckles were white, and his tone was curt.