“And now?” I ask.

She steps forward. There’s honking somewhere. Laughter. The smell of fried bread.

“I don’t think this is casual,” Jourdan whispers.

I shake my head. “Good.”

I have the best burger I’ve had in my life. Jourdan and I share a basket of fries and down bottles of water.

“It’s getting late for me,” I tell her.

“Me, too,” she says.

“You don’t have to lie to protect my old lady ego,” I laugh, and she laughs with me.

“I’m not lying. Well, not really. I’m on the opening shift tomorrow,” she says. “I really should turn in early tonight. How are you getting home?”

“I was going to call a car,” I say, fumbling in my purse for my phone. “You?”

It’s still early, but I don’t like the idea of her on the bus any more than Darren did, but I promised him that I wouldn’t bring it up. We refuse to make the same mistake twice.

“Same,” she says, pulling her phone from her back pocket. “My roommate gave me a code for half-off rides on weekdays.”

I smile at her as if I’m not relieved. And then we duck our heads and call our cars.

Salim will be here in six minutes, the app tells me.

There’s something about that ETA that lights a fire in my chest. I look up at Jourdan, waiting for her to finish calling her car.

“I want to kiss you,” I tell her urgently.

She grins. “Wanna know what Darren said?”

She purrs his name this time, and this is what we’d been avoiding at the tapas bar. I’ve never been the jealous type, but even I couldn’t have guessed how much I would enjoy knowing that my husband was in the nature preserve touching another woman. And there was no way of knowing how good it would feel to have that same woman say his name in such a way that let me know she touched herself thinking about him, couldn’t wait to be with him again, and wanted him as much as I did.

“Yes,” I breathe.

She moves forward. Her free hand covers my waist. Her palm presses against my body as her arm wraps me up. I feel her grip over my ass before she squeezes. “Your husband told me to wait until you asked.” Her mouth is close to mine. I move forward greedily. “Your husband,” she says, and I moan, “told me to wait until you couldn’t, and then he wanted me to kiss you like I kissed him for the first time.”

“Fuck,” I breathe, and then I taste her laughter on my lips, the tip of my tongue, and in my mouth.

“Yeah, that’s what he said too,” she whispers to me.