LoveLines (25 page)

But that was about to change.

***

“Can I just say that I’m in love with your boyfriend?” Erica said, rinsing the tomatoes in my kitchen sink.

She and Noah came over to celebrate Reece moving in.
There wasn’t much that was actually moved in considering Reece owned very little, but Noah did help load my storage shed with Reece’s tools, and Erica helped me organize his clothes in my closet. Our closet.

“I know,” I replied. “He’s pretty great.”

“He turned me into a professional. I really feel like a businesswoman now,” she said.

“He’s good like that.”

Erica’s business, Coastal Color Custom Airbrush Tanning, was in its fourth month of operation. She started slowly by tanning her friends and then using them as referrals to pick up more clients. Once she felt comfortable turning her “little home business” into something more professional, she asked Reece to create an ad campaign for her. She needed a slogan. She needed some advertising posters and banners. She needed a social media presence to spread the word. He helped her with it all, telling her his only payment was that she had to take his side in any future arguments he had with me. She agreed. The bitch.

“What happens when you get too many clients?” I asked.

“I hire help,” Erica replied. “Like you.”

“No way. With my perfectionism, it’d take me five hours to tan someone,” I said.

Erica chuckled. “You’re right. You’d be awful at it.”

“I’m just glad
you got better,” I said. “I was worried there for a second. How much did you pay for that tanning system, anyway?”

“You don’t
wanna know,” Erica replied.

We grabbed
the salad bowl and potatoes and headed outside. Reece and Noah were at the grill, drinking beer and cooking ribs.

“About done,” Reece said, tossing his empty bottle in a recycling bin near the back door.

“Good, ‘cause I’m starved,” Erica replied.

We sat down to
a Southern feast: grilled barbeque ribs, potato salad, fried okra, and a spinach salad on Erica’s insistence.

“Only healthy thing at this table,” she pointed out.

We dug into the food while Reece decided it was the perfect time to dig into my past.

“You three are close, right?” he asked, stabbing a potato with his fork.

“Sure,” Noah replied. “I’m fucking this one—” He nudged his wife. “—and that one’s practically my sister.” He jabbed a thumb in my direction.

“So we can
talk openly?” Reece asked.

“What do you mean by ‘openly’?” I replied, feeling a little wary.

Reece paused and shoved more potato salad in his mouth, holding up his fork while he chewed. The rest of us waited, intrigued.

He swallowed and continued. “Thirty-one.”

Noah, Erica, and I all looked at one another.

“Huh?”

“The number thirty-one,” he said, looking at me. “You never told me why you dislike it so much.”

My eyes went wide. “Can we talk about this another time?”

“Why? Noah and Erica know you better than anyone else, am I right?” Reece asked.

“That’s true,” Erica said.

“So I’m sure they already know. But you never told me. And you never gave me details about your fiancé,” Reece said.

“Bailey!” Erica admonished. “
You’ve been dating the man for months!”

I scowled. “Why are you bringing this up right now?” I bore my eyes into Reece’s face. Completely ineffectual. He just kept right on talking.

“I thought I’m owed these details about you. Like Erica said, we’re living together now. Every time I try to bring it up, you evade the topic.”

“Gee, Reece, maybe that’
s because I don’t wanna talk about it!” I spat.

“But I’m owed the details,” he persisted.

What the fuck with this guy?

“You’re not owed anything!” I cried.

“Okay,” Erica said. “Enough. We didn’t help you move in today and get a much-needed babysitter so that we could hang out tonight and listen to this bullshit.”

I dropped my fork and folded my arms over my chest, leaning back into my chair.

Reece shrugged.

“How many beers have you had, Reece?” Erica asked.

“Two.”

“Okay, so then we can’t blame alcohol for your douchebag behavior right now,” she went on.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“
Shutty,” Erica said. “This is private shit that you oughta ask Bailey when the two of you are alone. Doesn’t matter that Noah and I already know. But since we already know, and since she’s trying to keep stuff from you she shouldn’t—” I made some sort of squeaky noise in protest. “—we’ll fill you in. Honey, go ahead.”

“Bailey isn’t a fan of the number thirty-one for a few reasons,” Noah offered.

“Noah!” I yelled.

Erica swatted my thigh.

“It’s her bad luck number. She discovered it on her thirty-first birthday,” Noah said.

“Well, what’s so bad about it?” Reece asked. He
directed the question to me, who sat with lips sealed in a thin, tight line.

“She collected thirty-one rocks when she was six years old,” Erica explained. “She organized them all on the kitchen steps, and her mother discovered them.”

Reece crinkled his brow. “I don’t get it.”

I huffed.

“That’s when her mother discovered that she’d inherited OCD from her father,” Erica said.

“
Ohhhh,” Reece replied.

“
Because of the way she categorized them and lined them up,” Erica went on. “Her mother just knew. And I guess you could say she was devastated.”

Erica glanced at me. I averted my eyes and glued them to my beer bottle.

“Bailey, why don’t you explain the rest?” Erica offered.

“Why?” I asked. “You and Noah are doing
such an outstanding job.”

“Because I’d rather hear it from you,” Reece said gently. “And these people are your best friends. You’ve got nothing to hide from them. Why are you
so mad?”

“Because it’s a buzzkill,” I said.
“And I don’t like being put on the spot. Time and place, Reece. You know what I’m sayin’? There’s a time and a place.”

