Page 66 of Blame it on the Bet
She grabs my other hand and pulls me out of the kitchen and into the hallway, away from the little guy’s big ears.
“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Bryan went back to the apartment with you. You talked the friendly talk, and he…he kissed you? Are you sure?”
“Am I sure he kissed me?” I echo.“Yes, James, I’m pretty sure. Either that or he slipped, and his tongue just happened to fall into my mouth.”
“Oh my God!” she squeaks, now jumping up and down and clapping her hands like an excited schoolgirl. Suddenly she stops and puts her hands on my shoulders. “Henny, be honest with me. Were you…you know…naked?”
“I was not naked,” I insist, but she waves it away, preferring, I’m sure, to put her own sordid slant on the story. “Were you on the way to naked?”
“Jameson, quit it,” I hiss and give her arm a playful slap. “No one was naked. No one was on the way to naked.”
“Oh,” she says, disappointment filling her features. “I suppose there’s always next time.”
“Next time? What next time? I can’t kiss him again.”
“I thought you said he kissed you.”
“He did kiss me. But maybe I kissed him back…you know, just a little.”
“Hey, is that like being a little bit pregnant?” Jameson asks.
“Hey, how about less snark and more support,” I suggest, elbowing her in the ribs. She rolls her eyes and sticks her head into the kitchen to check on Jackson.
“Come here,” she whispers back at me, waving her hand. I move to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder to where the pudgy little boy has sprawled out on his blanket on the kitchen floor, sound asleep and clutching his toy car.
“Ouch! Isn’t that floor a little hard under the blanket?”
She shakes her head. “Nah, my boy can sleep anywhere, anytime. He gets that from his father.”
I’m thinking that this is certainly one of the more harmless traits he can pick up from his father, but decide it would be unwise to point that out to my sister right now.
“I love that child so much it makes my heart hurt,” she says. And when she turns back around to face me, there are tears in her eyes. “Am I doing the right thing, Henny? Thinking about leaving Win? He’s Jackson’s father…”
I consider what Bryan said to me in the car about the reasons why men cheat.
“Hey, James…is it possible that Win’s depressed?”
She shoots me a look filled with so much surprise that I realize she’s also had this thought.
“Maybe,” she whispers. “I’ve tried to get him to go to counseling again. Alone, together—whatever he wants—but no go. I think he’s afraid that it might hurt his reputation if it got out. But yeah, I’ve had that thought before. Thing is, if he refuses to get help, then he’s not leaving me with any alternatives. I have to do what’s best for Jackson. I mean, he’s young enough now that he doesn’t have any sense of discord, but it’s just a matter of time before that starts to filter down into his sunny little world.”
I put my arms around my sister and pull her to me tightly. “James?”
“Hmmm?”
“I still get goose bumps every time I think about it.”
“About what?”
“The kiss.”
“Oh,” she says with an understanding chuckle. “Must’ve been some smooch, then.”
“Best damn kiss of my life,” I whisper. “And all I can think about is how nice it would be to get another one of them.”
She pushes away from me just a bit so we can look at one another’s faces. Her pretty, full mouth quirks up in amusement on one side, and her green eyes glitter.
“Well, then, I guess we’d best figure out how to get you another one. And a naked one at that!”
