A Midsummer Night's Romp Read Free

patted Elliott on the back. “Have fun, and stay safe.”
    â€œLikewise,” Elliott said, turning a smile on his wife. “Don’t call unless something dire happens. I fully intend to give Alice the honeymoon she deserves.”
    â€œI’m sure nothing more exciting will happen beyond finding some Roman ruins beneath the pasture,” Gunner predicted, an excellent example of why he would never be called psychic in any understanding of the word.

Chapter 2
    â€œI think my best memory of you is when we were in college and you were telling me a funny anecdote that ended with the punch line ‘I said, I have gas!’ and right at the moment you were telling that part, the office door opened and out walked Professor Levi—you remember him?—
and
the dean of students,
and
the head of Romance languages.”
    â€œOh, lord. Yes, I remember both Dr. Levi and that day,” I said into the phone.
    â€œAnd you were so mortified—” Laughter choked off Sandy’s voice.
    â€œYou don’t have to continue. We both know what happened.”
    â€œLorina, you were so mortified that when you scurried away, you pooted with every step.”
    The phone tucked under my chin, I rested my head on my hands, not with remembered shame of that day sometwelve years in the past but because Sandy was laughing so hard she was snorting. It had been months since she’d laughed, and I just wanted it to go on and on. Why did it have to happen now, when she was calling me just before boarding her flight? “We had a lot of laughs together that summer, my intestinal woes aside.”
    â€œWe sure did. You were the best roommate I ever had.”
    â€œSilly woman. You haven’t had any roomies other than me. In fact, if you add up the four years we were together in college, and then the eight years we’ve shared an apartment after that, I think we’re going to have our twelfth anniversary in October.”
    â€œGood lord, so we are.” There was a thoughtful pause. “That’s longer than a lot of marriages!”
    â€œI told you that we should have been gay. We’d have been an awesome lesbian couple, and we could have had kids by now,” I said, a bittersweet nostalgia tinting my voice. “Although you’d probably have been the wife in the relationship, since I’m built like a brick oven.”
    â€œOh, you are not. You’re statuesque and tall and everything that petite people like me are not. I envy your ability to walk into a room and make people take notice.”
    â€œIt’s not so much take notice as it is stare and wonder who the Amazon is. No, no, don’t go on trying to make me feel better—I’m resigned to the fact that I’m almost six feet tall, and chunky. That’s beside the point, which is that we’d have made an awesome lesbian couple.”
    â€œYes, darn us and our pesky love of men.” She was laughing again, which made my spirits rise. “Although it doesn’t seem to have done either of us any good. I ended up with a man who ruined my life, and you—” She stopped abruptly.
    â€œI had exactly one relationship in that time, and it was with a man who was just as abusive as my father was,” Ifinished for her, feeling the pull of dark memories, but not allowing them to drag me under. After years of therapy, I’d finally made my peace with the fact that some men thought it was their right to tear women’s egos to shreds, but it didn’t mean I had to be a victim.
    I was most definitely
not
a victim any longer.
    â€œOh, sweetie, I didn’t mean that.”
    â€œNo, but it’s true. My romantic life has sucked. Men are just so . . . shallow. Into themselves. Looking for someone to be arm candy, or a quick roll in bed, and not anything more. Wow, I sound bitter, don’t I?”
    â€œNo, you sound like someone who simply hasn’t found Mr.