Do you really need to ask?
Red wine it is, I text back.
When it comes to Jillian, the answer is always wine. Bad day? Here’s some wine. Celebrating? Here’s some wine. Need a night to chill out and rewatch six episodes of Vampire Diaries or Supernatural? Here’s some wine.
I finish with a quick, See you soon, Jilly-Bean, already knowing the reaction she’ll have when she sees it.
Cheeks pinked. An eye roll that could reach the heavens. She claims she hates it when I call her that.
I adore seeing her blush too much to stop.
All this means is that as I strip out of my clothes, chucking my sweaty shorts and boxers toward the hamper, but not quite in, and step into the shower, turning it on full blast, I’m thinking of Jillian.
And her cheeks. Her pouty lips and full smile. I’m a pretty damn good gentleman when it comes to women, and I respect the hell out of my friendship with her. I can even temper my sexual attraction when I’m around her so I don’t make an ass out of myself or make her feel uncomfortable. I should be ashamed that I jerk off in the shower to thoughts of one of my closest friends I’ve made since moving to Charlotte three years ago.
But I don’t. I don’t feel any of that.
I only feel the blinding white-hot release slam through my spine and into my fist as I groan out my climax with Jillian’s name on my lips.
Like clockwork, thirty minutes later, I pull up to her quaint bungalow ten minutes from my own house. Armed with two bottles of wine after a quick stop at Total Wine & More, I don’t bother knocking before entering. We always unlock our doors when we know the other one is coming over. Knowing Jillian as well as I do, though, I’m betting she only did it a minute or so ago for me. She’s smart about her home security.
“Wine delivery is here!” I call out over the country music playing full blast. She’s always bopping around to what she calls bro-country. It makes my ears bleed, but it also makes her shake her ass and tits while she dances to it, so I’ve wisely kept my mouth shut over my disdain for the country twang.
“Good! I need it!”
I slide out of my leather thong sandals, kick them to the rug next to the entry door, and drop my keys and wallet on the table right next to her couch before heading back to the kitchen.
“Montepulciano or Chianti?” It took me a few times of buying American wine before Jillian confessed she only likes old-world varieties.
The first time I brought her something she specifically said she likes, she’d looked at me with a dumbfounded expression, like she couldn’t believe I remembered.
I thought I’d shown my hand then. Then I realized it’s because her ex is a bigger douche than I first thought, and he’d never paid close attention to her.
Which is fucking ridiculous. Jillian’s the easiest person to make happy.
Make her laugh. Keep her in Italian wine. Watch soccer with her and never… never fuck with her Saturday brunches with Becca. That’s it.
“Chianti will go great with dinner.”
I glance at the spread of vegetables all over her island countertop in all manner of being cleaned, sliced, chopped, and julienned.
“What are we having?”
She scoops a handful of veggies into a bowl and grabs more. “I’m trying this new Moroccan-inspired roasted vegetable and couscous. Most of it’s from my garden.”
“Awesome.” She has twelve raised garden beds out back and spends at least an hour a day keeping everything watered and weed-free. This past March I bought her an organic weed killer as a joke. Worst gift I ever gave someone, but I can still see her blinding smile and happiness, just because I thought of her and got her something useful.
Yeah. Her ex is a complete dick, although I mostly blame her family. From everything Jillian’s said, they don’t pay much attention to her, which is a damn shame. I think she’s incredible. What twenty-seven-year-old intelligent, beautiful woman grows up not being appreciated or having her own interests noticed?
I pull out her electric wine bottle opener and begin opening the wine. “What has you stressed?”
She does heavy chopping when she’s unhappy. Says using the knife calms her. A bit freaky, but as long as it’s vegetables, I’m guessing it’s a healthy way to release stress. Not that I can judge, I pummel a punching bag when I’m pissed. Same thing, I suppose.
“Nothing. I’m not stressed.”
My gaze narrows on her. She’s not looking at me. She’s always smiling at me.
I let her lie go. A glass or two of wine at dinner and she’ll open up. After I open the bottle, I slide a glass in front of her and take a stool across from her.
There’s a dance to the way Jillian cooks, and I learned long ago not to bother asking to help. She slices and dices with frenzied speeds. On the stove behind her, water boils, assumedly for the couscous.
I’m not a great cook outside being a master at the grill. Some nights, Jillian cooks at my house, a vegetarian dish for her with sides we can both eat while I grill steak or chicken outside. It’s perfectly friendly… yet intimate.
I adjust myself on the stool when she’s not looking.
Tonight’s not the first time I sit across from her, getting turned-on by her concentration. It is one of the rare times we don’t speak while she cooks.
She takes a small sip of the wine and makes a humming sound that sounds like sex.
“Hard day?”
“Not really. We’re prepping to sign a couple new football players which might have me traveling to Wisconsin this fall, but otherwise, it’s all the same pre-season prep work.”
“Tell me about it.” With training camp and a new season barreling down on me, this month of prep before everything begins is always the most grueling.
“Hard workouts?” She glances at me with a small grin which quickly fades.
“Two-a-day. They’re kicking my ass.”
Something’s going on. She might sound normal, but there’s a tenseness in her shoulders and a tightness around her lips I don’t like. And the way she’s not acting like her happy-go-lucky self? There’s no point in waiting until she has a glass or two in. “Want to stop destroying that zucchini and tell me what’s really going on?”
She drops the knife and sighs. “You know me too well.”
“I apologize. I’ll start being a self-involved dick and treat you like crap. How does that sound?”
She curls her lip and grabs her wine. “Speaking of Roman—”
“I wasn’t.” I don’t ever speak of him.
She shakes her head and tugs at the knotted mess of hair on top of her head. “It’s their wedding on the eighteenth.”
“Finally opened the invitation?”
“Becca made me on Saturday.”
“And did you light it on fire and call your parents and tell them never to speak to you again like I suggested?”
“No.” She sighs, chewing on her bottom lip. I have never, not since the first three seconds we met three years ago, seen her give me any indication she has the ability to be nervous. About anything. “We came up with a plan to get them all off my back.”
“Sounds good. What is it?”
“That I take a date with me. I just need to find someone.”