Hilary Fields - Bliss

“Bliss, what’s the matter?” Asher rose to his feet in a hurry, but Sera waved him away.

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Asher,” she warned. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough—” be began.

“You don’t know enough, Asher. You don’t know the first thing about me. If you did, you wouldn’t be kissing me right now.” She drew in a sharp breath and wiped her lips, as if she could erase the feel of him so easily. “Truth is, Ash, I’ve been a first-class mess for most of my life, and I’m only just starting to sort myself out now. I’m an alcoholic; a failure in my career. Back in New York, my very name is a joke in some circles.” Sera’s voice broke, and tears began to fall in hot streams down her cheeks. “I’m glad you’re getting over whatever it was that hurt you, Asher. You deserve all those things that you want—that you need from a woman. Most of all, you deserve happiness. You’re an amazing man. But I’m not an amazing woman—not yet. I’m still trying to get my shit straightened out, and I’m so far from where I want to be that some days I can’t even see the goalposts. And there are some things”— like my problems in the bedroom —“that I’m probably never going to overcome. You won’t find what you need with me, much as I wish I were all those things you think you see right now. I wouldn’t bring you happiness, Asher—I’d only fail you, and humiliate myself in the process. So let’s just nip this thing in the bud, okay?”

Sera didn’t wait to see whether Asher agreed. She ran for her truck and hauled ass out of there, leaving a trail of smashed lavender and sage in her wake.

And one very disappointed Israeli.

You two should fuck,” Pauline announced.

For emphasis, she stuck her spade in the pile of freshly turned earth she was fertilizing, propped her elbow on the handle, and gazed at her niece and her guest with a beatific smile that encompassed them both.

“Whaaaaat?” Sera squealed. Oh no, you did not just say that out loud… right there in front of Asher! She cringed behind the flower bed she was, with no great conviction, attempting to weed.

“You know. Bone. Bang. Bump uglies. Make the beast with two backs. Shag each other silly. That whole thing.” Pauline waved the spade back and forth between Sera and Asher, then made an obscene, impossible-to-mistake finger gesture.

Serafina didn’t know whether to throw up or die. Oh, my God. A third option—blushing herself into a coma—appeared to be her body’s instinctive answer to the conundrum.

She’d begged Pauline not to ask Asher over. Barely two days had passed since their disastrous dinner at his house… two days during which she’d dodged his calls and stayed away from the placita, claiming she had to meet with restaurant suppliers (which was true) and didn’t have time to drop by the store (which was not). She wasn’t ready to deal with her landlord yet—if she ever would be after his romantic revelation and her cowardly absconding act.

Pauline, however, wasn’t concerned with Sera’s finer feelings, as today’s awkward get-together proved. She’d asked some rather pointed questions of her niece when Sera had arrived home the other night, tear-streaked and still visibly trembling. Sera, having no intention of telling her aunt what had happened, had merely assured her that Asher had done nothing wrong, and that Pauline could put away the ball-skinning knife. When Sera proved stubborn in her silence, Pauline had turned crafty, inviting the Israeli over to help bed down her garden for winter. Never mind that Hortencia had volunteered for the job (she was no slouch with a spade, and had been tending her own gardens for fifty years); no one would do for Pauline’s little patch of earth but her favorite foliage whisperer.

Sera didn’t know what to make of Asher’s apparent eagerness to take up that invitation. He’d arrived mere hours after Pauline’s call, with mulch and gardening tools in the back of his meticulously maintained Land Rover. Sera had planned to invent an errand and escape before he got there, but Pauline had foiled her—she’d told her niece Asher was coming at two, but asked Asher to show up at one.

So now the three of them were gathered in the little adobe-walled garden behind Pauline’s house; Sera wondering if she could successfully disappear down a gopher hole, Asher looking impossibly manly with a rake in one hand and his leather hat shading his eyes as he surveyed the little plot of land, and Pauline sitting on a stump, wearing a set of Hortencia’s knitted leg warmers (and a pair of arm warmers as well) along with her faded “Professors Do It in the Classroom” sweatshirt and a much-patched calf-length denim skirt. It was a bit of a Mexican standoff, Sera thought—Asher at one point of the triangle, Sera and Pauline staking out the other two, as if none of them quite trusted what the others might get up to.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. Pauline could be trusted to thoroughly embarrass her niece.

Sera shot her aunt a fulminating glare. “Aunt Pauline, I swear I will never forgive you if you don’t shut your trap,” she growled. “I’m really sorry, Ash,” she muttered, barely able to look at him where he stood beside a pile of pungent compost, clad in ancient jeans and a soft heather-green V-neck that complemented his eyes absurdly well.

But Asher seemed okay with it. “It’s all right, Bliss.” He turned to her aunt. “Miss Pauline,” he said gently, “I think that’s something the two of us can sort out on our own. We’re grown-ups. And besides, I think your niece appreciates a bit of delicacy in these matters, if I’m not mistaken.”

My hero.

Sera shot him the most grateful look of her life. Still, her blush, if anything, only intensified… because he hadn’t denied the possibility of them “bumping uglies.” But incredible as it was that Asher really, sincerely seemed interested in her, she couldn’t risk their budding friendship—or her delicate, still-healing self-esteem—on a fling that was destined to end badly. Facing him day after day at the placita once he learned how lacking she was as a woman… Sera shuddered at the thought. Oh, Ash. Don’t you understand, I’m no good for you? She thought she’d made that sad fact abundantly clear the other night. How many shrubs must a girl slay before a guy gets the hint? She still owed him a lavender bush. Now, if she could only convince her aunt to let it alone, she could go be miserable and unfulfilled in peace.

“Yes, please, Aunt Pauline,” she gritted out. “A modicum of delicacy would be nice.”

“Harrumph,” Pauline harrumphed. “Well, I’m just concerned for your health. It’s not good for you to go as long as you have without a nice, thorough climax, kiddo. And I suspect it’s been awhile for you, too, handsome.” She jerked her head toward Asher, who shifted his weight and tried to look as though people commented on his climactic status every day.

Unexpected tears flooded Serafina’s eyes. Maybe it was her aunt’s well-intentioned humiliation, or perhaps it was the certainty that she’d never know what it was like to “shag” a guy like Asher senseless, but suddenly she couldn’t stand to stay in that garden another second. “Excuse me,” she said in a small, choked voice, rising from the flower bed and bolting for the house.

Asher caught up to her in the kitchen. Sera was scrubbing blindly at the dirt under her nails, shoulders stiff, water running full blast. But she sensed him coming anyway. Lately, she’d had Asher-radar so acute she felt like she could pinpoint his location with GPS accuracy, any time of the day.