had only dated for a few months, the stories their relationship produced had become part of the Gold/Levine Canon. The stuff of legend almost. Sheila had been sexually insatiable, a Goth girl with multiple piercings and a penchant for wearing black.
“Don’t ask like you don’t know.”
Josie giggled again. “I bet you wouldn’t wear black eyeliner and fishnet shirts if I asked you to.”
“Shut up!”
She tickled him until he squirmed. “Too bad. I thought you looked hot.”
He flipped on his side to look at her. “Get the fuck out.”
She laughed harder at his use of shocked profanity. “Oh, yeah. All moody and stuff. All angsty and Robert Smith from The Cure. Back when you had hair.”
He rolled his eyes. “That girl used me up and wore me out. That was probably the worst six months of my life.”
She mimicked his expression. “Oh, yeah. Being fucked to death is every man’s nightmare.”
He frowned. “It wasn’t the fucking. It was the hot wax and razor blades. That girl was crazy.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I knew about the hot wax. You never told me about the razor blades.”
He slanted her a familiar grin. “You never asked.”
“That’s…kinky.”
“That’s just scary.” He pulled her closer. “Anyway, I was only with her because you were going out with what’s-his-name.”
“Stuart.” Josie snuggled closer. “Don’t ask like you don’t know.”
He laughed, rubbing her shoulder. “We wasted too much time.”
“Nah.” She grinned up at him. “We would never have made it in college. Then what would’ve happened?”
“You don’t think so?”
He sounded so genuinely curious she pulled away to look up at him. She’d thought it had always been mutually understood that their relationship had grown from friendship to love through the years. She’d never guessed he might really have thought differently in college.
“I think so,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“Why not?”
“Because you were interested in partying and drinking and hooking up,” she told him. “And I was trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
She’d changed majors three times in college. Jack, who’d excelled scholastically despite his social proclivities, had never wavered from the major he’d decided on his junior year of high school.
It was the way he’d always been, though. He set his sights on a goal and he reached it, no matter how long the road to get there or how many times he stopped along the side of it. Her path had been different, a winding garden lane instead of a mega-superhighway. Yet they’d both ended up in the same place.
She kissed his warm, bare shoulder. “We are the sum of our experiences. If we hadn’t lived our past, we wouldn’t be here now.”
“Tell me you couldn’t have done without Stuart.”
She laughed lightly, smoothing his chest under her fingertips. “But then I’d never have figured out I didn’t want to pursue medicine. I’d never have taken that course in catering management. I wouldn’t have the job I have today, and I love my job.”
“And if I hadn’t been Sheila’s Jackhammer?”
That one was harder. “Um….you wouldn’t have learned you’re not into kinky sex?”
He gave a mock growl and rolled over on top of her, holding her arms above her head. “Who says I’m not into kinky sex?”
She giggled. “Okay. How about this? You wouldn’t have started working out so much. You needed your strength to keep up with her, remember? If you hadn’t been with her, you’d still be a skinny, flabby mess.”
“With a tremendous ’fro,” Jack added.
“That, too. So you see? Thanks to her you became the buff, bald god I see before me.”
He laughed and kissed her thoroughly. “So the truth comes out. You only love me because of my body.”
“I love you because of your body,” she agreed. “And your mind. And your heart.”
He smiled. “But the body helps, right?” He let go of her arms to sit up and flex his muscles. “Makes you horny, right?”
She made a face. “Oh, yes.”
Jack lay down next to her and pulled the blankets up over them both. He turned on his side and pulled her close to him, his face serious.
“You’re the only person who knows all of me, Josie.”
His quiet words made her smile, and she touched his mouth with her fingertips. “Same here.”
He pulled her close, tucking her head beneath his chin. “I still don’t think you needed to go out with Stuart.”
She laughed, snuggling closer, her eyes already drooping. “Go to sleep, Jackhammer.”
His chuckle was the last thing she heard before she slipped into dreams.
Chapter 7
“I brought a few samples for