Page 81 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

“I know that most of the things I feel inadequate about in my life directly correlate to either abandonment, or overcompensation,” I explained. “I’m competitive as a reflex, I’m impulsive because I don’t want to miss opportunities, and I’m, embarrassingly enough, an attention seeker, so I do things that are memorable and over the top as a response.”

“You’re saying all of those things as if they’re negative.” Frankie grabbed a cart and started loading topsoil into it while I held it still for him. “Why don’t you turn it around and think about all the good things that come out of those in-your-face, psycho-analytical buzzwords?”

“Do you go to therapy?”

“Physical.” He grunted as he hauled a giant ceramic pot into the cart. “It doesn’t take a professional to see that you think there’s something wrong with you that needs to be fixed—when maybe you just need to rewire the system.”

“How computer-techy of you.”

“Seriously,” Frankie said. “Competition is healthy. Impulsivity is your way of trusting your gut. There’s nothing wrong with being a little fucking cocky either.” He picked up two pairs of gardening gloves off a rack and held them next to each other for me to choose.

“You’re right.” I pointed to the yellow and orange ones. “But we’re talking about major life decisions. Like, who I’m going to potentially marry and have children with. That needs a considerable amount of calculation.”

Frankie turned his back to me and started filing through the display of seed packets. “I don’t think you really know how a guy is gonna be with kids until you give him kids. Or what he’s going to be like as a husband until he becomes a husband. It’s all educated guesses up to that point. You can’tmakesomeone be the right person for you—they just are.”

I sighed. “This is why dating apps are fucked. In a perfect world I’m not flipping through pictures of men all day with blind hope.”

He snorted, looking at me over his shoulder. “You don’t think Prince Charming is in Pine Ridge?”

“If he is, he's already married with kids.”

“Or he’s just not in Pine Ridge.” Frankie shrugged, pulling the cart along without another word.

I walked beside our growing pile of potted plants and gardening tools playing botanist, picking out the brightest petals and biggest flowers. Frankie paid less and less attention to my choices and more to the sheen of sweat on my collarbones every time I asked him to load another into the cart.

I was no better, because Frankie pushing me aside to do the heavy lifting was like watching softcore porn. His shirt was stuck to his body with sweat, and the hair on his neck was curling in damp waves. Every muscle from his broad shoulders to his calves flexed for my personal enjoyment.

His gray T-shirt was darker down his spine and under his arms, and his grunts of exertion, while completely innocent, registered oppositely in the little neutral headspace I had left. My mouth went completely dry thinking about getting that man home and treating him to a long, soapy shower.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I murmured.

Frankie straightened and lifted his hat, wiping the moisture from his forehead with his sleeve. He huffed, catching his breath, and before I could stop myself I was reaching out and wiping away a bead of sweat that threatened to get lost in his facial hair.

Such a shameless gesture, and yet it stole the air between us. Frankie’s eyes flared.

I’d slowly become obsessed with touching him. In small insignificant ways: a pinch, a pull, fixing the tag sticking out of his collar, tapping the face of his watch to see the time despite my phone sitting in my pocket. I knew this showed attachment, and disregarded it.

As soon as the holidays were over it would be like turning out the lights at the end of the night.

Frankie took my hand, inspecting it as if it’d burned him, and then dried my thumb by running it down the center of his chest. Too slowly to be harmless, too quickly for someone shopping around us to notice. The rhythmic thump of his heartbeat picked up beneath my touch, and the muscles in his abdomen twitched the lower my fingers dropped.

“I think we have everything we need,” Frankie muttered. He looked around the room and shuffled closer to me. My stomach flipped as he guided my hand lower, to his belt, then lower again. “All day like this,” he whispered. “All day for you.”

I gasped, feeling him hard against my hand. Our eyes met, and that same dark, glazed look from the parking lot was back—and with fervor.

“I’m ready to go home,” he said.

“We didn’t find anything for your sister.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he assured me, nodding his head toward checkout. “You did good, O. Thank you.”

“I don’t know if you’re talking about the flowers or the hard-on,” I remarked.

“Yes you do.” A playful smile danced on his lips. “You know me better than most people by now.”

My heart and my brain were playing a game of tug of war with the need I felt between my legs. One second Frankie was irritatingly sweet and playful, and the next making me wish we could be cloaked in darkness and going at it against a wall.

He was like a patchwork quilt of all the qualities I’d ever found attractive in a man sewn together. Nothing matched, the thread was different colors in places, there were parts I’d forgotten existed somewhere down a tunnel between adolescence and adulthood. But if I waved it out and held it far enough in front of me, everything looked pretty fucking on theme, and soft as butter to boot.

---