Page 29 of Axe Backwards
“I mean it. My lady parts are offline. It’s not happening for me.”
“Sure.” Alice waved me off. “But you get horny, don’t you?”
My chest opened up like an empty crevasse. “Nope.” And it was the truth. I was practically dead inside.
Becca angled forward, elbows on her knees, cradling her wineglass. “Do you have a vibrator?”
“Four.” I sighed. “I tried them all, hoping one would do the trick so I could, you know, finish. But no luck.”
“So you have no orgasms?”
“Nope. No desire, no attraction. No orgasms. It’s not surprising, really. My husband cheated on me, which led to a nasty divorce, and just as I thought the end of the dark tunnel was in sight, he knocked up my baby sister.”
Alice sat back on the couch, massaging her temples. “I’m so sorry. No orgasms? How do you function?”
Becca rolled her eyes. “Don’t listen to her. She’s getting railed by her hot lumberjack husband all the time.”
Alice’s cheeks went pink. She was such a blusher, and the wine didn’t help. “Not all the time.” She smirked. “We have kids and jobs, so it’s hard to make it happen more than two to three times a week.”
Groaning, Becca dropped her head back. “Kill the bitch.”
She set her wineglass down, then picked up a throw pillow and chucked it at our friend. I followed suit, and soon we were all giggling uncontrollably on the floor of the living room.
I loved these women. I hadn’t expected to find true friendship and support in rural Maine. When I returned, I figured Aunt Lou would be my one and only confidant. But the universe knew I needed badass women in my life and sent them my way.
We were still catching our breath when Henri and the kids walked in. He was a beast of a man, always in a flannel shirt and work boots, but his grumpy exterior softened the minute he laid eyes on his wife.
Alice popped up and kissed the kids’ heads. Her son Tucker, a lanky preteen with dark hair that obscured his eyes, was now taller than her.
“Did you have fun at Auntie Adele’s house?”
“I got to play with Thor,” Goldie, a little blond firecracker in human form, gushed. “He’s so funny and cute.”
“Auntie taught me to use a soldering iron,” Tucker boasted.
Alice frowned, but Henri laughed. Tucker was always building and fixing things. He’d even helped me figure out the broadband at the food pantry.
“Good. It’s time for showers and bed,” Alice said. “I’ll be up in a bit.”
Henri put his arm around his wife’s waist and kissed her cheek. “Everything okay here, ladies?”
“All good. Brawny.” His wife beamed up at him. “But my friends could use rides home in a bit.”
Though he wasn’t much for smiling, his lips quirked beneath his beard, and he gave us a small bow. “At your service.”
Becca nudged me with a pointy elbow. “See? You, too, could have a lumberjack to attend to all your needs. First, you have to get your head out of your ass, then you jump Noah.”
Hands flat on the plush rug on either side of me, I rolled my eyes. “We’re just friends. Also, he’s a firefighter, not a lumberjack.”
Alice dropped to the floor next to me. “Lumberjack is not a vocation.” She giggled. “It’s a state of being.”
Chapter 9
Noah
Calling the Lovewell Fire Department small would be a gross exaggeration. It consisted of a four-man crew, one dispatcher on shift at a time, and a handful of volunteers. The firehouse sat next to the police station off Main Street, and its façade was a deep red brick. When I pulled up, a few guys in blue work pants were milling around in front of the bay doors, washing the engine.
For a moment, I sat in the truck, giving myself a pep talk and digging deep for a little excitement. I was lucky I’d even scored a meeting, so I needed to make the most of it.
