Authors: Robin Kaye
She shook out her T-shirt and pulled it over her head before sliding the towel down and looking him in the eye. “It’s nothing personal, Fisher. You seem like a really nice guy, but I’m just not interested in dating, no matter how much chemistry there is between us. Just because you can raise my blood pressure, and I can raise your—” She motioned to his quickly deflating hard-on. “It’s nothing more than lust. Unlike you, I’ve got a lot of work to get done in a short time. The last thing I need is another distraction. So even though you’re the best-looking distraction I’ve ever imagined, I’m going to say thanks, but no.”
He inched closer. “So you’ve imagined me and you—” Oh yeah, she didn’t even need to answer, the way her eyes darkened and her breath caught gave her away. He was glad to know he wasn’t alone.
“Thanks for all your help today—the banana, the Gatorade, and you know”—she motioned to her leg—“whatever.” She tugged her shorts up under the towel and then pulled it off, folding it over the rail around the deck. “I’m sorry if I did anything to lead you on. That wasn’t my intention at all. As a matter of fact, I was trying to avoid you.”
He stepped to the left to block her escape, but she pivoted right. “You were? When?”
“When I saw you at Albertsons last night. I slipped down another aisle. Look, let’s just pretend this never happened. I’ll get my shoes, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Jessica, wait.”
She shook her head and walked through the French doors. He couldn’t say a damn thing to stop her. She’d made up her mind, and all he could do was hope she figured out that ignoring him wasn’t going to make the chemistry they shared go away.
“Sorry I’m late.” Jessie hurried through the gate of the tennis court Karma occupied, tossed her bag in the corner by the fence, and grabbed a can of balls and her racket. “I had another run-in with my stalker, and things got a little out of hand.”
“How out of hand did it get?”
Jessie shrugged and opened the fresh can. The scent of brand new tennis balls assaulted her. It was like a drug. God, she loved it. New-tennis-ball scent was as powerful and fleeting as new-car smell. By tomorrow, the balls would lose their new-ball smell and just a smidgen of their bounce. It was sad. But today, she put a ball to her nose and inhaled, they were perfect.
“I had a nasty hamstring cramp this morning, so I need to take it easy today. I’m sorry.” She tapped one over the net to Karma, who caught it and stuck it in her pocket. Jessie followed suit and then bounced the other around on the top of her racket, checking her strings. “Would you mind if we just volley instead of playing a game?”
“We don’t have to play at all if you’re hurt.” Karma adjusted her visor. “We can just go to Starbucks and talk. There’s one a few blocks away.”
“No, it’s fine.” The last place she wanted to go was the Starbucks that she and Fisher shared. She didn’t want to run into him again so soon, if ever. But then the thought of never seeing Fisher didn’t sound too good either—even after his threat of a come-to-Jesus meeting about the whole wild, rampant, scary, sexual chemistry thing. “I was just trying to run my hot stalker into the ground this morning, and well, by the end of the run, I was the one on the ground.” Jessie hit a ball to Karma. “Of course, in order to get me there, he had to tackle me.”
Karma let the ball fly past her and walked toward the net. “Your stalker tackled you?”
“Yeah, but he was only trying to help, I think. Though with him, there’s always that lingering doubt.” Jessie shrugged. “He’s a guy, and he gave me a hell of a leg massage. Between the massage and the soak in a hot tub, I’m almost as good as new.”
“A massage, then a soak in a hot tub? Sounds like foreplay to me.”
Jessie would be the last person on earth to admit it, but it felt a lot like foreplay too. She just hadn’t realized it until way too late. She plucked at the strings of her racket as Karma approached her.
“You have a hot tub?” Karma didn’t give Jessie even a second to answer. “Isn’t that convenient?”
“No, I don’t have a hot tub, and no, it’s not convenient at all.” Jessie backed up and took the spare ball from her pocket, bouncing it against the court with her racket to avoid making eye contact. “Fisher took me to his house, fed me a banana and Gatorade, and let me go for a swim in his Jacuzzi. It was medicinal, not foreplay.” She didn’t mention the end part where she practically ran away from a fully aroused, not to mention well endowed, incredibly hot man. Or the part about being as aroused as he was. Her only saving grace was that he lived with his mother. She’d made that mistake once before, and she was never doing that again. No momma’s boys for her.
“You went home with your stalker?”
Jessie let the ball bounce once more before hitting it over the net. “Uh-huh.”
Karma returned the volley right to her, and Jessie backhanded it, making Karma run.
Karma smashed the ball. “So it sounds like he’s becoming less of a stalker and more of a boyfriend.”
The ball flew back toward Jessie, but not right to her. She hopped sideways. “Not a boyfriend. I made that clear.” Jessie sliced it back over the net, so Karma had to run for it. “I refuse to date a grown man who lives with his mother.”
