My Dad's Best Friend Moved Into My Spare Room After His Divorce, and the Promise He Made My Father Lasted Four Days novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Three A.M.

I found him on the porch swing at ten to three, under the quilt from my couch.

His bare feet were flat on the boards to keep the chains from squeaking.

He had hung that swing himself, the week of my mother's funeral, and he had never once sat in it where I could see.

The street was dark.

One streetlight buzzed at the corner, and Dawn's porch light was off for the first time since Thursday.

"You're not asleep," I said.

"I'm thinking."

"You sound like a man who's thinking about a text."

"He said I was the one man on earth."

"I know. I read it to you."

"Lori, I heard it."

I walked across the boards in my softball shirt and nothing else, and he watched me come with his jaw set.

I lifted the edge of the quilt.

He didn't say a word.

I climbed into his lap with one knee on either side of his hips.

I pulled the quilt up over my shoulders until we were inside it together.

His hands settled on my back.

They were shaking a little.

"I can't fix it tonight," I said. "Neither can you. So stop doing his sentence over and over."

"What do I do instead?"

"Hold still."

I kissed him.

It was slow, and it was a long way from the kisses in the mirror.

His mouth was cold from the night air and warmed up under mine.

He made a low sound in his throat.

His hands slid up under the shirt, over my bare back, and stopped between my shoulder blades.

"No underwear," he whispered against my lip.

"I came down in a hurry."

"You came down on purpose."

"Both can be true."

I pushed the quilt off his shoulders so I could get at his chest.

He was in the gray sweatpants again, the ones from the night of the storm.

I put my palms flat on his ribs and felt the breath go in and out of him.

Out on Pierce Street a sprinkler ticked on and off.

His thumbs found my nipples through the cotton and rubbed slow, back and forth, until the shirt was damp where his mouth went next.

He pulled the collar aside and kissed the top of one breast, then the other.

I put my head back and looked at the porch ceiling.

He had painted it blue.

Haint blue, he'd called it, to keep the ghosts out.

I had thought it was a joke.

"Ed."

"Shh."

"I'm not making noise."

"You're breathing loud."

He took my nipple into his mouth, shirt and all, and sucked, and I bit down on my own lip so hard I tasted copper.

The swing wanted to creak.

He pressed his heels into the boards and held us still.

It took nothing but the muscles of his legs.

I felt it in the way his thighs went hard under mine.

His other hand slid down my thigh under the quilt, and two fingers found me, wet and bare, and slid in slow.

I turned my face into his neck and shook.

He curled his fingers and kept them there, barely moving.

His thumb rested on my clit and pressed, once, twice, a patient pulse, no hurry at all.

I came against his hand in the dark with my teeth on his collarbone.

It was small and deep and silent, and it left me weak and bright and wanting more of him than a hand.

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