sex with you,” I say. “It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done.”
He glances up and looks at me like I’m crazy or something, but then he gives me a small smile and nods, and I can’t read that mouth of his at all.
“I understand,” he finally says. “We’ll slow it down, okay? We’ll just dial it back here until we’re back to where you feel okay.”
“Can we even do that?” I say.
“Sure. We can do anything we want, can’t we?”
“Do you hate me so much right now?”
“Emmylou, I could never hate you. Don’t be ridiculous.” Then he laughs. “But I could definitely put you over my knee again.”
I don’t think I need to mention here just how I feel about that remark. It lands in the room between us like an unexploded bomb.
Chapter Seven
Sure, dial it right back until I feel comfortable again. Sounds totally reasonable, doesn’t it? Sounds like a real mature, sensitive plan to tackle the myriad of complicated feelings going on between me and Travis right now as we wade through the murky new normal of post-sexageddon. We’ll just go back to not fucking. Everything else will stay the same. We’ll go slower, whatever this means.
But while I’m left still thinking about Travis day and night, fantasizing about all the different ways he’s already had me, kissed me, felt me, held me—shit, I am fantasizing about the way he drinks coffee or puts on a pair of socks—he just backs right the hell off like it’s nothing. He acts like there never was a sexageddon at all.
He doesn’t drop his paper off for me to look at on Sunday, and he doesn’t call me after work. I finally call him, feeling pathetic, right at around six and ask him where the paper is. He tells me he’s had George—George!—proofread it. George was a history major for fuck’s sake. What does he know about the semicolon? Nothing, that’s what. Can he hyphenate? Not if he had to save his own mother from a dangling participle could the guy hyphen correctly.
“Well, you’ve got better things to do,” Travis says. “Like review for your exam this week.”
“I don’t need to review,” I say. “I can take that exam right now and ace it.”
“Why don’t you see if you can take it early, then?” Travis suggests. “Just in case?”
“Ask Professor Dickwad for a special favor? He’ll never let me do that.”
I’m prolonging the conversation as much as possible because I’m hoping Travis is going to ask if I want to go to the diner or something. But he doesn’t mention anything even remotely related to the remote possibility of seeing me tonight. I break down and ask him if he wants to go get a slice, but he’s already eaten and he’s in a cleaning frenzy because Mama Omaha comes tomorrow and she’ll want to swing by the house.
“You should see George—he’s actually cleaning the oven right now.”
“Do you need any help?” I ask, and now you know I really want to see him because I would rather sew my own fingers together than clean something.
“No thanks,” he says, pleasant enough. “I’ve got it covered.”
Fine, then.
“So . . . what are you going to tell your mother about your neck?” I ask.
“I’m not going to tell her anything,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
“Are you going to tell her it was Millie?”
“Emmy, I’m twenty-two years old. I don’t have to explain my hickeys to my mother. She’s not going to want to hear about it anyway. At best she’ll give me a withering look and make me put some of her cover-up on it before we go out to dinner.”
“Is it still that bad?”
“Not really,” he says.
Here’s where I’m hoping he asks me how my ass tattoo is looking, and I know the answer because alone in my room today, I’ve probably looked at it in the mirror about five times. Or maybe fifty. But he doesn’t bring it up, and I don’t, either.
Travis is acting totally normal, just the same as he ever did before sexageddon. But I don’t feel “okay” like I am supposed to with things “dialed back.” I’m more of a “this one goes to eleven” kind of gal, I guess.
He picks me up for rehearsal on Tuesday night and the conversation is all about his visit with the woman who ironed his Levi’s all through high school. (I had no idea Travis wore ironed Levi’s in high school, by the way. If he were any other guy,