I was that girl with him.

That girl who could flirt with a handsome man and set him to scoring through four condoms. That girl he couldn’t even let her take a sip of coffee before he had to kiss her and whisk her back to his bed.

I was free and I was easy and I was sexual and I was desirable and I was funny and I was worth something.

I wasn’t Eliza Forrester, the straitlaced daughter of a hippie, the prim and proper and responsible older sister of a wild child.

I was Izzy Forrester, free and easy and sexual and desirable, who could hook up with a handsome man with a fabulous house in the woods who couldn’t get enough of her, and after one night chatting in a bar over margaritas and beer, they were starting something.

As I gloried in all of this, it slowly became clear that he wasn’t moving.

This was strange, and in a flash of panic I thought it was just my luck that I would kill the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, much less slept with, after intense, amazing, pounding sex.

Did I give him a heart attack?

“Johnny?” I called tentatively, and a little wispily, seeing as I was accommodating his weight.

Instantly, he moved. Not letting go of my wrists but shifting them down so my elbows were bent, the position more comfortable, at the same time taking his weight out of his hands and also miraculously some of it off me.

His face was in my neck but he moved his lips to my ear where he asked, “You okay?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

He finally lifted his head and I liked that the harshness of sex was gone, the laziness of satisfaction had taken its place, but he still had an expression of concern.

“Rode you hard, baby,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I agreed.

His gaze scanned my face.

“I’m good,” I said quietly and then gave him a small smile at the same time I gave him a hug the only way I could, tightening my legs where I had them wrapped around his thighs.

I didn’t know him, at all—well, biblically, one could say I knew him relatively well—but otherwise I didn’t know him. Still, I could swear I saw the flash of unease in his eyes before he muttered, “Gonna take care of this condom.”

After that, he slid out, let go of my wrists, disengaged, and with no further ado, got off me, out of the bed and walked naked toward the hall.

No kiss.

No cuddling.

No tender caresses and soft murmurs.

I lay in bed staring after him and continuing to stare after he disappeared into the bathroom feeling a hint of frost come. It came like in the movies, when the bad things come and the chill comes with them, at first invading a corner of a window, starting slow but then moving quickly, covering and crackling over the window, the whole house.

Except this frost swept over my body.

It took but seconds to realize that I might not have tons of experience but I did have enough to know it didn’t take years for a man to dispose of a condom.

And for this reason, I shot to sitting in bed, searching for something to cover me.

I saw my panties on one side of the bed, on the other his T-shirt, sweats, and the rest of our clothes from last night.

I didn’t have time to fully dress so I rolled toward the clothes, grabbing up his T-shirt and tugging it on at the same time dashing around the bed to snatch up my panties.

I was settling them on my hips when Johnny appeared back in the hall.

He went right to his sweats, and I tried to take it as good he glanced at me as he did, not avoiding me, my presence or even eye contact.

He nabbed them and yanked them up as he asked, “You like eggs and bacon?”

“My mother was a vegan.”

He stopped in the process of tying the drawstring under his navel and stared at me.

His hair was even messier now, falling over his forehead and nearly into his eyes.

It made him look disheveled and more handsome than ever, especially my firsthand knowledge of and participation in how it got that way.

“I’m not,” I went on.

He kept staring at me.

“A vegan that is,” I shared. “I tried. About seven times. Even vegetarianism didn’t stick. So uh . . . yes. I like eggs and bacon.”

He slowly finished tying the drawstring on his sweats as he asked, “There a story behind all that information?”

“No, just, my mother wasn’t a vegan. She was a militant vegan,” I told him.

“Ah,” was all he said in reply, but he did it lifting his chin.

“And my sister was a vegetarian for years and years, until she met a guy who thought that was stupid and he introduced her to cheeseburgers.” I shrugged. “The rest is history. I had long since been a lost cause, but my mother never got over that.”

I was blathering and doing it mostly because I was beside myself with relief that he asked me if I liked bacon and eggs, which meant whatever strangeness I felt after we finished didn’t mean he was going to ask me to take off his shirt and put on my clothes so he could take me back to town and be rid of me.

“Not sure there’s a vegetable in this house, unless you count a bag of frozen corn,” he said.

I couldn’t stop myself from looking alarmed.

Johnny of course didn’t miss it and any of the cold I had left at the strangeness of how he left me in bed melted away when he burst out laughing.

I’d heard him chuckle. It was throaty and rich and lovely.

His laughter was that times a thousand.

But still, there was something about it that sounded . . .

Rusty.

“I’ll get the mugs,” I said in order not to do something stupid, like watch him laugh like a besotted teenager seeing her first boyband crush in concert.

I turned to the doors but turned back when he called, “Iz.”

My eyes met his.

“You eat a lot of vegetables?” he asked.

“Three quarters of your plate should be vegetables,” I answered.

“She eats a lot of vegetables,” he murmured through a white smile.

“I really need coffee,” I blurted.

“Then get our mugs, babe. I’ll get cracking on breakfast.”

He moved toward the kitchen.

I moved toward the deck.

I came back with the mugs and he was at the stove, but I knew he heard me enter when he ordered toward the stove, “Dump that out, we’ll get fresh.”

His cup maybe only had one last mouthful in it. I hadn’t even taken a sip.

“I’ll nuke mine,” I told him.

“Dump it out,” he returned.

“It’s okay. I nuke coffee all the time.”

And I did. I nuked coffee. I found creative ways to use leftovers. I slammed my lotion bottles on countertops to force down the last dregs.

What I didn’t do was waste, and I didn’t waste partially because I was an environmentalist but mostly because I grew up with government cheese in the refrigerator. When you didn’t have a lot, you not ever wasted what you had.

“It’s been sitting outside for almost an hour,” he stated.

“It’s still good,” I replied.

I made it to the kitchen, seeing he had a fancy drawer microwave in his island.

I was heading there when I stopped because I was divested of the mugs in my hands.

I watched Johnny go to the sink and dump both cups. He rinsed them, shook them out and then went to the coffeemaker.

“How do you take yours?” he asked.

“Just cream.”

“Little, lots or in between?” he asked.

“Little,” I answered.