Introduction by JetBoy: Those of you who have been long-term denizens of the Juicy Secrets community will probably recall a wonderful yet tragically incomplete story entitled “Pages From a Diary.” It ran for seventeen chapters, then the author vanished from our radar in early 2019. Since then, it’s become one of the most longed-for of our unfinished works.
Fast-forward to August of this year, when we received a heartfelt apology from Ms. Yukey. Personal reasons had obliged her to abandon “Pages” in midstream, and she was still conflicted about taking it on again… but lo and behold, she did have something else for us: a brand new novel-length story. She gave us the first two chapters, and Amanda and I immediately concurred that yes, this little saga looked to be a serious contender. We accepted, I applied a hint of editing here and there… and now, we officially launch the opening of Rachael Yukey’s new 23-chapter novella.
Rachael told us up front: This is a mystery novel that prominently features Ff lesbian erotica, NOT erotica first and foremost. There’s lots of sex in it, much more than you’ll find in any ordinary novel, but the sex is not necessarily the primary focus of the plot. So if a straight-up stroke story is what you’re after, go read something else. If you dare dump on Rachel’s story because “there’s not enough sex,” I will hunt you down and administer a wedgie that will leave your eyes permanently crossed.
I should also add that there is a smidgen of hetero activity in the story as well, nearly all of it early on. Fear not: the vast majority of the sex is lesbian.
Finally, an additional bit of good news. I kept dropping hints to Rachael (with all the subtlety of a flung shovel) that it would be a Very Fine Thing if she’d at least consider picking up the thread of “Pages From a Diary,” once more. Maybe just read the thing once again, I suggested, see if you get inspired? Well, out of the blue, Rachael informed me that not only had she delved back into the story, she’d penned two new chapters! Since then, I’ve received another four installments, so “Pages,” is up and running, people! By mutual agreement, though, we’ll be holding off on making those public until “Strange Brew,” has run its course. And with that, let me cease my endless rambling and let you get to the story. Please enjoy.
By Rachael Yukey
“3520, Franklin – we’re pulling up on scene.”
“Copy that, 3520, your time is 06:21.”
Before the county dispatcher had completed his sentence, I was dropping the mic onto the magnetic clip. My partner eased the ambulance around the front of the ladder truck that was blocking both lanes of country blacktop, killing the siren but leaving the lights flashing. I timestamped our arrival on my laptop, flipped it closed, and was already pushing the passenger-side door open as the rig came to a halt just abreast of the two ruined cars in the ditch. Between the fog and the morning dusk of early spring, I couldn’t see a whole hell of a lot.
I’m Antoinette Hastings, by the way. I’m a paramedic with Thormleton Ambulance, a privately owned small-city Advanced Life Support service in the upper midwest. My partner Justin and I had just hauled ass twenty miles through the fog and over bad roads in response to a collision.
Entering the back of the rig through the side door, I tossed the laptop onto the bench seat and tugged the first-in bag from its compartment. Justin popped the rear doors and pulled the cot out.
“Just leave it on the shoulder for now,” I told him as I hastily cranked the heat in the back all the way up. The patients still trapped in the vehicles had to be getting pretty damn cold by now.
As I exited the rig, a second ambulance pulled in behind us. Peering into the ditch, I could see a little better now. A blue Toyota Camry was on its side, with no activity surrounding it. Firefighters were working around a white Chevy crossover that looked like it had struck something head-on, then rolled a couple of times. One of the firefighters was wielding the jaws of life, working at cutting away the roof support beams. Another small group of rescue personnel were about twenty yards into a freshly plowed field, clustered around something I couldn’t quite make out.
I took a step towards the ditch, only to be brought up short by a hand on my elbow. I turned to face a short but sturdy blonde woman in the brown uniform of a Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy.
“Down here, Nettie,” said Cindy Koep, guiding me away from the cars and towards the cluster of bodies in the field. “The guy from the Toyota’s already out and sitting in the back of my squad to keep warm. I don’t think he’s hurt. The driver of the Chevy is trapped inside. She’s obviously intoxicated, but she’s talking to us, at least. Her passenger was unrestrained, and got ejected. Eleven-year-old girl. She’s hurt pretty bad.”
“Did you call flight?”
“Flight was a no-go for weather.”
“Shit. Do we know who it is?”
“You probably know the driver. Lisa Milne? She lives in your town. Her daughter is the one that got ejected. Chelsey, that’s her name.”
