Something Unexpected by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 12
Beck
“WE SHOULD PROBABLY set some ground rules before I get drunk.” Nora hiccupped and covered her mouth.
I arched a brow. “Before?”
She shrugged. “Whatever. Drunker? Is that a word? It sounds funny. Druuunkerrrrrrr. Drunk-her. Wait, if you drink more after you’re already drunk, are you drunk-him?”
I chuckled. Nora and I had found a local bar, though it wasn’t a hole-in-the-wall like she’d requested. Actually, there weren’t even any walls. About a mile down the road from where we’d stopped, there had been a painted wooden sign for a beach bar. I followed it down a bumpy dirt road until we arrived at a place that was little more than a metal awning covering a local guy with a dozen bottles of liquor. He had a bunch of old beach chairs set up on the sand and played music from what looked like a thirty-year-old boombox. It was perfect. I’d had one drink to Nora’s two, and since she was half the size of me, she was feeling no pain right about now.
“What rules did you want to set, Drunker?”
She hiccupped again and waved her pointer in my face. “No hanky panky. Sometimes when I get tipsy, I get horny.”
“I thought we’d already established that wasn’t my style. I didn’t take you up on your invitation the night we met because I thought you’d had too much to drink. And I didn’t know you were my grandmother’s partner in crime back then.”
Nora sucked her Bahama Mama through a straw. “It’s not you I’m worried about.”
“Are you saying you don’t think you can control yourself around me, Eleanor?”
She frowned. “Eleanor. How could he not remember a child named Eleanor?”
“It’s his loss, sweetheart.”
“Thank you for saying that.” She looked out to the ocean. “I don’t understand how something could feel like it was missing when I had so much love in my life from William.”
“I think it’s probably normal to be curious, to want to know who you came from.”
I didn’t say it, but I was curious to know where she’d come from too. For some fucked-up reason, I wanted to meet the stepfather she spoke so highly of. That wasn’t normal for me. Ever since my divorce, if I went out with a woman a few times and she mentioned meeting her parents, I ran for the hills. Yet I was the one thinking it now.
Nora shook her head. “I didn’t tell him. William, I mean. He doesn’t know I joined 23andMe and found my father—I mean, my sperm donor. I wouldn’t want him to feel like he wasn’t enough. Because he was. He was such a good dad.”
“Then he doesn’t have to know. But it sounds like he’s the type of person who would understand, anyway.”
She sighed. “Do you get to spend a lot of time with your daughter?”
“Her mother and I split custody. So Maddie stays with me three nights one week and four the next.”
“Wow. So you do baths and dinner and all that domestic stuff?”
“I have a sitter who picks her up from school in the afternoon, and she also handles dinner prep most weeknights. But I cook when I have Maddie on the weekends.”
Nora smiled. “Tell me about her. Does she take dance classes and wear a tutu? Have her father’s attitude?”
“Maddie marches to the beat of her own drum. She’s not into dance as much as earning Girl Scout badges.”
“Oh, she’s a Girl Scout?”
I shook my head. “Nope. She has no interest in joining Brownies or Girl Scouts, but she’s obsessed with earning badges. About a year ago, she watched a movie where the little girl was a Girl Scout trying to earn a wilderness badge. The next week, she came home from school with a book of all the badges from the library. There are a hundred and thirty-five of those damn things, you know. My daughter is intent on earning every single one. Louise has even indulged her with a full set of all the badges. I’m not sure where she got them. I wouldn’t put it past her to have mugged a scout leader to make Maddie happy. But I’d like to kill her for not removing the bugling badge. To earn it, you have to be able to play ten bugle calls. Taps is pretty painful when performed by a six-year-old.”
Nora covered her mouth. “Oh my God. That’s hysterical. So who decides if she’s earned the badges if she’s not actually in Scouts?”
‘That would be me.”
“How many has she earned so far?”
“I think we’re up to seventeen. In the fall, we’ll go camping so she can earn her wilderness badge. I bought blow-up mattresses, but I’ve been told we have to sleep in sleeping bags on the ground. I’m not looking forward to that part.”
Nora’s eyes warmed. “You’re like William—a big, tough guy on the outside, but the inside is filled with mush.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how I’d failed her on the invention badge.”
“Why did you fail her?”
“She invented these inserts that go in your shoes to keep your feet warm.”
Nora’s forehead wrinkled. “You mean like socks?”
I deadpanned. “Exactly. Socks.”
