“I sense that,” my cousin called back, going back to work.
Still staring at her phone, Cricket said, “I don’t care that I said it out loud. I wish I could punch Scott. Or knee him in the cods. Or both.”
Another ping. We both looked at her phone.
Where’s Julia Kate?
Cricket narrowed her eyes as her fingers flew over the phone keyboard. At the Brauds’. Be home in half an hour.
I looked up as the sound of the lift stopped. Cricket’s car now sat piggyback on the tow truck.
Another ping.
Going to bed. Long day. Tired.
“I bet. Screwing someone half your age has to be hard for a fortysomething sleazeball with a mild case of ED.” Cricket clicked her phone off and tossed it back in the bag.
“He has ED?” That would be justice, at least.
“Maybe it’s only with me,” Cricket said, sounding sad.
I didn’t know what to say. Sex was something I rarely discussed with anyone. Truthfully, though many might look at me and my past and assume I’d had much experience in that department, I hadn’t. My first love had been Dakota Roberts, and we’d taken that plunge together when I was sixteen, sweetly erasing my virgin status. After he’d broken up with me, I went out with a few other guys, and their awkward and not-so-attentive lovemaking had traumatized me enough to keep me from jumping into something physical without at least having some investment beforehand. I was the wrong person to have a conversation about sex with. For real. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
Cricket’s face reflected absolute misery. “Somehow this hurts more than I thought. I’m not a frigid prude or anything, but the older I get, the less I want him touching me, taking up my time. God, some of this is my fault. I just got used to doing this or that for seven point five minutes before he returned the favor for less than three. He hasn’t even asked for sex for, like, months. Not since we got back from the Cayman Islands. Honestly, I’ve just felt relieved.”
What to say to that? I glanced over at Griffin, hoping he couldn’t hear this vulnerable admission, and then did my best to make my boss feel better about her sex life, or rather lack of one. “Well, you’ve been married for a while. Everyone settles into knowing what their partner likes, and, um, when you get older, you lose some of that initial passion. I think.”
“He wanted to experiment with sex toys, and I shot him down without even considering it. I didn’t want to do freaky stuff.”
Griff may have had an ear cocked in our direction, because he darted a glance our way before catching himself and going right back to unhooking chains.
“Yeah,” I breathed. I really didn’t know what to say to that.
“And when I was, like, ‘No way,’ he said he was joking. But maybe turning him down drove him to Stephanie. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe I should have tried the anal beads or the other things he showed me on that website.”
“I would have turned that down, too, Cricket. I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. None of this is your fault. Not wanting to push the boundaries of, uh, what you do in the bedroom is not justification for cheating.”
She looked up at me with tears sheening her eyes. “You would have said no, too?”
“Yeah, that would have been a hard pass.”
A sigh of relief escaped her as she looked over at Griff, who had turned toward us.
“Okay, Mrs. Crosby,” Griffin said, walking over and readjusting the cap on his head. “Got you loaded. You gals ready? Or do you need more time to . . .”
His words faded as if he wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Cricket’s eyes widened, and I felt protective of her. I hoped like hell Griff hadn’t heard our conversation, but the slight softening of his expression and the solicitous query made me suspect he had. Griff wasn’t a bad guy. He’d probably maim Scott if I asked him to.
I looked at Cricket. “Ready?”
She pushed off the curb. “Sure. Thank you, Mr. Moon.”
Griff didn’t say anything more. Just watched as we gracelessly climbed into the cab of his truck. The cab smelled like coffee and—I squinted at the green-tree freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—pine. A stack of bills bundled with a rubber band sat on the dash, and another ball cap with the Blue Moon logo sat beside it. The cab was clean, like I knew it would be. Griff had always been disciplined. That’s why he ran a successful business.
He swung into his seat and shut the door, giving us automatic intimacy.
“We good?” Griffin asked.
Cricket’s phone trilled.
She sighed when she looked at the screen. Punching the ANSWER button, she tiredly said, “What? I said I’d be home.”
Because we were in close quarters, I heard Scott say, “Did you pick up my dry cleaning?”
I felt her answer before she said it. “No.”
“I told you I need a white button-down for tomorrow. There are none in my closet. You said you would get them.”
“I forgot,” Cricket said.
“Damn it, Crick. When you say you’re going to do something, you should do it. Now I’m screwed. What’s been going on with you? You never forget stuff like this. I’m sure you saw that I didn’t forget the anniversary of our first date. You got the flowers, right?”
“Sorry about the shirts. Wear the blue one. I’ll pick the dry cleaning up tomorrow.” Cricket pressed the END button before her husband could respond. She lowered the phone and screwed her eyes closed. “Sorry about that.”
Thick discomfort pressed on all of us. No one liked to be plunged into someone’s jacked-up life uninvited. And yet here I sat, ass deep in my boss’s personal business.
Griffin pulled away from the curb while simultaneously turning on the radio. Van Halen roared from the speakers, instructing us to “Jump.”
Too damned late.
“I hate him. I really hate him.” Cricket’s words scattered like buckshot, powerful and angry.
Griff leaned forward to look across me at my boss, who had pressed her hands into her eyes. “You want me to kill him for you?”
Cricket dropped her hands and looked over at Griff. “You do that sort of thing?”
Griff grinned. I had only seen him do that maybe four times in my life.
“He doesn’t kill people,” I clarified just in case Cricket thought my cousin was serious.
“I know,” Cricket said with a slight smile. “Besides, I don’t want Scott to die until I make him pay.”
Griffin pulled through a Family Dollar parking lot, looping around and pointing his tow truck north. “That’s the spirit, sunshine.”
CHAPTER SIX
CRICKET
A week later