Page 48 of Believe in Caloosa Springs

And, play with me, he did.

***

We made out on Mandy’s front porch like a bunch of teenagers to the point of making Porter late for work.

“I really have to go…” he said, lingering. “I’ll text you later?”

I nodded into his chest and he loosened his hold around my back. “I know you're late, but drive slow. The roads are bad.”

“I will.”

He kissed the top of my head, and I watched as he walked back to his still-running car. He smiled and waved as he got back behind the wheel and backed out of the drive.

I hung up my coat and hat and kicked off my shoes as Mandy poked her head through the open bathroom door, a curling iron in one hand and a comb in the other. “Hey!”

“Hey.” I tossed my wallet down on the small coffee table and walked into the bathroom to join Mandy as she finished getting ready for work.

“How was your night, slut,” she asked playfully as I took a seat on the toilet lid, and she went back to curling her hair in the mirror.

“How do you know I was out being a slut?”

“Oh, I don’t know, T… maybe the trail of love-bites going from your ear to your collarbone.”

“That mouthy, Mormon motherfucker,” I spat, getting up from the toilet and nearly pushing Mandy out from in front of the mirror.

“Hey!” Her protests were in vain as I cozied up to the mirror and whipped my head back and forth to get a good look at thedamage. Sure enough, it looked like a goddamn galaxy had been branded down the side of my neck.

“Fuck. There’s not enough concealer in the world…”

Mandy snorted. “No shit! With thosebruises against your vampiric skin, you’d have to bathe in the shit. Why did you let him do that to you?” she asked as she slammed her arm into the side of me to wiggle back in front of the mirror.

“I didn’t! Well, I guess I did. I didn’t realize it was happening. It was all just in the moment. But it’s like an unwritten rule… youdon’tleave marks!”

Mandy put the curling iron down on the edge of the sink and squared me off with a look.

“Christian…” Mandy began slowly, “Porter is a runaway Mormon…notan adult content model. Thoseunwritten rules”(she put her fingers up in air quotes) “don’t exist to him. He's just a regular dude, not a random twink you are doing a scene with. Speaking of that, have you told him about your… internet success?”

I sighed and plopped back down. “No. I don’t want him to freak out. He’s, like, the sweetest guy I’ve ever met. All wholesome and shit. What if that’s a dealbreaker?”

“Better to find that out now than to get any deeper.” She paused and arched an eyebrow. “This is weird,” she declared. “You, like…like him,like him.”

I looked up at her and squinted. “What is this, fourth grade?”

“If you’re referring to your emotional stability, then yes…”

I flipped her the bird, but didn’t argue. Because, as usual, she was right. I did, indeed, possess the emotional maturity of a pre-teen. Every guy I had ever had any romantic interest in always turned out to be a disaster. I always got too attached, too quickly, when most of the time they just wanted sex. Once they got it, I got blocked.

I resigned myself to focus on what I could control. And that was my body, and my choices. I compartmentalized sex as something to use to my advantage, and, boy, had I used it. The amount of kissing on the mouth Porter and I had done over the last 24 hours was more kissing than I’d previously done in my entire lifetime. I was no Vivian Ward by any means—I had no problem kissing guys I was making money with here and there, but it just wasn’t really athing.

I was beginning to love kissing Porter, and cursed myself for being such a little bitch about him before.

Think about all the time you wasted ghosting him… you could have been kissing him the whole time! Idiot!

I sighed. Absentmindedly, I picked up Mandy’s big paddle brush and raked it through my sex-mussed hair.

“You’re gonna have to tell him eventually. For right now… are you good?”

I sighed and tapped the end of the brush on my chin as I chewed on her question for a moment.

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