else, but I preferred our little bungalow with the personal touches.
James slid the steaks onto a platter and brought them to the table. “Only if you want to, babe. I don’t care, one way or another.”
It would have been so much easier if he had. If he’d put his foot down and demanded we host my parents’ party someplace else. If he’d taken the choice from me, I could’ve blamed him for making what I wanted come true.
“No.” I sighed as he slapped an immense portion of beef onto my plate. “We’ll have it here.”
The steak was good, the corn crisp and sweet. I’d made a salad with in-season strawberries and vinaigrette dressing, and crusty French bread rolls. We ate like kings as James told me about the new work site, the problems he was having with some of the guys on his crew, about his parents’ plans for a family vacation.
“When do they think that’s going to happen?” I paused in cutting my steak.
James shrugged, pouring himself another glass of red wine. He didn’t ask me if I wanted any; he’d stopped asking long ago. “I don’t know. Sometime this summer, I guess.”
“You guess? Well, did they think to ask any of us when we might like to go? Or if we want to go?”
Another shrug. He wouldn’t have thought of it. “I don’t know, Anne. It’s just something my mom mentioned. Maybe sometime over the fourth.”
“Well,” I said, buttering a roll to give my hands a reason not to clench. “We can’t go away with them this summer. You know we can’t. I wish you’d just told her that up front.”
James sighed. “Anne—”
I looked up. “You didn’t tell her we’d go, did you?”
“I didn’t tell her we’d go.”
“But you didn’t tell her we wouldn’t.” I frowned. It was typical and unsurprising, and right now, immeasurably more irritating.
James chewed in silence and washed down his food with wine. He cut more steak. He poured steak sauce.
I, too, said nothing. It wasn’t as easy for me but had come about from long practice. It became a waiting game.
“What do you want me to tell her?” he asked, finally.
“The truth, James. The same thing you told me. That we couldn’t take a vacation this summer because you’ve got that new development going in and you need to be on-site. That we’re planning on using your vacation time to go skiing this winter, instead. That we can’t go. That we don’t want to go!”
“I’m not saying that.” He wiped his mouth and crumpled his napkin, then threw it on his plate where it soaked up steak sauce like blood.
“You’d better tell her something,” I said sourly. “Before she books the trip.”
He sighed again and leaned back in his chair. He ran a hand over his head. “Yeah. I know.”
I didn’t want to be fighting with him about this. Especially since I wasn’t really tense about his mother, but about hosting my parents’ anniversary party. It all cycled around, though, a snake eating its own tail. Feeling pressured into doing something I didn’t want to do for people I didn’t want to please.
James reached across the table and grabbed my hand. His thumb passed over the back of it. “I’ll tell her.”
Three words and such a simple sentiment, but some of the weight dropped from my shoulders. I squeezed his hand. We shared a smile. He tugged me gently, pulling me closer, and we kissed over the remains of our dinner.
“Mmm. Steak sauce.” He licked his lips. “Wonder what else that would taste good on.”
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned.
James laughed and kissed me again, lingering though the position was awkward. “I’d have to lick it all off ….”
“That sounds like a very good way to get an infection,” I said crisply, and he let me go.
Together, we tossed the paper plates and put away leftovers. James found many excuses to rub and bump against me, always with a falsely innocent “Pardon me, excuse me,” that made me laugh and punch his arm. Finally he backed me against the sink and pinned me. His hands closed around my wrists, pressing my hands down to the countertop. His pelvis anchored mine.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello.”
“Fancy meeting you here.” He nudged me with his erection.
“We have to stop meeting like this. It’s really too shocking.”
He pressed closer to me, knowing I couldn’t move away. His breath, redolent of garlic and onion but in a delicious and not repugnant way, gusted over my face. He tilted his head to align our mouths, but he didn’t kiss me.
“Are you shocked?”
I gave my head the slightest shake. “Not yet.”
“Good.”
Sometimes it was like that with us. Fast and hot and hard, swift and frantic fucking without bothering to do more than slide aside panties and unzip a fly. He was inside me in a heartbeat, and I was wet for him. Slick. My body gave him no resistance as he filled me, and we both cried out.
My arms went around his neck, his hand beneath one thigh to shift the angle. We rattled the cupboards. I wasn’t sure I’d come but something in the way his body hit my pelvis, over and over, tipped me into a short, sharp climax. James followed just after my body tightened around him. His face dropped to my shoulder, both of us breathing hard. The position quickly became painful and awkward, and we untangled ourselves with stiff motions. He put his arms around me, and we stood together as our breathing slowed and the sweat on our faces cooled in the breeze coming in the window.
“When’s your next appointment with the doctor?” James’s question made me blink.
“I haven’t made one.”
I pushed away from him to rearrange my clothes and wash the grill utensils. The dish soap made my fingers slippery, and I dropped the tongs into the steel sink with a clatter that sounded like an accusation. James, however, did not accuse.
“Are you going to?”
I looked at him. “I’ve just been busy.”
He could’ve pointed out that since the local counseling center I’d worked for had lost its funding and closed, I’d been anything but busy. He didn’t. He shrugged and accepted my answer like it made sense, even though it didn’t.
“Why?” I asked. “Are you in a hurry?”
James smiled. “I thought you wanted to get started. Hey, who knows, maybe we just made a baby. Just now.”
That was utterly unlikely. “How lucky would that be?”
He