My pulse quickened. Little Chelsey. Dammit.
The little circle of humanity parted as we approached, revealing the half-grown body sprawled across the rough ground. The girl tried to lift her head to look up at us, but gentle hands restrained her.
I dropped to my knees beside her, my partner Justin coming around to the other side. I sized up the situation at a glance. The left forearm was deformed; a clear and obvious fracture. The jeans looked suspiciously tight over her left thigh. Blood oozed from scrapes on her exposed hands, and from a laceration to the right side of her head. She was shivering violently with cold, moaning with almost every breath. All the firefighters had done was place a cervical collar around her neck, but they had a backboard ready to go.
Justin pulled his trauma shears from his trousers, clearly intending to begin cutting clothing. I held up my hand. “Uh-uh,” I said. “We need to get her out of the cold first. Justin, you stabilize c-spine. One of you other guys, grab a dressing out of my bag and hold pressure on that head injury. The rest of you pick her up and put her on that backboard, and let’s move.”
With Justin holding the girl’s head still and counting off the moves, they gently lifted her onto the backboard. Chelsey screamed as they picked her up.
I gripped her hand. “Listen to me, sweetheart,” I said, as the group of men lifted the board on Justin’s count and hastened across the field. “I know it hurts, but we have to get you out of the cold. We’ll get you something for pain once we’re in the ambulance. Don’t try to talk right now, just rest.”
I had no idea if the child was coherent enough to comprehend any of this; I just had to hope for the best. I did a half-assed trauma assessment as we walked, checking pulses at the wrists and ankles, listening to her lungs, and getting the best look I could at the injuries. As we passed the cars, I noted that Lisa Milne had been extricated from her vehicle, and was being loaded into the other ambulance. I hope it hurts, you stupid meth-addled bitch.
As they set the backboard on the cot, I addressed the firefighters. “I need my partner in the back,” I said, “so I’m gonna need one of you guys to drive. Take us to Pinewood, and don’t spare the diesel fuel. Once we’re rolling, radio the hospital and give them a heads-up that we’re activating a trauma code.”
I entered through the side door of the rig as the firefighters shoved the cot in from the rear. Justin came in behind it, the men outside slamming the doors closed.
“Wrap a pressure dressing around that head injury, then start cutting her clothes off,” I instructed him. I yanked my trauma shears out and cut a slit up the right arm of Chelsey’s jacket, rapidly exposing the uninjured arm. The front door of the rig slammed, the siren wailed, and we lurched forward, almost knocking me from my perch on the bench. Goddamn firefighters.
Twisting my body around, I waved my badge in front of the scanner on the narcotics safe mounted above the bench seat. The lock opened with an audible click, and I extracted the narc box. Selecting a vial, I drew up half of it into a syringe, and turned back to the little girl on the cot..
Justin was cutting the rest of the jacket and shirt off with quick, efficient movements, flipping the material over so it hung from beneath the little girl’s body like the flayed skin of a dead animal. I cleaned the upper right arm with an alcohol prep, then uncapped the safety needle.
Justin looked at me with raised eyebrows. “No IV?”
“Oh, I’ll get one,” I said, “but I want to get some pain meds on board before I traction that leg, and this way is faster.”
I turned my eyes to Chelsey. She was staring at me with glazed eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m going to give you something for the pain, Chelsey,” I told her. “There’ll be a quick sting on your arm, but then you’ll feel better.”
The little girl just sobbed, and it dawned on me that she had yet to utter a single word. I got a firm grip on her arm, then plunged the needle in. She tried to flinch away, but I held on tight and pushed the plunger home.
Justin had just finished cutting off the right leg of the jeans, and was now cutting a slit up the left. Chelsey screamed and tried to jerk her leg away.
“Chelsey, listen to me,” I said urgently. “I need you to be as still as you can, even if what we do hurts. That pain medicine should start working soon. Do you understand?” I gazed straight into her eyes as I said it, and she gave a small nod. Tears stood on her cheeks.
Justin completed his cut, and I examined the swollen thigh more closely. It did nothing to improve my disposition. There was almost certainly a femur fracture under there. I looked up, and Justin was staring at me, waiting for instructions. I sighed inwardly. Justin is a decent technical EMT, but he’d be a catastrophe as a paramedic. He’s utterly incapable of taking the initiative.
