Not loose.

Not casual.

Not sexual.

Not nonchalant.

Tight.

Oh my God.

“Are you okay?” I whispered, rounding him with my arms too.

“I’m a dick.”

“What?”

“I’m a dick.”

“Johnny, if you mean what happened earlier, it’s okay—”

“Shandra called yesterday.”

My body turned to stone.

“Out of the blue, haven’t heard from her in years, she calls.”

Again of their own accord, and I didn’t stop them this time, my hands slid up his back over his shoulders so I could curl them around either side of his neck.

That neck bent so he could stop looking over my head and instead look at my face.

“Her dad’s sick. She’s coming back.”

The blow that caused after two breakfasts, two dinners, one phone call, one text exchange and lots of sex was far more extreme than I was ready for.

But I withstood it without letting on I endured it.

And I did that for him.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“I should have changed our plans and met you at Home. Shared it there. Let you go back to your place knowing where things were at. I shouldn’t have brought your dogs here, made you come here, fed you and fucked you and acted like a dick to you and let you be cute and sweet, all this making me a total dick.”

“You want her back,” I surmised.

“Fuck no,” he stated tersely.

The pads of my fingers dug into his neck.

“No?”

“Babe, she left me for reasons I can’t get into and she took my dog with her. The reason she left is still out there, even though she says it’s gone. I’m not setting myself up for her to gut me again.”

“She stole your dog?” I asked in disbelief.

“I let her have him. She needed someone to protect her.”

God.

From what I was learning that was so very Johnny.

“Regretted it the instant she walked out my door. Ranger was a great dog. Missed him so much, never got another one. But it was still the right thing to do.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t give you what you deserve.”

I endured that without my body reacting as well, like lurching, moving like it suffered the blow that it did.

Instead I said gently, “I know. I’ve known since the beginning. I only understood when Deanna told me about Shandra. But I know, Johnny. You aren’t a dick. You told me without saying anything where we were, and I like you, so I made the decision to stay there so you shouldn’t feel bad. I get it. I totally get it. I always got it. I knew where we stood. So please, don’t feel bad about it.”

His arms pulled me even closer as his forehead came down to rest on mine.

“You’re an amazing woman.”

Now I was understanding all those women who complained when men broke up with them and said things like that making them wonder, if that was the case, why they broke up with them in the first place.

I’d never been broken up with. I’d always done the breaking because I’d always chosen poorly.

I guess in a different way I was still doing that.

I gave his neck a squeeze and got up a bit on my toes to press my forehead deeper to his. “And you’re an amazing guy.”

“I’m sorry I went through with tonight.”

I pulled my forehead from his and forced a bright smile on my face. “And deprived me of garlic cheese encrusted steak and fabulous sex? Now, if you’d done that, that would make you a dick,” I teased.

“Fuck,” he whispered, his arms spasming around me.

My voice got soft again. “Johnny, it’s okay.”

His voice was soft too. “I wish I met you before she fucked me up.”

“It didn’t happen that way. It happened this way. And from how you’re talking, it was good for you like it was good for me. So let’s have that and not bring anything bad into it. It is what it is and we had what we had. I’ll go, and if you ever want some good guac or to hang out with Wesley, you know my number and maybe you’ll swing me a deal on my next oil change.”

“I still wanna take you camping.”

I melted into him.

“But I’m not gonna take you camping,” he whispered.

He wasn’t going to take me camping.

Why, after two breakfasts, two dinners, one phone conversation, one text exchange and a lot of sex did that sound like someone cancelled Christmas forever?

I pushed up to him, kissed him, pressing my lips lightly against his, harder, opening my mouth. His opened, I slid my tongue inside. He sucked it deeper for a second then slid mine out as his tongue invaded my mouth.

We kissed like that, gently, unhurried, for a long time in the chill of an early summer night by a creek with a water wheel splashing behind us.

After we were done, he led me to bed and he held me close, and I wanted him to make love to me but he was not that man. He would hold me but he wouldn’t take any more from me than he already had.

I fell asleep before he did.

But I also woke before he did.

And as quietly as I could, I got dressed. I found a pad of paper. I wrote him a note. I refused to look at him asleep in bed as I propped it on his nightstand. I got my dogs. We got in my car. And we drove home.

It wasn’t until Buttercup was on my shoulder, Wesley hopping on my counter chirping, that my phone also on the counter chimed with a text and I glanced at it, seeing the whole text under his name on the screen.

You too.

My note to him had said, You’re the best. Thank you for being that.

I finished up making breakfast and eating it, and I did all that silently, gently, unhurriedly crying.

After work that evening, walking up to my front porch, I wasn’t resolutely thinking about catching up on all the chores I’d missed being with Johnny as I’d made myself resolutely think about all the way home.

I was staring with some dread at my wicker rocking chair.

When I made it to the chair, I stood in my high-heeled shoes staring down at the seat.

On the gingham pad, propped up against the floral pillow, was a Ball jar filled with water and overflowing at the top with pale pink peonies.

I’d noted vaguely the night before, in my excitement to get to Johnny, that the fat peony bushes that hugged the back of his mill had gone full bloom.

And they were all pale pink.

In front of the jar was a rolled up piece of rust-colored material.

I took it up, unfurled it and a piece of paper fell out.

It was the On My Way Home T-shirt I’d slept in the night before at Johnny’s.

I bent down, picked up the paper and read,

It’s a good memory.

I hope.

For me it will be, Izzy.

Always.

~J

He didn’t mean to be cruel, I knew it. He meant it to be what I hoped one day it would become.

Sweet.

And when I bunched the T-shirt to my face and smelled he’d laundered it, I knew he meant that to be sweet too.

But I wished he hadn’t washed it.

I allowed one tear to fall, soaking into the material.

Then I sniffed, pulled the T-shirt away from my face and moved to my door in order to let out my dogs.

Margot

Izzy

IT WAS EXACTLY two weeks and one day after Johnny and I ended what had never begun.

I’d gone home from work, let the dogs out, changed from heels to boots, checked the horses but left them in their paddock, put my heels back on, grabbed up my purse and keys but also my journal, selecting a few colored pens to go with it, and I headed out.