Page 87 of Walk the Line

I slip the dildo out of him and palm my face. “How do we always lose track of time like that?”

“I have a few thoughts about that,” he says plainly.

Okay, fine, I know exactly how we get carried away.

Vivian’s voice pierces my thoughts. “Kaylah, Julius, honeys, Grandma and Grandpa are here!”

I rush off his lap because why am I still on there? “Help me get this on please,” I say as I grab my blouse from the floor. His fingers instantly begin tugging at the zip on the back.

“Fuck, the zip is stuck,” he says after a few seconds.

“Are you fucking with me?”

“I wish I was just fucking you.”

“You’re ridiculous. Is it still stuck?”

“Yeah.”

Panic courses through me as I imagine entering the front room with a dishevelled blouse that speaks clearly of my recent bedroom activities. “I can’t meet your Grandma and Grandpa like this!” Especially not for what’s supposed to be a nice Christmas dinner.

“I think I’ve got it, hold on,” he says, still playing around with the zipper. “Babe, stay still.”

“I am staying still!” I try to keep my voice as low as possible but I can’t help but raise it a little higher when I hear the laughter sounding out of his mouth. “Is someone telling a joke or something?” I say, because how is anything funny in this moment?

“I just don’t know who you think my Grandma and Grandpa are. They’ll love you whether your shirt is zipped or not.”

When he puts it like that, it doesn’t sound too bad.

But…

“They’ll know we were having sex!” I say.

“This is a pretty chilled family, babe.”

“Yeah, but like…it’s sex,” I continue, though he makes a fair point. It’s a very chilled family.

“Trust me, they know we were having sex.”

“Can we stop saying the word sex?”

The laughter returns, followed by a, “Okay, I’ll pretend you weren’t the one who said it first. Got it.”

We finish getting dressed as quickly as possible, and I check myself a few times in the mirror, making many adjustments that will hopefully prove we were doing completely innocent things up here, before feeling comfortable enough to take his hand and head downstairs.

When we go in, everyone’s standing around in the front room, all eyes on us as we make our greetings.

“Hey, Grandma. Grandpa,” he says, giving them his typical side hug. “Always good to see you guys. This is my wife, Kaylah.”

“So nice to meet you,” I say, hugging them both myself and only realising Julius’s introduction after.

“You don’t have to call her your wife, Julius,” his Grandma says, a look of amusement on her face. “We’re okay with sex outside of marriage,” she finishes and it takes me a minute…because I convince myself I didn’t just hear that. But as soon as everyone starts laughing, I just about flatline.

I think I’m sweating. I’m wiping something off my face because I suddenly feel very shy, and I’m internally cussing myself because I thought I got rid of all the evidence of what we were doing, yet it seems as if I’m the only one freaking out here because everyone else is laughing away.

Julius’s straight expression breathes some air into me, and I watch as he takes my hands in his and shakes his head at his family. “My Grandma did that because they saw your face. I told you it’s okay, darling. Breathe for me and annoy them back because trust me, they’re really annoying.”

I let out a deep breath. “I’ll just try to relax, then.”