Page 2 of One Wild Wish

She pushed up her boobs, her white minidress displaying ample cleavage, and sashayed toward the bar.

Gwen scooted closer. “Since I haven’t heard about any blind dates involving men with more hair in their ears than on their heads, I’m guessing your dating pool dried up?”

“For now,” I said. “Next time a family member sets me up, I’m planning to remove my contacts. Better to bang into walls than be faced with unruly ear hair.”

Gwen massaged her shoulder, likely sore from some insane workout. “I’m taking a dating sabbatical myself.”

“To focus on work?”

“Because I’m an asshole magnet.”

After talk of ear hairs, my mind conjured furry assholes bumping down the street pursuing Gwen. I stifled my laugh. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we dug chicks?”

“Tell me about it.” She tilted her head, scrunching her nose in concentration. The look she assumed when dissecting my crappy dates and job woes. Gwen the problem solver. “But I don’t know. I could totally make out with you and maybe get in on some boob action, but all the business downtown”—she motioned to my crossed legs—“freaks me out.”

I cackled, an unattractive sound that had me second guessing another drink. “I’m bad enough with men. If a woman were between my legs, I’d freeze up.”

“Define bad enough.”

Water circled the base of my glass. I dipped my finger in it and spelled the word frigid. “I just get so in my head, stressing about…I don’t know what. I can’t come from oral.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Like ever?”

I mentally catalogued my oral history: Daniel Bend’s tongue spelling out the alphabet nowhere near my clit. Allen Goldstein motorboating his stubbled face so roughly I got a rash. My last boyfriend, Maxwell Bush-Wetter (his name was a total sham), who mistook my lady parts for an ice cream cone. “From sex, yes. Just not, you know.”

“You know? Is that your code for eating pussy?”

I ducked, and she shook her head.

“You need to get over yourself. The first step to owning your sexuality is by using words like pussy. Your mother can’t hear you. Her head will not explode.”

As if on cue, my cell phone rang. Without looking at it, I knew it was her. Even my mother’s ring had a tone. Urgent. Unrelenting. Shrill. Unable to handle a longwinded conversation about a distant relative diagnosed with The Cancer or The Gout, I dug through my purse to silence it, barely able to find the thing among her throng of paranoid gifts.

Bear bell: One never knew when a grizzly would charge down Market Street.

Swiss Army Knife: The need to drink wine or, say, skin a deer, easily solved.

Cortisone cream: Her cure-all.

I found my phone and hit mute. It wasn’t like we hadn’t spoken twice that morning, and she’d no doubt bring up my crappy job again, something I needed to suppress for a few hours. I sipped my wine, glad the call had at least cut Gwen and my conversation short.

Unfortunately, the next thing Gwen said was, “How did I not know about your oral issue?”

She was nothing if not persistent. Although us girls gossiped endlessly, the nitty gritty of my sex life wasn’t usually up for discussion. “It never came up?”

“Our definition of friendship differs, and we need to fix this handicap of yours.”

An unlikely fix. But my gaze slid back to that blond man and the woman pressed against him, to her hand resting on his very fine backside. It had been too long since I’d seen a man naked. Too long since my hands had roamed freely over a man’s physique. I’d given up on the elusive oral “O,” but I was all in for the rest—the slide of skin against skin, the belly swoop at the first kiss. Hopefully the next guy who took me out would be cute and fun enough to get us to second base.

Thatthought had me grinning.

The music pumped louder, a decibel higher than deafening, like someone hit the wrong switch. Ainsley returned with our drinks and placed my glass of red next to my half-full glass of Pinot Grigio. Guess I’d be double-fisting it.

“What are you two smiling about?” Ainsley may have shouted, but we still squinted, as though that would allow us to hear her better.

Unsure what was wrong with the sound system, I yelled back, “Getting head!”

Reckless Rachel territory.