Tessa’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. “Reese, could you take this platter out to Dad so he can pull some steaks off the grill? Kurt likes his bloody,” she said while wrinkling up her cute little nose at him.
“Hurry up, Reese. Frank will burn the shit out of those steaks if you leave him alone out there,” Kurt warned.
I took the white platter and headed out onto the back porch where Frank was standing.
“Hey. Tessa asked that I bring this out to you. I guess Kurt doesn’t know the right way to cook a steak,” I said as I held out the platter next to the grill.
“And just how do you like to cook your steak, Reese?” Frank asked.
“I prefer medium to medium well. Just enough red in the middle to keep it juicy.”
“There may just be hope for you yet, boy,” he said as he picked up the almost raw steak from the grill and placed it on the platter. “I think Kurt just has a hard time waiting for the things that he wants.” He let out a gruff laugh. “Here, take this in so the whiner can have his steak,” Frank yelled loud enough for Kurt to hear him.
“I just know what I like, old man!” Kurt yelled back.
“Come right back out with that, yours and mine will be done soon. And bring me a beer. The girls’ steaks will have to cook a bit longer,” Frank said as I was walking back into the house.
After dinner, Frank started up the large firepit they had built into the ground in the backyard and we all carried chairs down to enjoy the fire together.
We sat down and I leaned down to whisper in Tessa’s ear, “I still dream about when we sat by a fire together.” Her cheeks turned pink as she remembered how we’d made love on the top of my house at sunset.
We casually talked about the weather changing, and I told Frank about the bike shop that I was opening in town. He said that he wanted to come by and check it out someday.
Abigail had been inside watching a cartoon that must have ended, because she came running out of the house with a box of graham crackers under her arm and her hands full with a bag of marshmallows in one and a stack of chocolate bars in the other. She threw her loot into my lap and said, “Reese, can you make shmallows the right way? Mom and Dad always burn them!”
“I think I can roast a pretty mean shmallow,” I said, “Do you have a stick?”
“Auntie, where are the sticks?” she asked Tessa.
“I’ll get them for you, sweetie. Be right back.” While she was gone, Abigail continued to instruct me on the proper way to make a shmallow.
“You gotta make it not burn, Reese. It’s gotta just get hot on the insides and just a little brown on the outsides, okay? Can you do that, Reese?”
“Yea, I got this,” I said when Tessa had returned with the sticks.
Abigail and I loaded a marshmallow on the stick and I crouched before the fire to hold it in the perfect spot, over the hot coals but away from the burning flames.
“You do know how to do it right!” Abigail squealed while clapping happily.
When the shmallow was perfectly cooked, I looked back at Abigail. “You got the cracker and chocolate ready?”
“Yup! Right here!” she gushed, holding them out for me to place the shmallow on them.
Tessa stood up and turned to stand with her behind toward the fire.
I looked up at her and said, “What are you doing?”
Her lips curled up into a smile and she rubbed her ass with her hands when she said, “I’m roasting my own marshmallow. Do ya mind?” The attitude she put in her voice made us all laugh.
After the third perfect shmallow, Emily said, “Okay, guys, that’s the limit. Come on, Abigail. We need to get you cleaned up. You have shmallow all over your face.” Abigail stood up and gave me a tight hug before following her mom into the house.
Then Tessa spoke up. “Hey, guys. I didn’t want to bring this up while Abigail was out here, but there’s something you should know.” Everyone looked at Tessa, waiting for her to continue. “It’s about Ruby.”
Frank, Mary, and Kurt all began talking at once, asking questions about if there had been a breakthrough in the case.
Tessa quieted them down then said, “Do you remember hearing that there was a guy who had found Ruby and had been hurt chasing down the man?” They all nodded their heads and she put her hand on my arm. “Reese was that guy.”
All three heads whipped to look at me. I looked at Tessa then at the rest of our party, seeing what they had lost that night. Kurt’s face was an expression of shock as Frank’s eyes filled with tears and Mary covered her face with her hands, quietly sobbing as Tessa continued.
