Lahat ng Kabanata ng Erotic Tales: Love, Lust and Romance: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

There. Finally. Thank fucking god.”Gina’s parking skills were tested to the maximum inorder to force her Karmann Ghia into the tight space between two SUVs across from the restaurant. She was visibly trembling when she exited the little citron- hued car and started to walk to the café. This was a big deal—a meeting she’d been prepping for all month. Unfortunately for her, lunch was scheduled for one of those high-end, chichi restaurants that made her tense simply looking at the menu. She’d hoped to arrive early enough to stake her place at a table and get comfortable, but the restaurant wasn’t opened yet.She dug into her purse for her datebook to make sure she had the time right. Most of her friends used iPhones or BlackBerries to track their daily lives, butGina preferred paper. Nothing beeped in her purse to let her know she’d missed an appointment. She had to grab the leather-bound calendar and flip the pages to find out where she was supposed to be. Her calendar was filled

I’d noticed him before, the young man with the dark, searching eyes. Our paths had crossed occasionally in the evenings—that is, whenever I was able to get out of the office quick enough to make the 5:15 train. He’d glance my way the second I’d board the car, and then he’d keep his eyes trained on me for a long while, conveying his interest with his unyielding gaze. I’d catch him out of the corner of my eye and could never hold back my smile. I liked the attention—and our little routine. He’d stare at me patiently, appreciatively, waiting for some sort of hint, a sign that would encourage him to sidle up and talk to me during our thirty-minute ride to the suburbs. But no matter how many times our paths crossed, I never acknowledged him—until last week. It was the evening before a long holiday weekend, and it seemed as if everyone in the city had hightailed it out of town by midday. I rushed from my office and through the steamy streets, eager to head home. The air was thick and damp

The house was one of those old summer homes on the bay: one big room with a porch and two smaller rooms off the back. It was no treat in the winter when the wind blew off the water with a damp chill and the lack of insulation made the house hard to heat, but in the warm weather the rickety house was full of charm. The view was all grandeur: an expanse of water held in the wide curve of the bay, the mountain rising from the foot of the far shore, cloaked now in the brown grasses of summer, with the darker green of oak and bay in the gullies and the lighter green of willows growing in thestreambeds.Jackson didn’t own the house. He was renting. Abigail parked on the road and walked up the narrow drive. Common wrens twittered in the bushes and out in themarsh she could see an egret standing on one leg, stately, looking for lunch in the tall reeds. They were friends. They’d met, had a few beers, gone hiking. She liked him, but she wasn’t sure how much. He hadn’t put on the hard press.

I was new in town, which made me the fresh meat. It was intimidating. As soon as everyone sniffed around and took a turn they’d get bored and go back to what- ever they were doing before I moved in, but I’d been through a divorce and wanted no part of it. I neededwingmen, and in Will and Adam I had them.There was sexual attraction, to be sure. Adam glowed with it. It was the first thing anyone noticed about him because, like a boxer with a solid left hook, he led with it. He propositioned me first thing; I declined, and after that we were friends. Will was harder to read. It took him four months to ask for a hug, but when he made his interest known, there was no mistaking it. I was tempted. Extremely tempted. But I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, least of all myself. Instead of friends withbenefits, we became friends with attraction.We met for drinks. We went hiking. They showed me the best places to swim and where to pick berries in the summer when the heat lay low in the thic

He listens while I explain. I’m a road warrior. One of that special breed. Two, three hundred days a year living on restaurant fare; flying double, triple platinum. An existence so bizarre that even in so-called downtime,I have to feel the asphalt under my tires, miles flying by as I go.Go, and go, and go. Different places, different faces, another night somewhere else I don’t belong. Some hotel room echoing with the ghosts of ten thousand strangers, picking up my echoes for a night or three or five until I’m gone again.Always on the road for money and for love. It’s why I’m here now: crappy diner with fluorescent lighting and blue plastic booths, the best this town has to offer.Any port in a storm though, and boy is it a stormout there. Enough to run even me off the road, mangle my tire against broken debris sloshing along the asphalt. Fate telling me to stop so that he could find me. With his pretty brown eyes and his blue-checkered shirt, coming out of the dark like a knig