“Get me a full set of vitals,” I told him, trying to keep an impatient edge out of my voice. “Then put a SAM splint on that arm. Make sure you check radial pulses both before and after you do it, please.”
Sliding across the bench seat towards the front of the rig, I flipped up the cushion where my ass had just been parked. The traction splint was stored in the compartment beneath it. I closed the compartment, slid back down the bench, and slipped the splint under Chelsey’s leg. She shrieked again, but somehow managed to keep still.
Chelsey moaned as I began to apply traction, but it was nothing like the noise she’d been making earlier. Good; the pain meds were working their magic. She was a slender girl, of normal height for her age, and I applied traction based on what I hoped was a reasonably good estimate of her body weight. I checked to make sure she still had a pulse in her left ankle, then mopped the sweat from my forehead with a hand towel. Justin pushed a button on the monitor, and the blood pressure cuff he’d placed on the right arm began to inflate. I noticed that Chelsey was still wearing panties.
I caught Justin’s eye. “Cut her underwear off, too. With this kind of major trauma you really do need to inspect every square centimeter of her body. Just throw a blanket over her once you make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
Justin hastened to comply as I wrapped a rubber tourniquet around the unbroken right arm, and started poking around for an IV site. I glanced over as the girl’s pubic area came into view. The clinical part of my mind was dominant at the moment, taking note of a merciful lack of injuries, aside from a contusion on the left hip that had been concealed by Chelsey’s panties. But another, less disciplined part of my brain took note of the barely-visible dusting of prepubescent hair, and the sweet puffiness of the outer lips.
I brutally shoved the thought aside. What the fuck is wrong with you?
The ambulance leaned heavily into a curve. Justin, who was standing at the moment, was hurled against the wall.
“Watch those curves!” I shouted to whoever the hell was driving. “I’m about to start a line; I need a little stability back here.”
Luckily, Chelsey had terrific veins. “There’s gonna be another poke in your arm, honey,” I informed her. “I need you to hold still. On three. One… two… three.”
Chelsey took it like a trooper, not even flinching as I slid the needle in. I advanced the catheter, flushed it in, and secured it to her arm. “Okay, Chelsey,” I said. “How’s that pain right now?” If she didn’t start speaking soon, I was going to get a lot more worried.
“G-getting worse again,” she got out in a weak, raspy voice.
“Okay, I’m going to give you some more pain medicine,” I said. “It’s called Fentanyl, and it’ll make you feel a lot better.”
“Isn’t that the stuff that kills people?” she croaked.
I tried for a reassuring smile. “Fentanyl is a really scary street drug, honey,” I informed her as I attached my syringe to her line and began slowly pushing the drug, “but the amounts I’m giving you are very safe. It’ll help with the pain, but that’s all. Okay?”
She gave me a little smile, and my heart melted. “Okay,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Your n-name is Nettie, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” I said, detaching my syringe from the line. I glanced up at the monitor, which had just finished taking a second blood pressure. It was lower than the first, enough so to make me a bit nervous. She hadn’t lost all that much blood from the head wound, so that meant there had to be some internal hemorrhaging going on. I briefly debated my options, decided they were all bad, and resolved to simply keep an eye on it until we got to the hospital. The rig was slowing, and I glanced out the side window. Were we already pulling into Johnstown?
“I need to call in a report to the hospital,” I told Justin. “See if you can get a second line. You’ll have to put it in the same arm; we can’t use the broken one.” Justin nodded and began rummaging in the IV kit.
“Nettie?” Chelsey was tugging on my sleeve with her good arm.
“What is it, honey?”
“I didn’t have my seat belt on. It was really stupid, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about that now.”
“I only took it off for a minute. Mom asked me to reach in the back seat and get her a pack of cigarettes.”
Jesus Christ, this just gets better and better.
“Nettie, am I going to be okay?” Her voice trailed off into a sob.
“They’ll take good care of you at the hospital,” I said. “We’re almost there. Try to rest… I have to call ahead and tell them what’s going on.”
“Nettie– can you hold my hand while you do that?”
I gripped the child’s hand, taking care to avoid the cuts and scrapes along the back of it. Reaching up to the mounted radio with the other, I switched channels and called the hospital.
