Page 67 of When the Time Is Right
“Hey!” She swatted at my arm and I narrowly avoided her wrath.
I laughed. “All right, well, I need to go kick Cal in the dick for being a nasty motherfucker who bet that his best friend would sleep with his sister. But you have a good weekend, Lauren.”
She shot me a wink. “You too, Hud.”
The real reason I had to go to Cal’s house was I’d had a crew there all afternoon cleaning up and putting the finishing touches on the pool, and since they were doing this as a favor to me above and beyond their normal hours, I was paying them all in cash. I usually met them back at the office, but that would take time I did not care to spend driving around town when I could be spending it with Lex.
Giving Cal absolute hell for betting on me and Lex with Lauren was really just a bonus.
I must have looked like a punch-drunk fool grinning ear to ear the whole way to Cal’s. It was strange. You’d think the minute I got her clothes off would have been the moment things with me and Lex finally felt real. Now that Lauren knew, it felt like we’d taken it to the next level. And holy shit if that wasn’t a high I never wanted to come down from.
It’d been a while since I’d been smitten with a woman. And honestly, even on the brief occasion over the years that I’d met someone, it had been short lived. Probably because the woman I was supposed to be with had been sitting across the booth from me every Thursday night for years.
She was the image in my mind as I hopped out of my truck in front of Cal’s, and as I rounded his house and saw the pool already half full, I couldn’t wait to see her in a bikini, giving her brother shit for ever being against it.
“Get in there, you sonofabitch,” Cal cursed as he kicked an inflatable unicorn into what appeared to be a new all-weather pool shed.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
Over his shoulder, he glared at me. “I’ll tell you something you can kiss with yours.”
My hands went up in the air and I laughed at the poor guy. “I come in peace. I just wanted to see how the pool looked all finished up.”
Finally, he finagled the cartoonish raft into place and shoved the door shut with his shoulder. Turning, he cocked a suspicious eye at me and stood with his hands on his hips.
“What?” I asked, prepared for the never-ending wrath of Dr. Calvin Lawson, MD.
“Why do you look like that?”
I scanned down the front of myself. Boots. Jeans. Black Hud Construction T-shirt. I didn’t see anything strange. “Well, this is what a blue-collar man looks like, Cal. Not that you’d recognize it.”
“No, jackass. That smirk.” He took a seat on one of his new ultra-plush chaise lounges, and I plopped down into a club chair next to him while he examined me. “Let me guess. This will be fun. You plowed over a family of ducks on your way over. No. You conned your way out of jury duty. Nah. Oh, yes. You acquired a building permit to tear down a neighborhood park to build a strip club.”
I sat idly by, and mildly entertained, as he defamed my moral fiber and character in a matter of seconds. “Can’t a man just be happy to see his best friend enjoying the thoughtful, heartwarming wedding present he so generously gave him?”
“No.” He scratched his chin, and then his eyebrow lifted and his lips curled upward. “You got pussy.”
That was not what I’d gone there to talk about.
“So the pool should be filled by morning, huh? Vanessa have monogrammed invitations to your first soiree already in the mail?” I pointed at him, begging the universe for him to let it go and fight with me about his new-and-improved, luxurious backyard. “I better get one and a thank-you note.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? You got laid.” His tongue did that thing where it pressed against the inside of his cheek, making him look like a half cocky know-it all and half blowfish. “I’m right. Don’t fight it, Hud. You can tell me. Did she cry? She threw up? Did she flee the country? Are you going with her? Joining Boners Without Borders?”
“Drop it,” I warned.
“Come on. Tell me about your new slam piece.”
There was no way he knew who he was talking about, but that didn’t matter. Even thinking about someone calling Lex a slam piece had my hackles up.
“I said shut up, Cal. You do not want to talk about this.”
“Is it painful having empty, meaningless sex with desperate women who only do it to take pity on you?”
I’d tried to stop him, but he’d never learn. “You know what? I did get pussy. Woke up with three of ’em just last weekend, in fact.”
