Dixie didn’t open her eyes. “You said that. Whatever you did with Mr. Jax Hawthorne last night has left you redundant.”
“I had almost sex with him!” she blurted out—the words echoing in her skull, taunting. Oh. That sounded so much worse out loud than it ever had in her head.
Dixie kept her eyes closed, but her lips twitched. “I thought we were havin’ quiet time?”
“You know doggone well you’d make me tell you just by virtue of your disapproving silence.”
“I did no such thing. You said you didn’t want to talk about it. I was respectin’ your wishes.”
“With your silent condemnation—the one that makes me squirm until my skin crawls.”
“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, Em. If you squirmed, that was your guilt over not telling your best friend something you so obviously need to talk out. That’s on you. Not me. Now, breakfast? I make a mean bowl of grits. Obviously, you need to refuel.” Her straight face crumpled into a fit of laughter that had her shoulders shaking so hard, she almost spilled her coffee.
Em dropped her coffee mug on the rich-hued surface of her pine table. “This is not funny, Dixie! I’ve done something so unlike me, and I don’t know what to do about it.” Misery, be thy name.
“But does what you did feel good enough that you might not want to take it back? ’Cuz you know, that’s okay. To enjoy the company of a man.”
“I didn’t just enjoy the company of a man, Dixie. I enjoyed his company in a Jeep with the seat flat. I was...I was sexually festive! If word got out I was diddlin’ in, of all things, a Jeep, parked right outside the man’s home while his baby girl slept inside—”
“What?” Dixie sat forward with probing eyes. “What would happen, Em? People would say, that dirty Em. How dare she date a man when she’s just divorced and single and well within her rights to spend time with an attractive, equally single man? Is that what they’d say? Would they call you unseemly, maybe even forward? And why is that so important to you, anyway?”
“Because of what happened with Louella when she put those pictures of him up on Founders’ Day, Dixie. I wouldn’t put it past Louella to be sneakin’ around snoopin’. I don’t want the boys to have more trouble at school, Dixie. Isn’t it bad enough they’re teased unmercifully about Clifton? Add me throwing myself at a man in a parked car, and they’ll never recover.”
Dixie’s eyes flashed angry and hot. “So you’re gonna let Louella dictate your life?”
“If it means the boys won’t have people callin’ their mother a whore on top of everything else, yes.” Yes, she would.
“Because Louella’s so lily-white,” Dixie spat, her lips pursing in distaste. “It’s your life. You should be able to live it the way you want. I understand you don’t want the boys to suffer, but it isn’t like you’re out in the square skinnin’ the seniors alive in the midday sun. You were just having some fun. As long as you’re not cheatin’ or hurting anyone, the notion that it’s bad to have sex for the joy of it is archaic.”
“But that’s the PO, and you know it.”
“No, here’s what I know. Your life is yours until you let someone else run it. I learned that from Landon. He taught me to live, Em. Really live. I’m here to tell you, I love livin’, even in this town where no one approves of how I live. There’s nothing wrong with having almost sex in a car between two consenting adults.” Dixie paused, her head cocked in question. “But a question. What is almost sex to you, anyway, Em?”
“Like I have to define that to the devil’s playmate. You know what almost sex is.”
She grinned. “I fear my definition and yours may vary.”
“We hit a few bases and then some. But then we realized we didn’t have a condom, so we couldn’t hit a home run.” Was that regret stabbing at her? Yes. She’d wanted to make love with a man she’d known less than a week.
Dixie giggled and did the wave. “Cheers from the crowd.”
Still, she couldn’t accept that about herself. She wasn’t the kind of woman who had sex just for sex’s sake. “No. Don’t cheer my bad behavior.”
“Why is it bad to enjoy a man, Em?”
“Because I was this close to riding him like he was Seabiscuit.”
So why was that bad?