“He was with a buddy who was throwing up in the bushes when they thought they saw a bear in the tree line. They moved closer to get a better look and the man saw them and ran. Reese chased after him, but he got caught in some fence and shattered his ankle.” I was thankful that she left off the part about it ending my ball career. “He stopped him from doing whatever it was that he was doing to Ruby.” Tessa and her father both had tears streaking down their faces by now. She looked over at Frank and said, “Dad, did you hear me? Reese stopped him.”
The next thing I knew, I was being pulled up out of my lawn chair and into the biggest hug I had ever received in my life. When Frank released me, he held me by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, the light from the fire casting shadows on his wet face, and said, “I will never be able to thank you enough for what you did, for the sacrifice you made. Not many people would have chased after him like you did.” He pulled me in for another hug, and I was pretty sure my hand was safe from now on.
I also received hugs from Mary and then from Kurt. When Emily came back outside, she had a confused look on her face, not understanding why her husband was hugging me and everyone was crying. Frank filled her in and then there was another set of hugs to go around. After helping Frank put out the fire, Tessa and I said our goodbyes and left. Luckily for me, Tessa didn’t have to work that night. I was going to have her all to myself. And man, was I going to take my time having her.
“Tessa”
When we got back to my apartment last night, Reese had kissed my tears away and loved me until I’d fallen asleep in his arms. Waking up with Reese in my bed was something I could get used to. Seeing the toned muscle of his chest rise and fall while he snored was enough to make me swoon. I found myself thinking that we could just forget about the expiration date.
For the next few days, we did everything together. He never left my side, even taking me with him when he had to check in on the shop. We shopped for groceries, went to a movie, and ate too much popcorn; we even showered together. I was starting to really like showers, so we showered a lot. But then I started noticing these little things that he was doing. Like that he always left the toilet seat up after he peed.
It wouldn’t have been such a big deal until I had to pee in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake him up by turning on the light but I wasn’t quite awake myself to remember to check the seat, and I fell in, soaking my butt in cold toilet water. He’s lucky he had flushed because that would have gone too far. When I fell in, I let out a scream loud enough to wake him up and he came running to the bathroom, turned on the light, and then laughed so hard he fell on the floor. I told him that he needed to sit down to pee from now on but I didn’t think he could hear me over his laughter.
The next day, he had his Xbox delivered to my apartment, and he set it up on my TV, saying that it would be fun to play the game that just released with me. It was some stupid fucking special ops game where you had to go around and kill people. We were on opposite teams and he kept killing me before I could even tell which way I was going. I swear at one point I was just spinning in circles and my stupid-ass guy wouldn’t stop looking at the ground. I gave up and threw my controller on the table. Reese just switched it to single-player mode and then he played it for hours. I mean hours and hours and hours. I started reading a book but fell asleep on the couch next to him before he had stopped. I just didn’t know what was up with him.
“Reese”
I’d tried everything that I had heard makes women mad. I had left the toilet seat up, I laughed at her, and I even kicked her ass at a video game and then pretended to ignore her for hours while I played solo. That might have been the hardest thing I had ever done. I didn’t know how many times I almost threw the controller down, said “Fuck it,” and then fucked her.
There had to be something I could do to piss her off. I knew Myles was good at pissing women off, so I called him the other day and asked him to fly in to see the show this weekend. I needed to pick his brain, and I knew he would know what to do.
When we arrived at The Happy Valley, I kissed Tessa, told her to knock them dead, slapped her amazing ass, and watched her walk backstage before I slid onto a stool at the bar.
Myles must have walked in right behind us, because he sat down at the bar next to me and said, “You know they say that spanking is a one-handed round of applause in appreciation of a magnificent ass.” But he wasn’t looking at me while he spoke. His eyes were trained on Sam, who was opening a beer at the end of the bar. The way he was looking at her made me wonder if there was something going on between the two of them.
“I’ll have to remember to spank Tessa every day then.”
