Hard Beat

“What? It’s true.” She shrugs, blond hair falling over her shoulders and a bottle of beer in her hand.

“It is not!” But I can’t keep from laughing because she knows me too well.

“That’s such crap. I’ve seen you do it. The minute a woman tells you she loves you, you get that knee-jerk reaction and say it right back.”

“I do not.” I feign ignorance when I know she’s one hundred percent spot-on.

“Dude, she’s right,” Pauly interjects with the tip of his bottle before meeting Stella’s hand in a high five. “You get pussywhipped and cave in to saying it back.”

“It just comes out. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just ignore that the chick’s said it and hurt her feelings because I don’t respond?”

“Jesus,” both of them say in unison as Stella slumps back in her seat and slides me a sidelong glance. “It’s gonna hurt her feelings a helluva lot more when you say it and don’t mean it, Romeo.”

I blow out a long breath and swallow the smart-ass comment on my tongue with a sip of beer.

“You guys are too funny,” Pauly says as he rises. “’Nother round?”

We nod and watch him walk off, and now that he’s gone, I look over to Stella who’s eyeing me once again. “What?”

“Nothing.” Silence falls between us for a moment before she continues. “I think it’s cute, you know. Most guys are scared of saying those three words.”

“Well, according to you and Pauly, I say them too much.”

“I’m just giving you shit,” she muses, head on the back of the chair, eyes tilted up to the ceiling. “I like that it’s easy for you.”

“I guess the real question, though, is if I can say it so easily, how will I know when it’s really real?” It’s amazing the things you’ll think to talk about when you’re bored out of your mind.

“You’ll know it’s real when you hesitate.”

I angle my head and meet her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“If the words are so easy for you to say when it’s in reflex, then the first time you ever hesitate, when you don’t say ‘I love you’ back immediately because you’ll be so overwhelmed that she said it to you… well, I guess then you’ll know it’s real.”

I stare at her, not sure if I believe her or not, but since I have nothing else to think about, the notion settles in as I lift the beer to my lips and rest my head on the back of the chair. “Food for thought,” I murmur.

A noise in the hallway pulls me from my dream and the moment I’d completely forgotten. My dreamlike state lasts momentarily, and I hold on to the recollection of Stella since the memories are coming less and less frequently now.

Rolling onto my side to avoid the bright light that floods the room, I’m struck by how perfectly it frames Beaux’s body in a halo as she sleeps. I visually trace the lines of her face and the sheet covering her body and take her all in. She’s so feisty when she’s awake that it’s interesting to have a moment to watch her in sleep. And it’s not like we haven’t woken up beside each other before, but this time just seems so very different.

Good different.

The first time you hesitate…

I push the train of thought aside – how both Stella’s wisdom and now Beaux lying beside me make me hesitate in so many ways – and try to redirect my mind to where I want my thoughts to wander: my family. I wonder how my sister, Rylee, is doing with her new husband and her band of motley boys that she loves more than life. I find myself guessing at how many times my mom has gone to pick up the phone to call me, only to hang it back up because she doesn’t want to annoy me even though I tell her to call anytime and that I’ll answer when I can. And then I get that little pang deep down as I wonder if my dad has found a new buddy to join him in sitting on the rocks of the jetty to fish since he’d gotten a little too used to my being home over the four months. We both found it therapeutic sitting there with fishing poles in our hands, him in having his only son home again for the longest bout in a decade and me in having his company. With my father, I didn’t have to say a word, and yet he knew exactly what to do to help me deal with Stella’s death.

Then Beaux makes this soft moan deep in her throat that tugs on every ounce of testosterone in my body. And it’s not like I’m not sitting here with morning wood; I’d be more than willing to relieve the pressure and feed the ache, but at the same time there is something so perfect about just being lazy with her. Like we’re lying together after an incredible first date instead of in the Middle East in some crappy hotel with squeaky bedsprings, waiting for the next story to hit.

Shit, even after leading into another morning broadcast in the States and not another mention of what happened in the hallway, we fell into bed exhausted but not too tired to go another round, a little slower, a little softer than the first time. And then complete and utter exhaustion took over, but damn, I’ll take exhaustion when it comes at the hands and thighs of a beautiful woman.

She shifts in bed, my eyes taking in the span of golden skin that calls for me to touch it, and when I look back up, I meet her sleepy eyes and shy smile. “Mmm, good morning,” she murmurs, shifting her pillow some so that she can lie on her side and look eye to eye with me.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

She closes her eyes drowsily for a slow blink and yawns. I laugh at how tired she seems when I feel so invigorated after a killer story, great pickups by other networks, and, more important, the incredible night we spent together.