A Girl Like You by vinnie Kinsella (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

face that he didn’t know; he expected an actual answer.

“Friends, I guess, I mean, people, someone to do things with, so that I don’t spend every night at my dining room table, working.” I looked over Michael’s shoulder to avoid eye contact. There was a party going on in the small banquet room, with a huge sheet cake covered in blue flowers, and a bunch of red helium balloons.

“I understand,” Michael said quietly. “I get lonely too.”

I looked at Michael closely. My heart rate went into overdrive.

My wine glass was empty. Michael ushered me out the door, his hand on the small of my back. “Where are you parked?”

“Way down there.” I pointed to the only car in the lot with the interior lights on. Shit! I hadn’t closed the door hard enough.

“Not the one with the lights on?” Michael said.

“I’m sorry, it is.”

“Don’t be sorry. Let’s see if it starts.”

I trudged in my sneakers to my car, thoroughly shamed. Climbing in, I turned the key, grateful beyond words when it started right away.

“I’m good,” I turned to Michael.

He was already bending over in that slo-mo way, and I was thinking, Thank God his head didn’t hit the roof, when he kissed me.

I hadn’t been kissed in months. I’d forgotten how nice it was.

31

Michael and I immediately became the kind of people who text good morning as soon as we woke up, even though neither of us was a morning person.

He was a great texter.

“I dreamed about your long hair last night,” he texted. “My hands got hopelessly tangled in it, and it was soft and smelled like rain.”

I had dreamed that I was out of dog food. Michael seemed very sweet.

“You surprised me,” I texted, the morning after our drink at Nick’s.

“You didn’t think you’d meet anyone you like at Fish?”

“No, in the parking lot.”

“Ah, the kiss. Maybe we should do it again.”

Not only was he a great kisser, but Michael’s grammar/spelling was impeccable.

“When’s your lunch hour?” he texted around noon.

“Right now, but I only get half an hour.”

Michael worked about ten minutes away from the town office.

“I get an hour,” he texted back.

“Jerk.”

“Don’t be a hater. One of these days, I will drive up there and meet you for your half-hour lunch at First Rate Deli.”

I smiled at my phone.

“What’s wrong with you?” Joe asked pointedly. “You got that spreadsheet ready for me?”

“Maybe she needs some fresh air,” Paulie said over the sound of Wes snoring at the conference table. He looked over his reading glasses at me. “If we all pitch in a couple bucks, think you could be a good gal and run down to Spot for a half dozen of them cinnamon scones?”

I got up and went just for the sake of getting away from them for ten minutes.

After work, I logged into Fish to show Maddy Michael’s picture.

“Eh, he’s cute, but what does he look like without the hat on?” Madison said, examining the ends of her hair for splits.

“Well, he’s bald,” I said.

“Looks a little bit like a tall Bryan to me,” Madd said, shrugging.

That night, as Penny snored at my feet, I stayed up texting Michael.

“So, I have to tell you, I searched for tall men with master’s degrees, and you came up, but I was too afraid to message you.”

“Why?”

“I thought you’d be too smart for me.”

“OK, well, check that worry off your list. Anything else you wanta tell me?”

“There is something, but it’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“At Nick’s, we had a moment.”

“I don’t remember a specific moment,” Michael texted. “But I know I liked you enough to kiss you. What was the moment?”

“Well, when we were looking at each other at one point, I got butterflies.” OK, so the butterflies were mostly out of nervousness, but still, it was true.

“That’s not stupid. That’s sweet.”

“I’m getting sleepy. This is a late night for me,” I texted. It was 10:40 p.m.

“Don’t go to bed yet. Tell me more about your life. Do you like your job?”

“Not really,” I texted. “It’s very technical, and I keep getting interrupted by the Three Stooges, these old guys who don’t seem to have a home to go to. I get overwhelmed and go home with a headache, completely drained.”

“You need to relax, Jess. Ever smoke pot? It’s the best thing for stress.”

Okaaaay. I would have never pegged Michael for a pothead. All right, maybe not a pothead, and most likely no one used that term anymore. Stoner?

“I don’t smoke,” I texted Michael reluctantly.

“Well, don’t rule it out. I think you’d like it.”

“Maybe.”

“It even makes orgasms better. And you never drink? You had only one glass of wine the other night.”

Hold on a minute—had he said “better orgasms”?

“There’s one more thing,” Michael texted. “I tend to be more dominant.”

“Dominant?”

“Yeah, dominant in bed.”

Now he had my full attention. I had to admit, it was a longtime fantasy of mine to be told what to do while having sex, to hand over control to a man I trusted. I didn’t want pain or anything done in a harmful way, but a dominant lover? That I could get into.

We said good night, but I couldn’t sleep. I’d told Eddie I was open to new experiences in bed. Maybe this was the perfect opportunity.

I texted Madison and told her the latest about Michael, my sort-of, maybe boyfriend.

“Lots of people smoke, Mom,” she texted back right away. “It’s a lifestyle choice. Just tell him you don’t. Unless you want to?” Smiley face emoji.

I’d smoked plenty of pot. OK, I’d smoked a little pot. At least a half dozen times in high school, standing around a keg of Miller Lite with friends at an outdoor fire, lighting up and passing it around. I’d gotten the buzz, the cotton mouth, the paranoia, the raging hunger that resulted in inhaling half a bag of Fritos.

I hadn’t smoked since. For a minute, I thought about getting high with Michael, maybe getting silly, maybe having extraordinary sex…did pot really improve sex?

If there was any chance it did, I