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The bridge isn’t a long one, maybe ten feet...thirty feet...okay, I don’t really know. But we’re in the middle before Jake says, “We’re not all bad.”
I stumble over my feet again. “Well, shit, my toes don’t work tonight. Who’s not all bad?”
“Men.”
Once I’m steady on my feet again, Jake drops my elbow but doesn’t keep his hands away for long. I feel the heat of his palm on my lower back, although he’s not pushy about the touch. “Not all men are bad. I’m sorry you got a shitty one.”
“Not the first, won’t be the last.”
“You should probably work on your selection skills.”
“You can’t tell me that you, a man, don’t want to fuck, fuck, fuck everything.”
His fingertips press lightly into my back, but only for a moment. “A real man isn’t going to date one woman and sleep with another behind her back.”
“You talk a good talk, Jake the Bartender.” At the other end of the bridge, I slow down, focusing on where I know the lip to be...but still nearly take a spill onto the concrete.
“Good lord, woman,” Jake says, once again taking my elbow. “You’re going to end up in the water.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re with me then, isn’t it?”
His answer is basically a growl, and I wonder for a second what that’s about. In the next second though, I’m thinking about that growl being in my ear, while we’re in bed, and his cock... “I live over in that way,” I choke out. “The townhouse apartments.” How those words came out instead of word vomiting what his growl does to me, I have no idea. Guess I have some self-control, after all.
It doesn’t take us long to walk onto the complex property, and it’s a good thing too because I’m suddenly very, very sleep. “I’m in the back corner. Building 35,” I say around a yawn. “You don’t have to walk me there.” Surely the man has other things he’d rather be doing on a Thursday night.
“I’m not taking you halfway and then leaving you to fend for yourself in this maze.”
I’ve never thought of it that way but yes, the complex is a bit maze-like. “Don’t complain to me then—” I yawn again, this time, speaking while my mouth is stretched wide— “if you miss out on whatever it was you were going to do after work.”
“Had no plans.”
We continue walking and it’s almost like he knows where he’s going, which should concern me. If I were levelheaded, it woulddefinitelyconcern me...
“So close,” I mumble, “yet so, so, so far away...”
Jake chuckles beside me. “What unit are you?”
I tell him and soon it’s in sight. You know those times when you’re sleepy in the car and you get a sudden burst of energy the nearer you get to your destination?
That’s not what happens to me tonight.
If anything, it’s as if I get ten times sleepier, knowing my bed is just a few yards away.
The apartment complex is set up in a series of four-unit, two and three story townhomes, each with their own small iron gate by the front stoop. The corner units have L-shaped patios, with their front doors on the side of the building, but I have a middle unit with a small concrete slab as a “porch.” The middle units have a five-by-four section of grass that the amenities list calls a yard, and the moment Jake opens the gate inward, I find the wooden Adirondack chair Emina bought a few weeks ago, plopping down hard immediately.
“Hey, now,” Jake says. “You’re nearly inside. C’mon. Back up.” He tugs on my arm but I’m just too tired to care.
“Just leave me here,” I mumble, tipping my head back to rest on the wood. “I can sleep here.”
“Nope. Not happening. Let’s go, Soph.”
I can feel the energy draining from my body, and it’s hard to keep my eyes open so I give in to the need to close them.
“Soph. Sophia. C’mon.” He’s tugging on my arm again and I whimper in complaint. It’s officially a no bones day for me.
No bones night.
No bones moment.