We laughed, and I shook my head. “I guess I should be glad she eased up on her other hobby, the one she had before earning Girl Scout badges.”
“What was the other hobby?”
“Searching real estate listings.”
“Like, regular house listings?”
“Yep. She would spend hours looking through the listings with photos. Sometimes she’d find features we don’t have at home and get upset when I wouldn’t add them to our place.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for one, she wanted me to add a dog-washing station.”
“That could be useful at least.”
“We don’t have a dog.”
Nora laughed. “Oh my God.”
“Tell me about it. Another time she asked me to add a urinal. Not sure what she was going to do with that.”
“Does Maddie look like you?”
“You tell me…” I pulled up a selfie she’d taken last week and turned the phone screen to Nora.
“Oh my gosh.” She took my phone from my hand. “Look at all that blond curly hair.”
“She gets that from her mother.”
“But she has your aquamarine eyes though. And your nice full lips. She’s beautiful, Beck.”
“Thanks. She keeps me on my toes.”
“I bet.” She handed me back my phone. “Maddie sounds pretty awesome. And for the record, her dad sounds pretty great, too.” Nora held up her drink, which was three-quarters of the way gone, and made a toast. “To good dads.”
I smiled. “And to the little girls who made us better men.”
Nora finished off that drink and another. After that, she started to slur her words.
“What do you say we go back to the hotel?” I asked.
She leaned close. “You want to come back to my room?”
I groaned and stood. “Yes, I do. But no, I won’t. I think you’ve had enough of asshole men for one day.”
She held out her hand. “Help me up?”
I did, and when she stood, she fell forward and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her gorgeous tits pushed up against me. “How about if I just get you off?” she whispered. “Then you won’t be taking advantage of me.”
In a weaker moment, I might’ve accepted that logic. But Nora was pretty shitfaced. “I would like nothing more, but I’m going to have to take a rain check.”
Her response was to lick a line from the bottom of my neck up to my ear. I groaned again. “Definitely gotta get you somewhere safe. Like behind a steel door.”
Since I’d been drinking too, I asked the guy who ran the makeshift bar if it was alright to leave the rental car here until tomorrow morning, and if he could call a taxi. He promptly pulled a wooden sign that read Be back in five minutes from his backpack and asked us to follow him. Then he drove us to the hotel for eight bucks.
I kept one arm wrapped around Nora’s waist as we walked through the lobby and rode the elevator up to her room. It took her three tries to swipe her room key, but she managed to open the door.
I waited in the doorway to make sure she’d be okay.
“Will you stay until I fall asleep?” she said. “I won’t attack you, I promise.”
Being in a room with not much more than a bed and this gorgeous woman wasn’t a smart idea. But she wobbled trying to pull off one of her sandals, and I wasn’t so sure I should leave her either. So I let the door close behind me.
Nora sat down on the bed and lifted one leg. “Will you take this one off for me?”
I swallowed, but kneeled down at the foot of the bed and unbuckled the sandal. She dug her fingers into my hair and started to massage my scalp. It felt good, and I couldn’t help but think how I’d like her to yank on my hair as I buried my face between her legs. Finding myself leaning closer to that area, I quickly pulled off the shoe and stood.
“You think you’ll be okay? I really need to go.”
She pouted. “Why?”
“Because apparently I’m not as much of a gentleman as I like to think I am.”
“Just let me get changed, and you can tuck me in and go.”
Nora walked a crooked line to the bathroom and disappeared inside for a few minutes. She came out wearing only a V-neck LA Dodgers T-shirt, with a hem that barely covered her ass. And a blind man couldn’t have missed that she’d taken off her bra.
I took a few steps back as she crossed the room and climbed into bed. She laid on her side with her hands tucked under her cheek and shut her eyes. “You can tuck me in now.”
I shook my head and grumbled under my breath. Nevertheless, I walked to the bed, pulled up the covers, and kissed her forehead. “The Dodgers suck, by the way.”
“They’re the best team in baseball.”
“That would be the Yankees, sweetheart.”
A goofy smile spread across her face. “Wanna fight about it?”
“Not a chance.” I chuckled. “Goodnight, Nora.”
“Goodnight, Beck. I owe you one.”
“I doubt you’ll ever find me drunk enough that I need to be tucked in.”
She smiled. “I didn’t mean I owed you a tuck-in. I meant I owed you a blowjob.”
By the time I got to the door, I could hear the soft purr of her snore. So Nora didn’t hear the last thing I said.
“I plan to collect, sweetheart. Really soon.”
