Hot & Heavy (Lightning 2)

Which I know is total, absolute and complete bullshit. I’m not my mom, who believes everything is written in the stars and that every person we meet is there to somehow guide us on our journey. Shawn is just a gorgeous guy who knows how to handle a woman’s body. That’s all.

Who really, really knows how to handle a woman’s body.

God, did he really just give me three orgasms in twenty minutes? I’ve never had three orgasms in one sexual encounter in my life, let alone with a stranger in the back of a bar.

The enormity of what just happened—along with the utter absurdity of it—overwhelms me. I don’t want to think about it, but the truth is, it’s all I can think about as I pull my car into my driveway.

I just slept with a stranger.

I just slept with a stranger.

Holy fuck. I. Just. Slept. With. A. Stranger.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

I put the car in park, and for long seconds I just sit here, in the dark, letting my thoughts chase themselves around in my head. I can try to blame that lemon drop all I want, but the truth is, I’m stone-cold sober. I never would have gotten behind the wheel of this car if I wasn’t. Alcohol didn’t make me fuck Shawn against a wall in the back of that bar.

So what did?

I still don’t have an answer ten minutes later, when I finally make my way up the front porch stairs and into my townhouse. Once inside I think about going straight to bed, about burying my head under my pillow and not coming out until I’ve convinced myself that everything that just happened did so in an alternate universe. With an alternate Sage who has none of the same hang-ups that I do.

The only problem with that theory is that I can still smell Shawn on me, the orange and bergamot and whiskey smell of him is on my clothes, in my skin. Because I like the smell—too much—I force myself toward the laundry room off the kitchen. I strip down right there in front of the washing machine, and shove everything but my shoes inside of it.

Even though tonight’s outfit is the only thing in the machine, I throw in some laundry detergent and start the delicate cycle. Ecological responsibility be damned tonight. Right now I’m too busy worrying about my own sanity to worry about the amount of water I’m using as well.

With that in mind, I walk naked to the master bedroom at the back of the house. For a moment I contemplate taking a bath, but I need this smell gone—along with the memory of Shawn’s feel and taste and deep, gravelly voice—as soon as possible.

Besides, a bath will only give me too much time to think.

I hop in the shower instead, and focus intently on thinking about anything but Shawn. Anything but what I did tonight. What we did tonight.

It almost works.

But twenty minutes later when I’m lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling in the dim light cast by the streetlamp outside my window, I know I’m screwed. There’s no way I can stop my brain from going into overdrive now, with nothing else to concentrate on. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to fall asleep with thoughts of Shawn, and what he did to me—what we did to each other—racing through my head.

I throw back the covers with a groan, grab my laptop off the floor and make my way to the kitchen for a cup of tea. If I can’t sleep, I might as well work.

It’s the motto of my life, and one I find especially comforting as I wait for the teakettle to boil. Not as comforting as Shawn’s body pressed against—

I cut the thought off before it can fully form. That is not how I’m going to deal with what happened tonight. I’m not going to think about that godforsaken bachelorette party, I’m not going to think about Shawn and I’m sure as hell not going to think about what the two of us did together in the back of that bar.

After making a cup of good strong English breakfast tea—which my mother derides as being both capitalistic and soul-destroying—I settle down at my desk and start making my way through the monthly bills for Soul Studio, my mother’s yoga place. Payroll doesn’t go out until Friday, but everyone turned their hours in yesterday so I might as well do that, too.

I can feel myself settle a little as I crunch the numbers, feel the tension start to leach out of my shoulders and my stomach as they slowly, slowly begin to unknot. I know there are a lot of people in the world who hate math and budgeting, but I love it. I love the way numbers never lie, love the way they just make sense. No matter how you move them or change them around, when you add or subtract, multiply or divide, you’re always going to get the same answer. Two plus two really does equal four.

To be honest, it’s the main reason I became an accountant to begin with. My mom always said I was doing to it rebel against her, and I’m honest enough to admit that maybe there’s some truth to that. When you spend your whole childhood living on a commune and your teen years in a traveling yoga studio and bookstore, you end up craving a little stability. A little normalcy.

When it came time to declare my major in college, accounting was the most stable and normal job I could think of. The fact that I fell in love with it from my very first class just made it better. At least until my mom started having trouble with Soul Studio my sophomore year, and I ended up sucked into her woo-woo business whether I wanted to be or not.

I’m cruising happily along now, my brain focused on numbers and decidedly not on Shawn’s incredible biceps and even more incredible tongue. Once I check through all the time cards, comparing them with the last two weeks’ schedules, I pull up the studio’s bank accounts to deal with the direct deposits.

And nearly have a heart attack the moment the zero balances flash across the screen.

What. The. Fuck.

I try to click through to withdrawals, but I’m so frantic I click the wrong button and end up in bill pay instead. Cursing under my breath as thoughts of fraud and identity theft race through my brain, I finally manage to get to the right screen. And nearly have a heart attack all over again when I realize my mom made the withdrawal. My mom took all seventy-six thousand dollars out of the checking account and the hundred-and-twelve-thousan

d-dollar nest egg I’ve spent four years building for the business out of the savings account.