“No.” I try to think of how to describe flambé to him. When nothing comes to me, I say, “Alcohol makes fire in a hot pan. It’s lighting food on fire.”
“Babe, you get my dick hard when you talk about fire and food in the same sentence.” He clears his throat and blows out a shuddered breath. I eye my closed bedroom door and scrunch my face up at what I’m about to do.
“Is your dick hard now?” I ask, stuttering through the entire sentence. God, I sound like a freaking moron.
I’m not the only one who wasn’t expecting me to be this forward. “It is now,” he says. “Good thing I got a few minutes.”
“Aren’t you outside?” I ask. He can’t possibly be… considering… that… outdoors.
There’s rustling on the other end, and a doorbell chimes in the background. His stomping echoes in the phone, and then a door creaks open and shuts closed. When I hear the lock slide into place, I almost giggle.
“Can you touch yourself for me?” I ask. Yeah, it’s official. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing, but I’m not hearing any complaints so I go with it. I think he might be at the new coffee shop in town… in the bathroom… about to touch himself. I shouldn’t encourage this kind of behavior, but he’s going to do it anyway. Dad did say to make my boy happy.
His breathing escalates as he slides his zipper down and frees himself. At least, that’s what he tells me he’s doing. He tells me he’s stroking himself,
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I confess.
“Just talk,” he says. “I want to hear your voice. Tell me how you make a flambé or whatever it is.” I giggle happily at his difficulty at understanding the meaning of flambé. “I fucking love that sound. Do it again.”
So I tell him, through giggles, how to flambé a dish. Trying to sound sexy, I note the heat of the fire and the wetness of the alcohol before it burns. I search for any aspect of the process that could help him along, but I’m pretty miserable at it, to be honest.
Finally, I give up trying to be sexy when I’m not. “I love you, baby, and I wish I were there with you right now.”
He grunts on the other end of the phone, then gasps and sucks in a frantic breath. I wait until he’s back with me, sounding breathless and pleased and obviously worn out judging from the series of yawns that escape him. Being able to give him this and to hear him pleasure himself is enticing. But I can’t do anything with my dad in this house—it’s bad enough what we just did—so I try to block out the telltale throbbing at the apex of my thighs and my heated skin. Jeremy and I have only been together a few times, and in a lot of ways, it feels like our relationship can’t stay on course like normal adult relationships do.
“I love you,” he says. He yawns again despite the early hour. “Sorry.”
“Long day?”
“Long year,” he says, I think referencing my absence in combination with all the club’s shit.
And here it is, the topic he never wants to talk about. The toll the club takes on him with the Mancuso situation, and the devastation that’s followed is painful. It hurts me to even think about what we’ve lost, but Jeremy actually lives through it every day. He’s been there through almost all of it, and I know it must weigh on his heart that things are going this direction. It’s just getting more violent and scarier every time he gives me an update. I worry for him so much sometimes that I curl into a ball on the floor and sob for fear that the next call I’ll get will be my dad telling me he’s gone.
“I’m sorry, baby. I wish I could make it all less painful,” I say in absence of anything more helpful. “I know you don’t want me to have to deal with all that shit, but I want you to talk to me about it. You need to talk about it so you can move forward and get the shit done you need to so we can have our always.”
And he does.
I listen while he talks and tells me things I didn’t know, and this time when he asks if I’m still his girl, I say, “Always,” and I know it’s the truth.
Just as I hang up the phone, Dad knocks and, as always, walks in without notice. He notices my fallen shoulders and sorrowful eyes. He blows out a breath and says, “You talk to him?”
“Yeah.” I give him a small smile. “I just miss him. I still feel that crushing thing when I think about how long it’s going to be until I’m going to see him again.”
“Christ, you’re fucking dramatic.” With a huff, I eye the black throw pillow beside me and chuck it at his head. He doesn’t bother with batting it away and lets it bounce off his head. With a raised eyebrow, he says, “If you’re done throwing shit, I want to show you something I brought for you.”
“If you’re done being insensitive, I’d like to see it,” I say and stand from my bed.