He tightened his grip on my hips, lifted his slightly. “I know, it makes it harder. So. Much. Harder.”
I sighed, exasperated. “No jokes, Nick. We need to have a serious discussion. I messed up really badly! I’ve been stupid all weekend.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve been enjoying yourself. So much that your regular routine slipped your mind. You’re human.”
“But that slip might have resulted in a pregnancy. Do you understand that? A baby. I’m totally unfit to be a parent!”
“You won’t be alone, Coco. I’m here.”
“You’re totally unfit, too!”
“Hey, come on. I want kids, remember?”
“Not like this, you don’t. With your ex- girlfriend who—“
“Ex-wife, actually. Hey, let’s get remarried!” he said, as if it were the best idea he’d had in years.
“—ex-wife who hasn’t forgiven you for what you did and probably never will. And could you please stop proposing to me out of the blue?”
“Sorry. I just got carried away when you said baby.”
“I don’t want a baby with you, Nick. And I don’t want to marry you again.”
He was silent a few seconds. “Ouch. I’m not sure which part of that hurts most.”
I closed my eyes and tried to rethink what I’d said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, and if I am pregnant, that may change things, but right now, Nick…I am not OK with this. I wish I were. I wish I could accept your apology and understand your excuses and forgive and forget and all that, but I can’t. I just can’t. Because I don’t know how to trust you.”
“Why not?” His hands locked behind my hips. “Tell me what to say and I’ll say it. Tell me what to do to make you change your mind. I love you, and I don’t want to give up on us.”
“But you did! You already did!” It struck me then that maybe that’s the part I couldn’t get over. Even if I forgave him for leaving me in Vegas, I couldn’t get beyond feeling that he didn’t try hard enough to get me back, if that’s what he really wanted. “If you were truly sorry for calling our marriage a mistake, you would have tried harder to find me, to keep me. Even after I got back from Paris.”
“But I did try! You divorced me in sixty days!”
“I wanted to hurt you. Like you hurt me.”
He exhaled, dropping his head back on the seat. “I left you in peace after the divorce because I thought that was what you wanted. If you love something, set it free and all that. I’d fucked everything up, and I thought for once I’d try to be a gentleman.”
“I never wanted a gentleman. I wanted you.”
He picked his head up. “Thanks.”
I almost laughed at the offended look on his face, but every time I felt a moment of levity, reality sucked me down again. Groaning, I dropped my forehead to his shoulder. “What the hell, Nick? What are we going to do? Why can’t we ever get things right?”
He rubbed my back. “It’s your body, Coco. And I will support you no matter what you decide. It’s going to be OK no matter what. ”
Giving in to the feeling of being comforted, of being told it would all be OK, of feeling like I wasn’t alone, I turned my face into his throat. Inhaled the scent of his skin, which would forever say sex-and- sugar to me. Except when it said sex-and-bacon.
I chuckled in the crook of his neck. I couldn’t help it.
“What?” He sounded shocked that I was giggling.
“Nothing. I was thinking something dirty.”
“What a coincidence.”
I laughed again, lifting my head. “This would be so much easier if I didn’t like you.”
His mouth formed that crooked grin I couldn’t resist. “I knew you still liked me.”
“A little. Maybe.” What are you doing? screamed a voice in my head as I leaned forward impulsively to kiss those lips. What the actual fuck are you doing? It was the anti-dessert tray voice, the one that remembers to count the steps it takes me to walk away.
Oh, now you show up, I thought, feeling Nick’s hands move up my back. Where were you in the kitchen when I told him to fuck me without a condom? Where were you in the cemetery this morning? Why didn’t you sound the alarm then and remind me that I hadn’t taken a pill?
No answer.
I took that as a sign.
Our kiss grew frantic, and our hands began to wander. I freed my dress from between us and Nick’s fingers crept beneath it. His palms slid up my thighs, settling on my ass and squeezing it tight. I took his face in my hands, meeting his tongue with mine, shivering with anticipation at the growing bulge in his jeans beneath me.
Reaching behind me, I unzipped my dress and let the straps fall off my shoulders, then slipped my arms from them. Nick’s hands moved up my back, which arched instinctively, pressing my breasts closer to his mouth. He dragged his tongue around one nipple, teasing it into a stiff, tingling peak before sucking it hard into his mouth. “Oh God, that feels so good,” I breathed, taking his head in my hands and holding it to my chest. My breath caught as he took the hardened tip between his teeth, biting down before sucking it again. His other hand slid down over my ass, this time inside my panties.
I grabbed onto the back of the seat and rocked my hips over his, widening my knees. He groaned, moving both hands to grip my ass, thrusting up beneath me as he pulled me against him, his mouth never leaving my breasts. Remember this? I almost asked. Remember how we used to park your truck somewhere hidden and fuck each other through our clothes? I wanted the real thing. I want the real thing now. But I was too scared to say anything—if I stopped to talk, stopped to remember, stopped to think at all, I might reconsider where this was headed, and right now I really wanted this to head somewhere that ended with my pussy hot and tight around his big hard cock.