Page 10 of Tempted at Midnight

“Didja get lucky last night, Miss Lillian?” Jimmy smirked as I put on my safety glasses and headed onto the floor.

“Yeah Jimmy, I fucked him right in the middle of the parking lot at LJ’s, then I dry humped him in a booth while we were waitin’ for our beers.”

Even behind his safety glasses I could see his eyes widen comically. “Really?”

I smacked him on the back of the head. “No, you idiot. I swear your mama dropped you on your head too many times.”

“What did you two do then, young lady?”

I hadn’t even heard Leo come up behind me. I smirked at his calling me ‘young lady’ given that I was firmly in my forties.

“We had a drink and talked while we shared a basket of fries, then we both went home to our kids.”

“You gonna see him again?” This was from George.

“We have a date planned for next Saturday night, are you nosy old ladies happy?” They all nodded. “Great, then let’s get to work.”

At some point during my time at Thomas Industries I’d become the de facto den mother of this crew, and their sudden interest in my personal life was unsettling. Usually, I was the one asking them questions and giving advice. Then again, I didn’t usually have a personal life for them to be interested in.

Like most single mothers that I knew, I spent all of my time working to support my kids, driving them around, and trying hard to raise them to be upstanding citizens instead of sociopaths. I think I was doing a pretty good job, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized my friend Becky was right. Now that my boys were getting a little older, I needed to find some time for myself.

I deserved it.

Martin

I tried to be cool, but I gave up and texted Lillian the second I got home from the bar. We fell into a pattern. She was radio silent during her working hours, and she refused to respond to texts until I was off work too.

My girl had strong opinions about work time being for work, not personal stuff, and I had to respect that. Plus, it wasn’t like she could text me from the factory floor anyway.

Once I confirmed that I was off work for the day, we generally texted a couple of times throughout the evening. Then when the kids were in bed, we’d chat back and forth for hours. It was fun, not as much fun as seeing her in person of course, but it also gave us a way to get to know each other a little better. Our relationship had started with the physical, but I already knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, whether she realized it yet or not.

By the time our date night came, I was a jumble of nerves. We’d agreed to meet for an early dinner in a good-sized town midway between our houses. I suggested a nice restaurant I’d been to a few times for business, but Lillian vetoed it once she saw their website.

“I’m not a fancy girl,” she texted. “Can’t we go somewhere where I don’t have to dress up? Despite New Year’s Eve, that’s not really me.”

“I was trying to impress you,” I texted back.

“Don’t be an asshole and you’ll already be better than most of the guys I dated.”

It was a low bar.

We settled on a brew pub that was supposed to have pretty good food in addition to a wide variety of microbrews. Lillian texted that she was running late so I got a table and waited for her inside. She came rushing in, looking the slightest bit harried. She’d worn her hair down today, falling in a curtain down her shoulders. She didn’t appear to be wearing make-up other than mascara and lip gloss, but then again, she certainly didn’t need it. Her natural beauty was more than enough.

Lillian was wearing dark jeans that hugged her long, muscled legs, black ankle boots with a low heel, and a cute white top with a white tank beneath it.

I pulled her into a hug, sniffing the scent of her shampoo like some kind of a weirdo, and whispered, “I want to fuck you right here.”

She pulled back with a laugh. “You’re funny.”

If she only knew.

We ordered a flight of beer samples, and then a second one as we talked, ate burgers, and shared an enormous basket of tater tots. Lillian was an equal opportunity potato fan.

“This is kind of weird,” she confessed midway through the meal. “I’m not a person who goes on dates like this.”

I nodded. “Dating is hard with kids. I haven’t done a lot of it, to be honest.”

“My boys seemed confused when I told them I had a date. It was like I was speaking a foreign language.”