Karma returned a half volley that would make Roger Federer proud. Karma obviously knew her tennis. “Did you say he lives with his mother?”
“Yes.” Jessie hit a crosscourt shot, making Karma run for a ground stroke, and bounced back to the middle, favoring her hamstring. “I mean, I think he does. His house has to be run by a woman with a major case of OCD. The kitchen sink shined, the house was immaculate, the gardens were spectacular, and his videos and music were in alphabetical order. Fisher’s mother must be like Martha Stewart on steroids. Even the linen closet was so tidy it looked staged.”
Karma lobbed the ball to her. “You didn’t ask him if he lives with his mom?”
Jessie skipped back into no man’s land and returned the ball with an overhand smash down the line. “Hell no. I don’t want him to think I’m interested because I’m definitely not. No matter how hot he is. Fisher and his mom even have a compost pile. It’s… unnatural.”
Karma returned with a drop shot and let out a laugh. “Composting is unnatural? God, you make it sound almost incestuous. A lot of people compost here. There’s nothing kinky about it, believe me.”
“Maybe not.” Jessie ran to the net to scoop up the ball and missed. Maybe tennis wasn’t such a good idea. She turned and hopped back toward her tennis bag. She motioned for Karma to follow.
“Now spill. Did hot stalker guy ask you out again?”
Jessie looped her bag over her shoulder and rummaged through it, finding nothing. “I didn’t give him the opportunity. I left.” She gave up and collapsed, resting the bag on her lap. Her hamstring cramped again, making her almost as uncomfortable as Karma’s questioning.
“You ran?”
Jessie shaded her eyes and looked at Karma with the sun at her back, her blonde hair tied in a ponytail and a visor shading her face. “I didn’t run, I left.” Jessie needed to drink the Gatorade she’d picked up on her way, and take some Motrin before her hamstring seized up on her again. Dammit, she hated that Fisher was right. She could just picture the smug look he’d have on his face if he found out about this.
Karma slid down beside her. “Looks like the game between you and your stalker is at forty-love and you, my dear, are on the losing end.”
Jessie searched the pocket of her bag for a pill bottle. “I don’t believe in love, not off the court at least. There, I found it.” She took a look at the expiration date. “Shit. They expired two months ago.”
“They’re fine. They don’t go bad when they expire, they just lose some of their effectiveness.”
Jessie shot her a questioning look.
“My brother’s a doctor.” Karma shrugged. “He’s forever going through my medicine cabinet and tossing stuff, but even he wouldn’t complain over a few months.”
Jessie reached into her bag and pulled out the couple of drinks. “You want one?” She cracked open a Cool Blue Gatorade, not caring if her lips turned blue. She handed one to Karma before tossing four pills into her mouth and chasing them down.
Karma leaned her racket against the chain-link fence and brushed off her hands. “What do you mean, you don’t believe in love?”
Jessie should have known Karma wouldn’t let that go. She might have only met Karma twice, but she could tell she was one of those people who wouldn’t let anything slide. “I think people love their families. You know—parents, siblings, friends, and pets. But I don’t believe in romantic love. It’s not love at all. It’s lust, plain and simple. It’s not pretty, so people try to dress it up with hearts and flowers and cute, chubby babies armed with arrows. The whole concept of romantic love is nothing but spin and a boon for the entire greeting card industry.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Karma took a swig of her drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Nope. I’m serious.” Jessie pulled up her left leg and tried to massage her hamstring—Fisher was way better at it. The man had magic hands. Not that she was thinking about him or his hands or anything else. What was she talking about? Oh yeah. “You see, Karma, before the year 2000 and the dawning of true gender equality, women were dependent on men.”
“Not my mom. That woman wouldn’t be dependent on a man.”
“Okay, fine. Not every woman. I grant you that women have been increasingly less dependent on men in the years approaching the turn of the century. Still, even thirty or forty years ago, the majority of women were dependent on men for everything—food, shelter, money, you name it. Men married women, and after the lust died, women had no choice but to stay with their husbands because of that dependency, not to mention the social stigma carried by divorce. Not divorced men, mind you, just women. In the last thirty years that’s all changed. Women are no longer dependent on men, and divorce is no longer the proverbial scarlet letter. There’s no reason for a woman to stay unhappily married. We can take care of ourselves.”
Karma laughed. “We women might be able to ‘take care of ourselves,’ but a vibrator doesn’t keep you warm at night or bring you coffee in bed in the morning. This I know.”
