“You do give very good hand jobs. Excellent. I give it five fingers out of five.”
“I tried.”
“You succeeded. I guess considering your history I can’t blame you for not telling me you’d never had sex before. Men can get squirrelly about that stuff.”
“You don’t seem squirrelly.”
“I might have been if you’d told me before. It wouldn’t have stopped me from fucking you. I might have just waited a few days and gone a lot slower.”
“Then I’m glad I didn’t tell you. Ruthie calls it my ‘little problem.’ That’s why she was joking about hiring me a male escort. At least I think she was joking about Sven.”
“Oh, Sven.”
“Good ole Sven.”
“So my seventeen-year-old daughter has been trying to get her thirty-year-old boss laid? And to think I thought all she did at the nursery was water plants and answer the phone.”
“I promise, hiring me male escorts was not in the job description. That was all her idea.”
“The only bad downside of us sleeping together is that I can’t call my parenting book Kids Are Such Cock Blocks anymore. Damn. It was going to be a bestseller.”
“Sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Not at all,” she said. “That was...amazing.”
“I like that word. Amazing. It implies that you were, you know, amazed.” He waggled his eyebrows at her to make her laugh.
“I was amazed. I was lying there and thinking, ‘Wow. I didn’t think this would be worth all the trouble.’ And you know what? It was worth all the trouble.”
“I hope there’s no trouble. You did say you were on the pill, right?”
She nodded. “I take it every day. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“When I had the sex talk with you know who, I said condoms all the time, every time. I love being a hypocrite. Not the best part of being a parent but definitely in the top five.”
“In all fairness to you—and we must be fair to you,” she said.
“We must.”
“I wasn’t kidding about the latex allergy. I got hives in the hospital after surgery because the doctor was wearing latex gloves. Although maybe I mentioned that so you’d think I’d had sex. I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“Not freaked out,” he said. “You? It was your first time, after all. Feeling okay about it?”
“I feel pretty good,” she said. “Very good, really.”
“Good enough to go another round?”
“Hmm... I’m a little sore inside but we can try.”
Erick shrugged. “We’ll wait until you’re ready. We had sex once and it’s already more than I’ve had all year.”
“We can keep kissing, though,” she said. “I’d like that.”
“Can I ask you something personal?”
“Isn’t that all you’ve been doing for the last four hours?”