Chapter 5
"Oh, thank God you're there," Selena said in Sunshine's ear as soon as Sunshine answered the phone. "Where have you been? I've been ringing the phone off the hook all day long trying to reach you. I know you can never find the damn thing, but dang, girl... I've been so worried that I was about to head over there and see if you were okay or if this unknown guy had murdered you in your loft." Selena finally took a breath in the midst of her tirade. "Please tell me he's not still there."
Wiping off her paint-stained hands while she cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder, Sunshine smiled at Selena's concerned voice and her motherlike lecture. "No, Selena, Mr. Bodacious is gone. He had to go meet some friends."
"Well, what time did he leave?"
"A few minutes ago."
"Sunshine!"
"What?" she asked in feigned innocence.
"Oh, honey," Selena gasped, "don't tell me you spent the whole day with him playing Parcheesi or something."
Sunshine bit her lip as she remembered exactly what they had spent the day doing. It made her warm and tingly all over again. "We didn't get to the Parcheesi, but we did it on the backgammon table a couple of times. And on the couch, the kitchen counter, the floor, the coffee table, and-"
"Oh, my God, TMI-way too much information. Tell me you're joking about this."
"Nope, not a bit. I'm telling you, Selena, forget the Energizer Bunny, this guy had it all."
Selena groaned. "What were you thinking? You just met him."
"I know," Sunshine said, agreeing completely with her friend that she was a lunatic for doing something so stupid. "It's so not like me, but I couldn't help myself. It was just like that weird magnetic force that grabs me when I'm walking past the Frostbyte Cafe and makes me swerve in to get a triple scoop of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey."
That was her one major vice. Sunshine had never been able pass up Chunky Monkey.
"The power of temptation was just too much, Selena. I couldn't resist it. He was a Chunky Monkey container and all I could think was, 'Someone give me a spoon.' "
"Oh, good grief," Selena said.
"Yeah. It was weird. I was here, he was here, and then he said, 'Let's do it,' and the next thing I knew, the spoon was in my hand and I was going for it."
Selena made a disgusted noise. "Please tell me no one was using a spoon."
Sunshine smiled devilishly. "No, no spoon, but there was a whole lot of licking going on."
"Oh, oh, oh! You're killing me. Don't go there."
Sunshine laughed. "I can't stop myself. He was so hot that I feel this deep need to share his spectacular hotness with you."
Selena snorted at her. "Are you at least going to see him again?"
"No, unfortunately not. I didn't even get his last name."
"Sunshine! Girl, you are nuts."
"Yeah, I know. It was just a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing."
"Sheez, are you okay, though? He didn't hurt you or anything?"
"Oh no, not at all. It was the best day of my life. Freaky, ain't it?"
"Ah jeez, Sunny. I can't believe you did this. You've been hanging around all those weird friends of yours so much that you're picking up their bad habits. Bringing home stray men you don't even know. Next thing you know, you'll be dancing naked on tabletops... Oh wait, that was me."
Sunshine laughed. "Don't worry. It'll never happen again. You know me, I do date occasionally, but I usually spend at least a few normal, boring days with a guy before we rock the house down. Of course, no one ever rocked my house down the way this guy did. He leveled the mother to its foundations."
Selena shrieked. "I can't believe you keep telling me this."
Sunshine laughed at the tortured angst in Selena's voice as she continued to tease her. "I can't believe I spent the day in bed with this guy, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm telling you, these were the best eighteen hours of my life."
"Jeez, you didn't even know him a whole day?"
"Well, I know him now. Every last yummy inch of him. By the way, he had a lot of inches."
"Stop it, Sunny," Selena begged, her voice cracking with laughter. "I can't take any more. I don't need to know the sexual athlete of all time is running around New Orleans and I'm married to the lawyer. This is so cruel."
Sunshine laughed again. "Well, Bill is nice, in a very Bill sort of way."
"Oh gee, thanks, now you're ripping on my Bill."
"I'm sorry. You know I love Bill, but this guy was really, really great." Sunshine, dragging the heavy, psychedelic phone in her wake, crossed the kitchen toward her fridge to get some guava juice. Teasing Selena was fun, but oddly enough there was a part of her that was extremely sad Talon had left.
He really had been a lot of fun and not just in the bed, or on the floor, or on the other five thousand places where they'd had sex. He'd been fun to talk to too.
Best of all, he hadn't lost his patience with her.
She opened the fridge, then laughed again.
"What?" Selena asked.
Sunshine saw Talon's prized Snoopy Pez dispenser standing up, looking straight at her. She couldn't believe it.
So that was what he'd been doing in the fridge while she was in the shower. No wonder he had looked uncomfortable when she caught him.
How adorable.
"Awww, he left me his Snoopy Pez dispenser on top of the soy cheese."
"What?" Selena asked.
"Nothing," Sunshine said, taking the cold plastic toy into her hand. "It's an inside joke."
"Oh, don't tell me you did something with the cheese."
"No, we just ate it. Jeez, Selena, get your mind out of the gutter. Not everything has to do with sex."
"Well, with the two of you it does. The basis of your whole entire relationship seems to be nothing but sex... Oh wait, it's only been eighteen hours since you met him. Does that qualify as a relationship?"
"Believe me, the way he does sex, it counts. Besides, he did leave me his Pez dispenser."
"Ooo," Selena teased, "he's bodacious and generous. What a guy."
"Hey now, be fair to my bodacious biker. It's a valuable Pez dispenser. A 1960-something collector's item."
"Yeah, but did he leave you his phone number?"
"Well no, but he did put Snoopy on the top shelf so I would find it."
"Enough said. Case closed. You're still riding the loser train when Snoopy becomes something valuable."
"Okay, fine, Selena, you're bringing me down from my love fest and I'm losing my afterglow. It's been ten months since I last slept with a guy and it'll probably be forever and a day before another one who's not gay darkens my doorstep, so let me go back to work where I can bask in the after-greatness of my afternoon."
"Okay, sweetie. I'll call you later. I was just concerned. You go back to work and I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay, thanks. Bye."
Sunshine hung up the phone and looked down at the Snoopy in her hand. She laughed.
Talon might not be perfect, he might even occasionally screw up and get run down by a Mardi Gras float, but he had been a great guy, and great guys were hard to come by in this day and age.
It was a pity she'd never see him again. But then, she wasn't the kind of woman to mope over what could have been. She was an artist with a good career that she had worked very hard for.
A serious relationship with someone wasn't something she was looking for right now.
She liked living alone. Loved having the freedom to just pick up and go whenever and wherever she wanted to. Her brief marriage in her early twenties had schooled her well on what a man expected from a wife.