Dark Wild Night

“I may not have suspected it,” she says, mimicking the low volume of my words and looking at my mouth for a lingering moment before blinking back up to my eyes. “But I’d wanted to hear it for a long time.”


I open my mouth to respond, but she cuts in, brighter now. “But rule number one tonight: no making out.” She takes the shot and winces, chasing it with a swig of her beer.

I choke on my own shot, coughing. “Pardon?”

“You heard me,” she says.

I take a long pull of my beer, and swallow through a grimace. “No making out when?”

“Once we’re drunk,” she explains. “I want to talk.”

My chest feels too full for everything inside it; lungs, heart, the expanding emotions inside don’t leave enough room to breathe. Is this it? Is it happening now?

I reach for a strand of her hair and ask, “Is there a rule number two in case rule number one gets broken?”

Her smile is a slow-growing work of magic. “Don’t be cute.”

Smiling back, I whisper, “I’ll try.” Every single drop of blood in me is rioting. Fucking finally. “What’s happening here, Lola Love?”

She gives me an innocent shrug. “We’re playing poker.”

“I’ll clean the floor with you,” I warn, before tilting my bottle to my lips and sipping my beer again.

She watches me swallow. “You can clean the floor with all of your clothes while I watch.” I raise an eyebrow at her and she adds, “We’re playing strip poker.”

With a surprised laugh, I say, “We really do have a lot to discuss tonight if we’re playing strip poker but we can’t make out.”

Lola turns and retrieves a deck of cards from the drawer in the kitchen, and then gestures for me to join her at the dining room table.

This all feels so sudden . . . but at the same time it seems I’ve waited an eternity for this. I want the friendship barrier to dissolve. I want the next step, and the one after that. Lola has entered my house like a bulldozer, and although I’ve never seen her like this, not in a million years would I try to slow her down.

A determined Lola is a sight to behold.

She pats the tabletop to rouse me from my thoughts and I blink, carrying my beer to the table. Sitting across from her, our eyes lock, and neither of us breaks the tension by looking away. We’ve danced around each other for so long and I swear my skin is on fire, my brain thrumming as I wonder how this night will unfold.

“Ante up,” she whispers, reaching beneath her hair to remove her earrings. She drops them in the center of the table and looks up at me expectantly.

I glance down at what I’ve got on. A watch. Jeans, a shirt, belt, glasses. I’m not even wearing shoes or socks. “This seems a little uneven.”

“Lucky me.”

She has no idea that I consider myself the lucky one. To have earned her trust. To have earned her affection. To witness her take-charge attitude. I smile at her, wanting to just say it again right here: I love you.

Instead, I unfasten my watch and drop it on the table as she begins to deal out five cards each.

We look at our cards, shifting them into our preferred order, and holy fuck, I have two fucking pair: two jacks, two threes, and a seven.

“Your actual poker face is so bad,” she says, giggling. “This is the shock of a lifetime.”

“I may get you naked with this one hand,” I say, waving my cards at her, and feeling everything inside me pull to the middle in a warm tightness when I see she catches my double meaning. “I’m going to open.” I reach for my belt, slowly pulling it free and coiling it before dropping it in the center of the table. “See or fold, Castle.”

“Do you know if we’d stayed married I would be Lorelei Lore?”

I nod. “Thought about it once or twice, though I always assumed you’d keep your name.”

“I’m traditional in weird ways,” she says, putting her cards facedown. Just when I think she’s folded, she reaches for the hem of her sweater and pulls it up and over her head.

She’s wearing nothing but a bra beneath.