We are.
I open up the box, pull out a packing slip and peer underneath. The box is chock-full of cheekily-named toys. Hastily looking around to see if anyone can peer into the conference room—they can’t—I take out several boxes of male vibrators, butt plugs, cock rings, a vibrating cock ring, and some crazy thing that looks like a cock ring with a tail made out of pink plastic beads.
Oh. That part goes there. An anal plug.
I look over at Evie. She’s blushing furiously, and it’s sexy as hell.
We both burst out laughing. I can’t help but feel embarrassed. It’s difficult enough to discuss sex toys with anyone, let alone a woman you’ve slept with—who is also your legal adviser. “So this is totally normal,” I say.
“Absolutely.”
Five clear plastic cylinders holding kits to make molds of my dick come out next.
They look intimidating, actually. I read the instructions on the label. You have to mix up plaster and figure out how to hold your dick in there long enough and hard enough for it to make a mold.
My eyes widen. “I’m not totally sure how to use these.”
“I think it’s just like making a Popsicle,” she says. And I laugh. “You know, you have to put the liquid in the mold, and it takes on that shape. But first you have to make the mold.”
I grin, but it’s sort of a grimace, because I’m fighting getting hard, and I don’t want to be a perv. Not everything is about my dick. I cannot allow myself to imagine using these things with her, and I don’t want to have a hard-on in my lawyer’s office. Even if my lawyer is as hot as Evie.
Trying to keep it under control, I dive back into the box and fish out a box of vibrating thong panties controlled by a remote.
Yeah, I’m totally at semi-staff, immediately thinking of uses for this.
“Ohmigod,” she breathes. “I’ve never heard of those.”
I hastily put them to the side.
Can’t use those.
At the bottom of the box are several bottles of lube, some sort of flavored gel, and a bumper sticker.
Won’t be using that last one either. They couldn’t pay me enough to put a sex toy manufacturer’s bumper sticker on my car or anywhere you could see my face, even though I’m thinking about accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from them to plaster a different body part on their website.
Hypocritical? Maybe.
“Did they send everything?” she asks.
“They told me they’d be sending the molds and an assortment of products to try out. So yeah, it looks like what they described.”
We pack everything back up again, and she stacks her papers.
I watch as she tucks her hair behind her ear and beams that gorgeous smile at me.
Fuck, I miss her. I miss the way she laughs when we’re joking and the way her cheeks flush when she’s embarrassed. How she’s all fire when she’s pissed and gentle and refined when she’s not. And the way she looks at me like we could be so much more than friends.
I’m going to keep torturing myself, because this—just being friends—is more tolerable than being apart.
“How’s the remodeling going?”
She perks up and relaxes. “The master bathroom is coming along. I’m looking for the perfect pedestal sink to replace the hideous harvest gold monstrosity in there now, which, you know, is inappropriate for the style of the house.”
I can think of lots of things that are inappropriate here, and I really could care less that she knows it. Instead of making a comment, I close up the top of the box. “I did some research and found a few architectural salvage places I’ve never been to. I can take you if you like.”
“Josh,” she warns.
“As friends.” I hold up my hands like I’m harmless.
She eyes me skeptically. “As long as you’re on your best behavior.”
“Like I would ever misbehave.”
We stare at each other and start laughing.
“Fine,” she says, “since you’re the model of good behavior, I guess I trust you.”
As those words leave her lips, I know I have to tread carefully. Because I would never do anything to hurt her.
I need to convince her that what we have is too good to be just friends.
But being her friend is a good place to start.
After work on Wednesday evening, I lift up my hand to knock on her door, but it opens before I make contact. Evie’s purse is on her shoulder and her keys in hand as she shoves Chauncey behind her. She beams like we’re going to Disneyland.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Yes!” She follows me to my car, almost skipping, and we drive to the salvage store I found online.
This dingy place is like the storeroom at the end of Indiana Jones, but instead of wooden boxes of who-knows-what, it’s chock full of bathtubs, light fixtures, cabinets, and other house parts—with an attitude. A hand-painted sign reads, “We don’t decorate, we RESTORE.” We walk past old doors stacked like books on an oversized shelf to a counter with a cash register that’s so antiquated the numbers pop up, like in cartoons. A portly man who looks like an old sea captain, wearing the Skipper’s hat from Gilligan’s Island, stands behind it, arms crossed over his chest, and growls at us. “What kind of house you got?”
He’s had extensive customer service training, I see.
Evie stutters out, “A 1927 Craftsman bungalow.”
He relents. “Okay, you can look.”
When he turns away, she leans into my ear, her lips brushing it as she whispers, “This is the snobbiest store I’ve ever been in. You need the right kind of house to even look.”
“I know, right?” I murmur back. Not like the snobbery that I’ve grown up with, but snobbery just the same.
“What’s your project?” Sea Captain asks over his shoulder.
“I’m restoring a bathroom,” she says, and pulls out her phone to show him pictures. I notice that she’s careful not to use the word decorate. “I’m looking for a pedestal sink to go here.”
Squinting at the pictures, he says, “You don’t want a pedestal, you want a wall-mount.” He disappears into the back.
She looks at me. “I think I know what I want for my own damn house.”
I give her a half-smile.
Snobby Sea Captain comes back and hefts a white, wall-mounted sink up onto the counter. It has separate holes for a hot water faucet and a cold water faucet, as well as a space for a soap dish.
“Take it or leave it. This is what belongs in your house.” He goes off to snarl at another customer who has the audacity to ask for subway tile.
“You can just go to Home Depot,” I say. “You don’t have to do what he says.”
But she looks delighted. “This place is the exact opposite of Home Depot. I think he may be right, though. This would look great.”