Page 127 of Townshipped
“No?”
“I mean. Whatever fits your schedule. A week works.”
“It doesn’t work for me,” he says boldly.
“What does?”
“How about tomorrow?” he asks.
“Tomorrow’s great.”
I try to sound casual, but I think I end up sounding like I just woke from a nap, my voice all husky and raspy, with a little squeak at the end of the wordgreatthat totally ruins the casual vibe or the sultry vibe or anything but theI’m failing at hiding the fact that I’m in love with youvibe.
“I’ll call you after the kids are in bed,” Aiden says with a confident smile.
“I’ll bring my bowl of ice cream.”
“I’ll bring mine too,” he says with a grin that brings back every memory of what it felt like to have him touch me.
We hang up and I sit staring out my window. I glance around my childhood room, which, because Mom is Mom, has been fully redecorated to reflect this year’s trends for bedrooms. I never fit in here. Not really.
I’m dialing Gabriela before I even think about what I’m doing. I need a sounding board—someone to talk sense into me.
Background noise carries through behind her when she answers. “Hey, chica!”
“Hi. Am I interrupting anything?”
“No. I’m just dropping my niece at her dance class. Single dads, lots of soccer moms, you know. All the chatter. It’s all so intense like a pressure cooker. We’re not raising Shakira over here. These girls are nine and ten. Ay! People are cray-cray. What’s up?”
“Aiden and I talked. And then he and the kids FaceTimed with me.”
“Oooohweee. That’s good. Sooo … Tell me.”
“It is good. I think.”
“It’s good. He wouldn’t call and FaceTime if you didn’t mean something more to him. Guys aren’t like that. For the most part, anyway. They don’t spend all this time up in their heads asking themselves, should I, shouldn’t I, what if, and all that other craziness we women put ourselves through. They just find their target and take action. That’s how they’re wired.”
“Is that right?” I ask her with a laugh.
“You know it is. Think about it. Men. They’re on the hunt. If a woman isn’t the one, they move on. If she’s the one, oh, yes, baby. The hunt is on.”
I laugh a belly laugh.
“So the hunt is on?”
“For you, yes, mija. He’s in full-blown hunter mode. He’s plotting how to win you back, trust me. His whole mind is zeroed in on what it will take to capture you until you’re his.”
I laugh again. Gabriela’s probably dead wrong, but at least she’s entertaining.
“Would you go to him, go back there, if he asked?”
“He’s not going to ask that.”
“Let’s just do a hypothetical here. If he asked. If he said, ‘Oh, Em, I miss that red hair and those green eyes. Your little freckles on that adorable nose of yours. I miss your curves and how your butt looks in a pair of jeans, and I think of our stolen middle-of-the-night kisses.’” She pauses to make obnoxious kissing noises. “‘I can’t live without you near me,’ would you move back to Timbuktu, Ohio, and be his woman?”
I’m dying now, catching my breath through gulps of laughter. “How my butt looks in jeans?”
“You know it’s fine. So fine.”