“I don’t mean take care of ourselves sexually. Hell, there’s never a shortage of men to sleep with, if that’s what you’re looking for—I’m talking about financial and social independence. When the lust peters out, which studies show happens between a year and a half and two years after the first roll in the hay, women of the past would lie to themselves about how much they adored their husbands. They did the whole wifely duty thing because there was no escape. Now we’re finding that the relationship is left to wither and die, eventually ending in divorce or an ugly breakup.”
Karma took another drink and stuck out her hand to stop the conversation. “Let me get this straight. You don’t believe in love, and you’re writing a romance novel? How can that be?”
“Romance is fiction. Do authors of novels about serial killers have to kill people to write them?” Jessie stretched out her leg in front of her. “Romances are nothing but formulaic stories with three point five sex scenes. Boy meets girl, boy and girl have sex, fall in lust, boy, girl, or both do something stupid, girl breaks up with boy or vice versa, and then they somehow overcome their flimsy external and internal conflicts, or the horrible misunderstanding, only to realize they can’t live without the other. They kiss, make up, have one more hot sex scene, and live happily ever after. The end.”
Karma had a funny look on her face, but Jessie wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Karma was thinking. She finished off her bottle of Blue Ice. “I wonder if Fisher would let me use his hot tub again.”
“You’ve never been in love.” Karma said it with such certainty it was eerie.
Jessie didn’t lie. Well, not usually at least. “Okay, fine. I’ve never been in love. Not even close. I’ve been in lust and in like, but never love, because romantic love doesn’t exist.”
Karma picked up her empty bottle and Jessie’s too. “I’ll recycle these.”
Was Karma just going to leave it like that? She wasn’t going to argue?
Karma offered her a hand up, and Jessie took it, grateful for the lift. Good thing Karma was strong. Jessie was able to get up without putting any weight on her left leg. How she was going to drive was a mystery. Maybe the Motrin would kick in before she got to her car.
“Well,” Karma said as she bent to get both her bag and Jessie’s. “I believe in love. Hell, I’ve seen it. My brother married the love of his life and so did my cousin. They’re disgustingly happy. There’s no sign of the lust petering out with either.”
Jessie found herself hobbling beside Karma in the general direction of the parking lot. “They’re still in the lust stage. Just wait a few years, you’ll see. The average first marriage lasts about six and a half years. Of course, not all marriages end in divorce. I guess it depends on what the couple has in common outside the bedroom.”
“My grandparents were married for over forty years before my grandmother died. I’m not buying it. A woman as intelligent as you can’t actually believe that love doesn’t exist.” Karma tossed her bag on a nearby picnic table in the shade and threw her leg over the bench.
Jessie shook her head. “Your grandparents lived before the new age of gender equality. They don’t count.”
“Of course they do. Gramps is so rich, if his wife had wanted out of the marriage, she’d have had no problem living off the money from a settlement and would have gotten in a divorce. She loved him, plain and simple, and he loved her until the day she died. There’s never been anyone else for Gramps, which is kind of sad, really.”
Jessie stretched her sore leg as Karma patted the table. “We might as well make ourselves comfortable. I don’t think you’re going to be able to drive like this.”
Karma was probably right. Dammit. Jessie leaned against the table. “My parents are still married, but my mother’s always been a stay-at-home wife and mother. My mom met my dad in college, married, and she’s never worked a day outside the home. She’s the last of the dependent generation.”
“Maybe she’s happy with her life.” Karma kicked the dirt and watched the plume of dust rise and fall in the stillness. “Have you ever asked her?”
“No.” Jessie stared at the ground and flexed her leg. “What’s she going to say? I’m her daughter. You don’t tell your daughter the sex is boring, and you’d rather be anywhere but staring across the dinner table at your husband.”
Karma laughed. “Believe me, my mother lets everyone know when she’s not happy. Maybe your mother is content. There are worse things to be. Life isn’t all sunshine and happiness, no matter how great a marriage is.”
“I don’t know. They’re always there, but separate, like a pair of bookends. You wonder what they have to talk about after all these years.”
Karma took her visor off and pulled out her ponytail. “I think a solid, contented relationship would be wonderful.”
“Is wonderful synonymous with boring?”
“No. You don’t understand.” She tossed her visor in her bag. “It’s like baking. You can sprinkle in happiness like cinnamon sugar on a coffee cake—too much is overwhelming, and too little is bland. But when you get the right mixture, it’s comforting and enjoyable. I think that’s what a good marriage is like after the hot sex cools a little. That’s what I remember when I think back to Gramps and Gran. Even after my cousin’s parents died. They were sad, but close—inseparable, holding each other up through a really tough time. One always had the other’s back. They were one hell of a team.”
Karma leaned against the table and looked out toward the river. “I wish I had my fly rod in the trunk. There’s nothing like tiptoeing to the edge of the river and casting to work out the kinks and relax. Do you fly-fish?”