The Bookworm's Guide to Dating (The Bookworm's Guide 1)

“I saw you mow your lawn.”

“What are you? My keeper? Fuck.”

Colton held up his hands. “You really didn’t sleep well last night.”

I shook my head and walked into the living room with him hot on my heels. My phone was still unlocked and on the text screen of my last conversation with Kinsley, and I snatched it up right as Colt sat down and looked at it.

“Who are you talking to?”

I shoved the phone in my pocket. “Just some girl I met online. Why?”

“I thought I saw something about my sister and sex.”

“Her name is Kelly. Probably misread it,” I answered, sitting in the armchair instead of my usual spot on the sofa. “You only glanced at it.”

“You’re right.” He shook it off and looked at the TV, catching the breaking news scrolling across the bottom of the screen on the sports news channel. “How about these shit fucking trades then, huh?”CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – KINSLEYrule seventeen: unlike most heroines in romance novels, menstruation is a thing. and you will bleed like hell and be a crabby bitch with cramps and an unrelenting need for sugar and carbs. you’re welcome.In all seriousness, anyone who wished to end their day with their life still able to be lived needed to fuck the hell off away from me.

One year.

One year. That’s how long it’d been since I last had sex.

Did Mother Nature give a shit about that? Nooo, she did not. I didn’t know who pissed in her Cheerios, but it was not justifiable by giving me my period the morning after I’d finally had sex.

And damn good sex, at that.

No matter what I said to Josh, that man knew his way around the genital area, and he really had found my clitoris with his tongue without any direction.

Seriously.

He could teach a class on locating the clitoris.

Not that he’d be locating mine for the next few days.

Ugh.

Being a woman really, really sucked.

Look, don’t think I was being ungrateful. I really was thankful that I wasn’t pregnant, but at this point in history, Mother Nature probably had WiFi. An email would have sufficed.

Long story short, I was pissed.

Admittedly, it did make things somewhat easier. With sex off the table, there was less reason for us to spend a night together which meant less instances for Josh and I to ultimately explain.

Since we were officially sneaking around.

Not that he knew that yet.

But if your best friends didn’t know the truth, you were definitely sneaking around.

Despite my bitching, I was happy, in a weird kind of way. Now we’d successfully crossed all the lines and dotted all the corners, removing the sexual element of the relationship meant we had to connect on another level.

An emotional one.

The same one that scared the ever-loving crap out of me.

Mostly because, given my current emotional state, I was liable to cry at a bread commercial.

Don’t judge me. We’ve all been there.

“When was the last time you had sex?”

I stared at Ivy. She was sitting at one of the tables at the front of the store, her swollen ankles up on another chair, and a torn-open bag of chips resting on her swollen stomach.

“That’s a random question,” I replied, right as the baby kicked and almost knocked her snack off her stomach.

“Stop that,” she said, tapping her belly. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”

“About the last time I had sex?”

“People in general.”

“Pregnancy is weird,” I muttered, finishing up arranging the shelf I was working on.

“You’re telling me,” she retorted. “Yesterday, I couldn’t stand the smell of these chips. Now I can’t stop eating them.”

I wrinkled my nose up at the strong onion smell that was emanating from her direction. “There’s a reason you couldn’t stand the smell of them, Ives.”

She paused, her mouth open, chip held in mid-air. “I’m sorry. Am I stinking out your store?”

“Yes, but it’ll just give your sister an excuse to put potpourri everywhere.” I brushed my hands on my jeans and walked over to her. “Do you need anything?”

“Do you have any water?”

I held up a finger and went into the staffroom to grab two bottles from the fridge, then took them back out.

“You’re my favorite person today,” Ivy said, uncapping the ice-cold water.

“Because I’m letting you eat those chips to annoy your sister?”

“Yes!” She sipped, then eyed me. “And you’re going to tell me about the last time you had sex.”

I frowned, toying with my own bottle. “About a year ago. Nothing special. Probably why it was the last time I had sex,” I lied.

“Liar!”

My mouth dropped open. “I am not lying!”

I was, obviously, lying.

And apparently not very well.

It wasn’t really one of my strong points, if I was honest with myself.

I couldn’t believe I’d gotten lies past Holley and Saylor already. Either I was a better liar than I thought, or they were really, really dumb.