***
That evening I lay sprawled on the couch, wearing nothing but a bathrobe I hadn’t bothered to tie shut, with the stereo cranked as loud as apartment living will allow. Mine is the generation of tiny earbuds, crappy desktop speakers, and streaming in compressed formats, but fuck that. I know high-end audio is mostly a male hobby, but it’s hardly the only quirk that separates me from other women. My audio system takes up an entire wall of my living room, and is worth more than my car.
And I hate bubblegum pop. Hate, hate, hate it. I’m a metalhead through and through. The soundtrack for this particular evening was provided by Iron Maiden. “Run to the Hills!” screamed Bruce Dickinson. Good plan, I thought, wondering for the millionth time what kept me tethered to this little slice of nowhere. Bronning is a dying agricultural town, with a population of 963 if one includes dogs, cats, chickens, and goats. Over 50% of the population is above the age of forty-five, and with the county using these little outlying towns as a sort of rural section eight, a depressingly large percentage of the under-forty population is on meth.
But, you know– it’s home. I grew up here, and small-town inertia keeps me hanging on somehow. I could move the thirty miles to Johnstown and live where I work instead of commuting forty minutes one way, or simply ditch Franklin County altogether. There’s a national shortage of medics; I could walk into a job at a nice, big, vibrant city and just start over. Yet here I sit.
I haven’t really described myself. I’m twenty-six, slender, and quite tall for a woman, coming in at just over six feet. I have black hair that I wear long– almost down to my ass– and I wear glasses with orange plastic frames. I like orange; I feel like it does a certain thing with the deep black of my hair.
I’ve been in EMS for my entire adult life. I took an EMT course while still in high school, and celebrated my eighteenth birthday by taking and passing the national registry test. I joined my hometown volunteer ambulance squad the next day. Four months later, I got a job at Thormleton ambulance in Johnstown, and started paramedic school. A year after graduating, I got my critical care certification, thinking I might like to become a flight medic. But I never did, because that would have required me to move. Like I said, something I can’t define keeps me hanging onto home.
The record I was listening to ended, and I got up to put on another. Blind Guardian this time. Before settling back onto the couch, I poured myself a glass of bourbon.
I know damn well I drink too much. I’ve been trying to cut back, but it’s tough. I don’t need a shrink to tell me that I’m dealing with emotional trauma stemming from life with a domineering bitch of a mother, and spending weekends with a distant, disinterested father. My job doesn’t always help. Badly injured children aren’t something one deals with every day, but when it does happen you can take it to the bank that little Nettie is going to polish off the day with a nightcap. Or two. Or six.
“Imaginations from the other side,” Hansi Kursch bellowed through my speakers. Where the fuck do I find the other side? I wondered. I sipped at my bourbon, willing myself to refrain from tossing it back and immediately going for another. Images of that poor, damaged child filled my head, along with an incandescent rage at the mother who had caused her suffering. I tried to block out the images of the injuries, focusing my mind instead on her sweet, cherubic, slightly freckled face.
But that wasn’t so easy, either. I have a problem, you see, one much bigger than childhood emotional trauma, or the stresses of emergency service. I’m bisexual, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that I’m excited most of all by females who are, shall we say, a wee bit on the young side. Or a large bit. Okay, fine– I get hot thinking about girls on the cusp of, or just barely into, puberty. I’ve never acted on my desires, and with discipline I can often avoid even thinking about them, but in moments of weakness my fantasies are dominated by images of myself naked and in bed with sweet young girls, performing deliciously salacious acts. Like I said, it’s a problem.
The bourbon was starting to mellow me, and images of Chelsey Milne’s sweet face and dirty blonde hair were kindling the first stirrings of excitement in my loins. And then, all unbidden, the image of her lovely, exposed vulva popped into my head. I closed my eyes, and my imagination did indeed begin to take me to the other side. I envisioned my fingers stroking the wispy down coating her smooth, still-childlike lips, imagined the softness of her skin; the moisture of excitement coating my fingertips. My own excitement was building, and I knew from long experience that if I reached down to touch my womanly center, I would find plenty of wetness there.
Stop it, damn you. By then I was thoroughly aroused. Masturbation was, at this point, inevitable. But dammit, the time had come to pick a different fantasy. Under these circumstances, I avoid concentrating on women. If I start thinking about pussy, my thoughts will inevitably turn to the sexes of underage girls, bald or with the lightest coating of down. So when my incipient pedophilia begins to manifest itself, I deliberately and forcefully turn my fantasies to men.