“Bailey,” he replied, “you didn’t give me a choice. You never
wanna talk about it. I know this was kind of a bullshit thing to do—”

“I’ve gone
through thirty-one boyfriends, okay?!” I blurted.

“Okay,” he replied.

“Brian was thirty-one when he broke off our engagement!”

Reece listened closely.

“Mom decided I was a hopeless cause after seeing those thirty-one rocks!”

Reece reached across the table for my hand. I pulled away.

“Before you, I was thirty-one and single! And not by choice! I don’t have the best track record with that number. Happy?”

Silence.

“Have you ever considered the tide might be changing?” Reece asked.

“Is that, like, a beach quip
?” I asked.

Erica laughed.

“It just happened that way,” Reece said patiently.

“Well, do tell me how the tide is changing,” I said.

“You’re thirty-one, and you met me,” Reece pointed out.

I snorted. “You really think you’re something, huh?”

He grinned. “I must be if you adopted me.”

“Wait, what?” Noah asked. “Adopted?”

“Bailey didn’t tell you I’m a foster kid?” Reece asked. He cleaned a rib bone in three bites.

“Umm,
noooo,” Erica said. She stared at me.

“Yeah. I’m a foster kid. And she adopted me,” Reece explai
ned, pointing the bone at me.

“Oh my God,” Erica whispered. “Oh my God, it’s so sweet!”

“I know, right?” Reece said.

I considered him. “Are you always this open with people?”

“These aren’t people. These are my friends,” he countered.

“Fine. Are you always so open with friends you’re still getting to know?” I asked.

“I just wanna belong, Bailey,” he said softly. “I wanna belong in your world with your friends and your hobbies and your gardens. That’s all. I wanna know everything about you, even if I have to bully it out of you. Put you on the spot. Make you uncomfortable. ‘Cause I can’t get enough of you.”

Noah instinctively put his arm around Erica’s shoulder. He pulled her close and kissed her temple.

“All right,” I sighed. “We’re all friends here. Ask me anything you wanna know.”

***

“How were your urges today?” Reece asked later that night as we watched TV.

I noticed the glint in his
green eyes. I’m no fool. He was itching for me to tell him I tapped something so that he could tap my ass. Hard.

“What urges?”
I replied, affecting confusion.

“
That’s cute,” he said. “Now tell me.”

“It was a good day,” I replied. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“That doesn’t disappoint me at all. I want you to have good days. I want every day to be a good day.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. It wasn’t in my nature to cuddle, but something about the way he interacted with me compelled this new urge to touch him. Constantly.

I voiced my discovery.

“I want to touch you all the time,” I said. “You’ve made me develop a new urge.”

“Well, that’s a good one, though. Right?”

“I’m not sure I know the difference,” I confessed. “All of them feel good when I’m succumbing to them because they ease my anxiety.”

He kissed my forehead. “Are you still feeling anxious all the time?”

“No, not lately.”

“Then I think it’s a good urge. But just to be safe, we’ll play it both ways,” he said.

I lifted my face to his. “What do you mean?”

He stood up and pulled me off the couch.

“Reece?”

He knelt in front of me and unbuttoned my pants.

“Reece, I’m not really in the mood.”

“I didn’t ask.”

My mouth dropped open. I watch
ed him slide my pants down my legs. I stepped out when he instructed. I just did what he said, just like that, because somewhere along the line it became easier to not make decisions. Perhaps that was why my OCD was becoming more manageable. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to make the decision
not
to tic. Not to arrange and sort and categorize. I simply let Reece take the lead.

“So this is something new,” Reece said, looking up at me.

“What’s new?”

“What I’m about to do to you,” he replied.

My heartbeat quickened.

“You developed an urge, see? And that’s not good for your OCD. You don’t need to keep stacking the deck. You need to be eliminating.”

My mouth quirked up.

“
Buuuuut
,” he went on, “the urge is a rather good one. Since it involves me. You touching me, to be exact. So you see how this is quite the conundrum? Do I reward you or punish you?”

I shrugged.

“Yeah, I think it’s gonna have to be both,” he decided, just as he ripped my panties off.

“Please don’t spank me,” I pleaded. “It’s too cold, and my ass will burn, like, double.”

“Oh, I’m not spanking you,” he replied. “Now go climb up on that table.”

“Seriously?”

“Mmhmm.”

“You know, other women would tell you to fuck off,” I said.

“You aren’t other women. Plus, you know you’re gonna get something out of it, too. I’m wise to you, missy. You like to play victim, but I make you come every time.”

Point taken. I walked to the kitchen and climbed on the table, crisscrossing my legs Indian style.

“What the hell is that?”

“Is what?”

“You’re not sitting like that,” Reece said.

“Well, you didn’t tell me how to position myself,” I argued.

“Get on your hands and knees,” he said.

“But Reece, that’ll hurt
my knees,” I said.

“Exactly.”

I sighed and pulled myself up on my hands and knees. I blushed at the blatant exposure of my bare ass in the air. Reece flipped the switch in the kitchen, and suddenly my modesty multiplied by a hundred. I moved to sit down again.

“Don’t you dare,” he warned.

I froze. “I’m feeling vulnerable,” I whispered.

“Good,” he said.

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Every
subsequent statement sounded like a plea: Let me sit down. Don’t look at me. Turn off the light.