sipped her beer as though it was a pacifier.
“You don’t agree?” Norman asked her.
She shrugged. “I guess…” She took another sip. “I think I’m just still rattled about the idea of that pervert at Giant following me without my realizing it. And of course there’s this Arty character and his interaction with my daughter.” Another sip. “I mean the creep even knows where we’re staying for Christ’s sake. Patrick told him.”
Patrick frowned. “Baby, the guy called this place Crater Lake. And that was after I’d already told him the correct name. Hell, I’ll bet he probably forgot it again the minute he left the station.”
“But he was right there at the restaurant with us an hour later, trading a blue lollipop for a fucking doll.” She looked away, disgusted.
Norman and Lorraine exchanged an uneasy glance.
“I’m not saying it isn’t bizarre, baby—it is—I’m just saying that with a wife, in-laws, and twins on his plate, I doubt the guy’s got any time to pop in for a surprise visit, if he happens to remember the name of the lake.”
Amy took a deep pull from her beer.
“Come on, honey,” Patrick began, “we’ve already been over this. I hate what happened too, but it’s done, right? We need to put it behind us now.”
Norman leaned to his right and rubbed Amy’s shoulder. “Here, here,” he said. “Just dumb luck is all it was.” He then smiled and added, “Besides, you’ve got Oscar to protect you now.”
All four adults looked out onto the grass where the still-heavily stuffed and clinically zonked Oscar hadn’t moved for the past two hours.
“Great,” Amy said. “I feel safer already.”
* * *
Over an hour had passed before Amy and Patrick were able to crawl under the sheets together.
Inching over, Patrick placed his lips on Amy’s neck and mumbled into her warm flesh. “You better not be ready to go to sleep just yet.”
“You’re not tired?” she asked.
“Does it feel like I’m tired?”
Amy reached under the sheets and touched the front of her husband’s boxer shorts. “Oh my,” she said. “No, I would say you’re, or should I say, he’s wide awake.”
They both chuckled. Amy rolled over on top of her husband and began kissing his chest, periodically darting her tongue in and out, flicking his nipples. “Although I’m not sure I gave a good enough inspection,” she said, her tongue sliding down his torso towards his waist. “Perhaps I should take a closer look?”
“I, I mean he, would like that very much.”
* * *
In the twelve years they had been married there was one undeniable truth both Amy and Patrick could never deny: their sex life was amazing. As incredulous as it sounded to other couples in the same chronological boat, their physical attraction and passion for one another had never once dimmed from the first time they’d touched each other’s skin. Tonight’s marathon of intensity proved to extend that streak even further.
“I think I’m done, baby,” Amy said. She was on top, Patrick still inside her (the sheets long since discarded in a heap on the floor), and panting heavily, perspiration rimming her hairline. “I’m starting to get a little sore.”
“You okay?” he asked between pants of his own.
She leaned down and began kissing him, pausing and breathing hard between each kiss to say, “I came twice.” Kiss. “Yes, I’m okay.” Kiss. “I’m very okay.” Kiss. “I think I just need some healing time if we’re ever going to do it again on this trip.” Kiss.
Patrick laughed and said, “Okay, dismount.”
She giggled and slowly pushed herself off. He leaned forward and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her onto her side and close to him so they could spoon into one another. He kissed her softly on the nape of her neck. “I love you,” he said.
Amy reached back and rubbed his leg. “I love you too, baby.” She took a deep breath into her nose, and let it filter out slow and heavy through her mouth—any previous anxieties gratefully expelled with her therapeutic sigh. She felt her eyelids getting heavy. “We better pull the sheets back onto the bed,” she said. “If the kids come in…”
“Good idea,” Patrick mumbled, his eyes already closed. “You do that.”
“Such a gentleman,” she replied, gently slapping his leg.
Amy sat up and reached over the side of the bed. She glanced outside through the bedroom window and saw the man with the shaved head staring back at her. She screamed louder than she’d ever done before in her life.
10
Patrick and Amy