As I slid a hand down my belly and through the soft curls covering my pubis, I conjured images of a lean, youthful male face framed by shoulder-length chestnut hair. As I teased my slit and the first wave of pleasure engulfed me, I envisaged another hand– a small hand, attached to a willowy child’s arm, with a young girl’s face inches from mine. “Bright Eyes, burning like fire,” the recorded voice was crooning, as Chelsey Milne’s bright eyes burned holes in me through the window of my imagination. Goddamn it.
I tried again, but this time I was too distracted, too at war with myself for my fingers to conjure any response. My body was aching for release in every nerve ending, but at this rate I could go for hours and not get anywhere within shouting distance of a climax.
It was time for desperation tactics. I put down my whiskey and called the man with the lean face and the shoulder-length chestnut hair. Ninety minutes later, I was drifting off in Terrance Wilder’s bed.
Terry showed up out of nowhere four years ago, and soon came to refer to himself as the Conquistador of Jenkins Manor. The Jenkins practically founded the shining metropolis of Bronning (population 963 at the last Minnesota state census) with their bare hands, and the palatial home they built for the original patriarch has been in their family since the 1880s. If the old-timers are to be believed, children have been known to get lost in the cavernous old house trying to find their bedrooms.
The sale of the place came as a bit of a shock to the drugstore gossips, but to have a successful author with money to burn take possession was an even bigger surprise. People like that have been known to move to the country, but they’ll normally pick a nice resort town with good fishing and some summer nightlife. He didn’t even have family in the area, so far as anyone could determine. Nobody could quite figure out what he was doing in Bronning. I’ve been sleeping with him off and on for over three years, and I still can’t.
Folks liked him, though. Terry has a way with people, and it didn’t hurt that he immediately immersed himself in community service. He and his kids put in time at the food shelf once a week, could always be counted on for participation (to say nothing of a generous donation) at fundraisers, and around the end of his first year in town, he joined the ambulance squad.
You see, Bronning has an all-volunteer ambulance service. I’m the only paramedic on the squad, so most of the time a crew is made up of two EMTs. That’s what we call a Basic Life Support crew, or BLS for short. The paramedic level of care is Advanced Life Support, or ALS. The Bronning service is licensed and equipped for ALS, but most of the time there isn’t an ALS provider to give it. In short, it’s an ALS service if I’m there.
It’s really tough to keep a two-person volunteer crew on call 24/7 in a dying little town like Bronning. There’s never enough EMTs, and scheduling is a nightmare. Terry, after living in town for a year, learned how desperately short of personnel we were and signed up for a course. I met him when he was preparing for his skills testout. Since I’m the highest-level provider on the squad, I’m also the training officer, and I helped him practice for his skill stations. He was attractive, flirtatious, and fun, and he impressed the hell out of me with the energy he brought to what was, for him, strictly volunteer work. We got together at the station to practice his skills, and ended up in his bed that same night.
Since then we’ve had a tumultuous on and off relationship. We’ve been an official couple a few times, but never can seem to make it last very long. Part of it is that we’re so damn alike in some ways, but different in ways that get on each other’s nerves. Part of it is me; I may be bisexual, but I’m just that little bit more oriented towards women. Part of it is that regular exposure to his two oldest daughters, aged ten and twelve, brings out that wicked part of me that I fight so hard to suppress.
But, for all that, no matter what our relationship status, we always manage to remain friends, as well as occasional fuck-buddies. And on those nights when I need some dick to get my mind off of my craving for underage girls, Terry is always the first person I call. I still don’t understand what he’s doing in Bronning, or how he makes his living; I do know that he doesn’t work a regular job. He’s become a mainstay of the ambulance squad, doing over three hundred hours a month of on-call time. He’ll never be a paramedic, but he’s matured into an outstanding EMT.
None of that mattered to me that night as much as his ability to get a girl off. He excels at that, and two orgasms later I was physically sated, drifting towards sleep. But my mind wouldn’t quite shut down, and I fell into unconsciousness haunted by the image of Chelsey Milne’s girlish pussy lips.
I woke up from a nightmare. I won’t go into it… I can’t. Let’s just say that this particular nightmare and I are old companions, and it’s linked to a memory that’s too painful to bear. But it’s been almost a year since I’ve had this dream, and I’d thought I was putting it behind me. Yet there it was, back again, and I woke with a start, barely managing to choke back a scream.
