I heard her footsteps behind me and the sound brought me up short. I’d left her to carry the boxes, and that was discourteous. My momma raised me better, even if I was suffering from penile engorgement.
I turned and met her a few feet from the kitchen door, relieving her of the boxes.
“Thank you very much for these. You didn’t have to bake us treats.” I kept my eyes on the boxes.
“I don’t mind. And it’s the least I can do for all you’ve done. And all you’re doing. By the way, do I have any homework?”
Homework.
Dammit.
“Yes. Homework. Yes.” I nodded, trying to remember what I’d planned to give her for homework. I couldn’t remember, so I made it up. “You have to talk to Claire McClure about instruments and baking with a partner.”
“You mean I need to ask her about sex.”
Oh for the love of—
“Yep.” I turned and escaped to my car.
“So you’ll send me her phone number? And let her know I’m calling?” Jenn was trailing after me, pummeling me with questions. I needed her to leave me alone so I could stop thinking about teaching her how to pleasure herself.
“Yep.” I opened the trunk and placed the bakery boxes inside, then walked past her to the driver’s side door.
“Okay. Sounds good. I guess I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Yep,” I said, closing my door and immediately starting the engine.
Jennifer lingered just beyond my parking spot, her arms crossed against the cold. I placed the car in reverse, but didn’t hit the gas. I couldn’t leave, not until she was back inside. She didn’t move.
Grunting my frustration, I rolled down my window. “What are you doing? It’s freezing out here. Go back inside.”
She shuffled forward in her slippers and bent down to the height of the window. Before I knew what was happening, Jennifer Sylvester placed a featherlike hand on my jaw and a sweet kiss on my cheek. The whole thing was over before I knew it had happened.
Giving me a triumphant smile, she backed away from the car. I looked at her and she looked back, her smile never wavering. Then she turned and jogged to the back door. She stepped inside. She shut the door.
I don’t know how long I stared at the back door to the kitchen, but when I eventually glanced at the clock on the dash, it was 10:46 PM. I still needed a cold shower, but I decided to skip it.
My decision had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I could still feel the warm, gentle brush of her fingers on my jaw, or the searing press of her lips on my cheek.
Shit.
CHAPTER 14
“Let's clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power
Jennifer
Over a week later and I hadn’t heard from Cletus.
I tried not to feel disappointed and mostly succeeded. We weren’t friends. I might’ve been developing affection for him and enjoying our time together; but I couldn’t allow myself to forget that I was, in fact, blackmailing the man.
The only reason he was talking to me at all was because of that video. Once our deal was over, he’d likely avoid me. I’d become invisible again. And that was okay. I just needed to prepare myself for the eventual rejection.
I was good at dealing with rejection. No biggie.
Therefore, my decision to seek him out ten days after our last lesson made no rational sense.
“What are you doing, Jennifer Sylvester?” I asked myself out loud as I pulled into the parking lot of the Winston Brothers Auto Shop. “You’ve obviously lost your mind.”
I had definitely lost my mind.
I was blackmailing him to help me find a husband. But recently, when I thought about him, when I thought back on our stolen moments together and my heart became too full for my chest, part of me—clearly the very wrong in the head part of me—wondered if I should just blackmail him into marrying me instead.
See? I’d lost my mind.
I’d lost it the moment I stepped forward, bent into his car, and placed that kiss on his cheek ten days ago.
But he was just so . . .
I sighed and glanced in my rearview mirror, my chest aching as I watched shadows and shapes of movement within the shop’s garage. My eyes snagged on my nails where they rested on the steering wheel. They were painted black.
Yes. Black.
I’d painted my nails black.
I’d also stopped wearing the yellow dresses during the day, preferring to bake in jeans, T-shirts, and Converse. And I’d made an appointment with my hair stylist for mid-November. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to my hair, but I did know I was going to change it.
My mother was not happy. There had been much wringing of hands and wailing over the last few weeks. But each time she threw a fit, I met her hysteria with calm reassurances that I still wore the yellow dress and heels during the special events, and when pictures needed to be taken for social media. It didn’t matter what I wore in my free time.