Page 76 of You've Got Hate Mail
But Cricket—the woman who’s invaded my dreams since I carried her out of the fermentation building, with her dark hair streaked with honey highlights, those big doe eyes that I still remember staring at me in terror the first day we met, the lush mouth, the fantastic breasts—the woman whose nipples are suddenly poking out beneath her wet white T-shirt—that woman?
She does exactly what I’ve come to expect from her, and she thrusts her fists in the air, laughing. “Yes!You got it, Lav! You gotallof them! We’re saved!”
Giving me one more example of why I have to move.
Plenty of women have come and gone who have played with my daughter here. Doted on her. Showered her with kindness and love. Done her hair and her nails and arts and crafts with her. The way her mom would’ve if she’d lived.
But none of them have played with her likethis. Or so thoroughly distracted her from remembering to speak in meows.
And not one has snuck into my dreams.
Naked.
Writhing.
Gasping my name.
Making me bolt awake as I come in my bedsheets.
My libido has awakened after a long, long slumber, and I don’t like it.
Especially when it’s Cricket.
And it’s not one of those dreams where you know it’s someone but they look like someone else.
This is Cricket.
Exactly as she looks here.
But without clothes.
And they always happen five minutes before she knocks on the door to come sit with Lav and Fluffy while I shower.
I hope to fuck she can’t tell I’m washing my sheets every damn day.
This place is chaos as it is, and I have enough on my plate already.
I don’t need to addtry out a fling for the first time in almost a decadeto my to-do list.
I don’t date.
Period.
My marriage?
That was one more thing that everyone thinks I was fantastic at.
Fuck, maybe I was.
And while I don’t regret it—I’m glad I got to give Ava the best life I could give her—it wasn’t fulfilling on my end.
And here I go, feeling like a dick again for acknowledging my reality.
That Ava and I weren’t actually well-suited for each other.
“Tell me you didn’t find structural damage in the events center,” Mabel says beside me.
I jolt out of my own head and look down at her. “No. It’s fine.”