I looked around wildly, and in the dim moonlight through the window a shape coalesced. I started to recoil, then my eyes came into focus. Terry lay on his side, propped up on an elbow and looking down at me. His shoulder-length chestnut hair hung carelessly to one side.
“Jesus,” I murmured, letting my head fall back to the pillow. “How long was I out?”
He caressed my cheek. “Not very long… maybe half an hour. Bad dream?”
I looked away. “No– why? Did I say anything?”
Terry’s expression turned thoughtful. “You said– I think it was that you’re going to clean my garage tomorrow. And you’ll do it naked.” Then he grinned. “Naw, just a little shifting and mumbling. It only lasted a few seconds before you woke up.”
“Must be the cocaine messing up my sleep,” I murmured, rubbing my eyes.
Terry snorted derisively. “As if you could score decent coke out here in the land that time forgot. Be honest… you’re on meth.”
I smiled, but it dwindled into a deep sigh. “You might be surprised. There’s a fresh batch of heroin floating around Johnstown.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. There’ve been three calls for heroin OD in the past five days; Shannon at work transported one this afternoon. If it goes the way it usually does, we’ll be busy with it for two or three weeks, and then we’ll get another week or so of withdrawal symptoms. Some of it might trickle out this way… it’s hard to say.”
Terry pursed his lips. “You ought to give the squad a refresher on opioid overdose,” he observed.
I rolled my eyes. “What for? If you’re running BLS, the only tool you have is nasal Narcan. If you’re running ALS, it means I’m there and it’s my problem anyway.”
“Sure, but it wouldn’t hurt to remind people what they ought to be looking for. Stacy, for instance — I had to stop the dumb twit from giving the nose spice to a guy with dilated pupils last week.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Jesus. Was that the meth overdose over at Hillcrest?”
“That, my dear, is in fact the incident in question.”
“Do you call her a dumb twit in bed?” I asked with a sweet little smile.
Terry lay his head back against the pillow, closed his eyes, then snickered. “Come on, Nettie– are you accusing me of compromising a married woman?”
I laid a hand on his arm. “You do get that the whole ambulance squad knows about it, right? You’re just lucky nobody likes her husband.”
Terry shrugged. “I should have guessed. Whatever. Being fun to touch doesn’t make her any less of a twit.”
“So what do you say about me when you’re in bed with her?” I tried to keep my tone serious, and failed.
“That you’re the best piece of ass in the Great Northern Pine Forest, of course. I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
I slapped him playfully.
Terry laced both hands behind his head. “You missed one hell of a day here in town.”
I nodded. “I imagine there’s a lot of concern about Chelsey and Lisa Milne.”
“Well, about Chelsey, anyway. The fact that she’s in ICU and her fat-ass drug addict mother only sustained minor injuries is eloquent proof that there’s no justice in the world. That being said, the rumor mill has it that you’re the medic who hauled Chelsey in. True story?”
“You know damn well it is,” I said tartly.
Terry grinned that rakish, go-to-hell grin that I found by turns so endearing and annoying. “Guess I do. Think she’s going to make it?”
“Probably. There was some hemodynamic instability that I think was secondary to an internal bleed somewhere, but since she’s still alive I have to think they’ve got a handle on it by now. But it’ll be a long road to a full recovery. And not to change the subject, but what was the scoop with that train wreck here in the service area last night? I heard them page out a mutual aid from Melville. Could we seriously not get a crew for the second truck?”
Terry snorted. “We couldn’t even get half a crew for it. The on-call crew took the A rig out, but not a single person was available to take the B rig. If we could’ve just got one EMT, they could have had a first responder drive.”
“So why didn’t you go? Were you not in town?”
“Bad luck,” he replied. “Halee and Naomi were at a slumber party last night, and I can hardly leave Dawn and Maya home alone while I run out on a call.”
I nodded. At ages eight and six respectively, Terry’s two youngest daughters weren’t old enough to be home by themselves.
“You know,” I told him, “if you called my mom in a situation like that, she’d drop what she was doing to run over and watch your kids for you. She’s two blocks away.”
“At four AM?”
“You don’t know my mom very well.”
“That’s because she hates me.”
“So stop having sex with her daughter, you perv.”
We both laughed. I snuggled up close, and he put his arm around me. I must have been more exhausted than I realized, because that’s the last thing I remember before I awoke in his bed the next morning.
On to Chapter Two!