Myles shook his head like he was breaking away from a trance and turned to me. “Hey, man. Sorry I’m a bit late. I saw this amazing redhead at the airport and I had to get her number.” Just then, Sam slammed his beer down in front of him on the bar hard enough that it started shooting out of the top and he had to shove the bottle into his mouth to keep from wasting his precious ale. There was definitely something going on with them.
“What’s that all about?” I asked him.
He waited until Sam was out of earshot before saying, “You don’t want to know, man. You don’t want to know. Enough about my love life. What was so important that you bought a last-minute plane ticket just to talk to me about it? Is the shop okay?”
“Yes, the shop’s fine. In fact, it is better than fine. It’s great! The problem is that I can’t make Tessa mad.”
Myles leaned back and looked at me like I should be in the loony bin. He placed the back of his hand on my forehead like he was checking for fever. “Nope. No fever. You must just be crazy.”
I shoved his hand away. “I’m serious, man. We are so close to being done with all this trial shit, but I can’t seem to get to the last one. I can’t make her mad.”
“Well, you did call the right person to figure this out I guess. I’m pretty good at making women mad,” he said while glancing over at Sam with a pained look on his face. “Tell me what you’ve tried so far.”
I told him everything I had done and he said, “Damn, man. Any of those should have been enough to set any normal woman off. But I’m thinking that if she made it this far, she isn’t just any woman, so you might have to break out the big guns.”
“That doesn’t sound good. What’s the big guns?” I asked, expecting him to tell me some grand secret.
He leaned in and said, “Tell her about the trial. That’s sure to piss her off.”
“Huh. Why hadn’t I thought of that?”
“Well, because you’re a dumbass?” Myles said. “And hey, dumbass, I need another beer. I’m going to go take a piss. Would you order one for me please?”
Myles got up and I muttered, “Pussy,” under my breath as he walked away. I ordered his beer and waited for him to come back. Just then, the words I had been waiting for came over the loudspeaker and I turned around to watch my beautiful girl do her thing.
I knew we had just two more, just two more and then we could move on and really start our lives together. And if heaven wouldn’t forgive us for our sins when we were done, I would follow her anywhere.
We were snuggled up together in Tessa’s bed later that night. It was a dark bliss knowing that she was right here with me. There was something we needed to complete before we could really be together. As much as I wanted to push through and get it over with, I also wanted to just spend time with her, enjoy her. I intended to do as much of that as I could before risking everything.
Tessa started waking up, her body stretching out from the curled-up position she had been in, her head tucked under my chin on my pillow.
I kissed the top of her head and whispered, “You are a bed hog. You know that, right?”
“Hey. My bed, my rules. I’m not used to sharing my pillows, okay?” She giggled and turned to look at me.
I thought to myself that I would never get enough of seeing her in the morning—her hair a mess, her face clean of the makeup from the night before. She was the most perfect thing I had ever seen. When Tessa’s lips curled up into a Cheshire grin, I knew she was up to no good. She yanked on the pillow and my head hit the mattress. Before I could blink, she initiated a full-on assault. Putting my hands up to protect myself, I blocked a couple of hits before I could catch the pillow. My hands locked on the fabric and I heard a squeal from behind it. She knew she was in for it. Tessa jumped up from the bed and started running.
“My turn. You can run but you can’t hide.”
I jumped off the bed and ran after her, pillow clutched in my hand. My steps were cut short when I saw her. She had jumped up onto the kitchen counter, completely naked, her legs open and waiting for me. I barely felt the pillow slip from my fingers and fall to the floor.
“You hungry?” she whispered, her fingers lightly caressing the soft skin of her thigh.
“Famished,” I said and quickly crossed the room to her.
After a quick kiss, I knelt down and buried my head between her legs.
“Tessa”
I was one lucky girl. My Keurig didn’t mind me bringing another man into my home. After showing Reese how to make a cup, he said that he was going to put one in each of his shops and that the guys would owe me big time. We wrapped up in our robes and sat at the table by the window enjoying our coffee. I looked at the clock and found that I only had an hour before I was supposed to pick up Abigail to go to the zoo. They had a new exhibit opening up for the polar bears and I’d promised her months ago that I would take her.