Page 38 of My Fearless Fake Fling

As I looked at him, I felt grateful to the universe for bringing him to me. Beautiful even more on the inside than the out, and the out was pretty darn beautiful, Len made me feel special. I really hoped we could remain friends at the end of this lunatic experiment.

“Let’s go home, Kam. You have enough stuff there for now. I think after spending the day packing, we should have some more fun. What do you say?”

“What are we going to do with all this stuff?”

He shrugged. “We’ll integrate what you want around and store whatever stuff of yours or mine that we aren’t using right now. Each condo comes with an extra-large storage unit. We’ll make it fit.”

“Well, okay then.”

“Come here and kiss me first,” he said.

I obliged.

When we ended the lip-lock, he swatted my butt. “Get your shoes on. We’ll come back tomorrow with a truck to move this stuff out.”

After popping a couple of ibuprofens from my purse, the ones from my apartment already having been packed, I slid on my shoes and waited by the door for Len to do a sweep-through to determine how many more boxes we’d need.

Then we headed home, where he let me shower first.

As directed, I pulled on a pair of shorts and a cute scoop-neck T-shirt, and brought socks along with me. I didn’t quite know what to make of this because I had on my sandals. That was the directed part, to not wear a skirt or dress and bring socks. This meant Len had a definite idea of what he wanted us to do today.

He dressed similarly. Even down to the socks.

The last thing before leaving the condo, Len packed us snacks and water bottles.

We stopped off for coffee and pastries because we both needed them and he knew me sufficiently well by this point. Then, oddly enough, he turned into the parking lot for Stride Sporting Goods. Why would he stop there?

Well, I thought I’d wait in the car. Guess who was wrong?

“C’mon, Kam. You have to come in for this.” He slid out, shut his door, and jogged around to open mine for me.

Together we walked into the sports store and he directed us to the back, where they held a large selection of shoes.

My eye caught on a cute pair of pink runners, though I didn’t have much time to look because he dragged me to a completely different section. One with boots. Hiking boots, to be exact. I’d never been a hiker, per se, but I knew hiking boots when I saw them.

“Sit,” he ordered, but sort of pushed me down onto the hard bench thing they had in the center of the aisle so I didn’t have a choice. “Shoe size?” he asked.

“Seven and a half,” I answered.

He plucked an expensive-looking pair of boots from the shelf and bent down to my feet like a shoe salesman.

“Need the socks, baby.”

Those I’d stuffed in my purse. So I opened it and pulled the thick cotton out, handing it over to him. Len proceeded to unlatch my sandals and pull the socks on me, then he stuffed each foot into the boots.

“Walk around, see what you think.” He stood when I did, hands to his hips, and watched me walk around the shoe aisle breaking in the boots.

“Perfect,” I said.

“Good. Wear them out.”

I put my sandals in the boot box and after waiting for Len to find a pair, try them on and decide to buy, we checked out and headed back to the truck.

An hour later, he turned into a gravel parking lot out in the middle of nowhere.

“I’m not skinny-dipping again,” I said, something he had to be well aware of. The last time hadn’t ended too well for us. Though I wouldn’t be on this adventure with Len if not for takingthatplunge (pun intended), so I didn’t hold too much animosity in my heart over the fiasco.

He laughed. “No. We’re not skinny-dipping. Just going on a hike.”

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