So Sweet a Changeling: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 6)

Chapter Seven: Johnny, Sunday

He did feel wretched about not telling her he was married. As far as she knew, he was divorced with two grown sons. She was divorced too, and maybe that was what had drawn her to him, they could both relate.

It had taken him forever to work up the courage to meet her in person, and a lot of the delay had to do with sheer logistics. When could he go out when Val wasn't at home waiting up for him? Eventually he'd stayed behind when Val went with the boys to a soccer tournament on Vancouver Island, pleading work commitments, an emergency on a construction site, and Val hadn't verified with Joe that there had indeed been an emergency. Maybe she'd just decided to believe him because she'd wanted time away from Johnny, too; it wasn't as if he was the perfect husband, either, and as long as she was with her boys, she was happy. In any case, with the Salish Sea between them, and an hour-and-a-half ferry ride time delay, he'd finally felt confident he could see Melody without getting caught, and when Melody welcomed him into her apartment, she'd wanted to get down to business right away, giving him even more time to fulfil his fantasy.

It had been thrilling that he hadn't had to spend time dating her first, working up to the moment like he had with Val. It had also been terrifying. Melody had been on Tinder longer than he had, and she was used to the zero-to-sixty nature of "hook-ups." His heart had been at a gallop as she undressed him, and with his nervousness about having sex with a woman he barely knew, and his worry about whether he'd be able to perform, and his elevated blood pressure... well...

It hadn't been because he'd worn a condom. He'd worn them with Val when they were teens and she couldn't get a birth control prescription for herself, and he'd never had a problem finishing.

When he looked it up later, he discovered a condition called "lazy penis." This never happened to him when he was with Val, so it had alarmed him when he couldn't... finish... inside Melody. Apparently it was psychological, which wasn't surprising, since he'd worked himself into quite a state by the time they'd gotten to it. It was also quite common, but he'd never heard his brother or any of his other male colleagues confess to having this problem.

What made it even more dismaying was that Melody hadn't been bothered by it at all. In her opinion, he had porn-star level control of his timing, and she'd enthusiastically walked him through position after position, taking advantage of his size and his stamina to make herself come again and again, and though he'd enjoyed pleasing her, it had been terribly disappointing that he couldn't come himself. Eventually Melody had taken pity on him and finished him off by taking him in her mouth, with the condom still on, so it had been weird, and not at all how he'd pictured it.

Maybe he'd just built it up too much in his mind, and it wasn't because there was anything wrong with Melody; sure, she was a little full-figured for her height, but no more so than Val, and he still thought Val was a sexy woman, and it wasn't like he could brag about his own body, anyway. She was smaller than Val, and this was where her similarity to Lauren had made him build up the fantasy of Melody rather than the reality of her. She was incredibly nice, and actually quite talented at sex (maybe she'd had a lot of practice being on Tinder, a concept he wouldn't let himself think about.) In fact, she'd almost been too energetic for him; by the end he'd been exhausted and a little melancholic, riddled with guilt and self-consciousness, when he should have been focused on cuddling with Melody, who'd then seemed disappointed that he hadn't been as tender to her as she'd deserved.

So, it was a bit of a surprise to see a message from her. He'd thought maybe she wouldn't want to see him again, and in any case the timing was terrible.

Val had only found out about Melody when she'd picked up his phone one day, knowing his passcode in case of emergencies, seen the Tinder app, wondered what it was (they were both so ignorant of trends at their age,) and seen his text exchange with her. All the evidence she'd needed was there.