The Humanity Project Read Online Free Page B

recoil, but he pushed past the feeling, pushed his tongue past the small fence of her teeth and into the hot space inside.
    When they stopped and drew apart she said, “He’s over there, don’t look, he’s just some guy who answered my ad and I was fooling around with him, online I mean, just going back and forth saying stuff, all this crazy stuff I didn’t mean, yeah, dumb. But I didn’t know if you were really going to show up so I told him I was coming and now he’s expecting me to leave with him but he’s probably not sure it’s me and anyway I like you, I like everything about you. Can’t we just go somewhere?”
    “I don’t . . .” Sean began, without knowing what came next, don’t think so, don’t want to, wanted to but wished she wasn’t nuts. You’d have to be nuts to be humping in a parking lot with some guy you just met but maybe he was a little nuts too. “Where did you want to go?”
    “Get in,” she told him, shaking the car keys out of her purse. “Let’s just get out of here.”
    His phone buzzed. Conner. Sean put it up to his ear to answer. “Hey. I got a little hung up. Yeah, go on to bed, I won’t be real late.” He shut the phone off, relieved, he guessed, that he wouldn’t have to worry about Conner. He was covered, yes, free to follow his dick around all night, great idea. He walked behind the car to the passenger side, lowered himself with care—he was used to his truck, to climbing up—and shut the door behind him.
    “Hey,” she said, smiling at him. The inside of the car was small, some little undersized Nissan. She started the engine and it came to life with a rattle.
    “Hi yourself.” Sean draped an arm around her neck, tried to get some purchase on her left breast.
    Laurie allowed this, waiting for him to be done with his probing and squeezing, then said, “It’s kind of hard for me to see behind me . . .”
    “Oh. Sure.” He took his arm away. He needed to move the car seat so he’d have more legroom. It slid a grudging few inches. The pain in his back felt like a crack in glass, a radiating starburst. “Are you OK to drive? You want me to?”
    “I’m fine. I just had to clear my head, you know, get some fresh air.” Laurie steered them out of the parking lot, down an access road and past a strip mall, darkened, closed, then onto 101 North. She checked the rearview mirror. “Good. I don’t think he’s following. Anyway, he doesn’t know where I live.” She was in the left lane but not driving all that fast. Headlights kept coming up behind them, bearing down on them with glare, then pulling around to pass them on the right. “So, Steve . . .”
    “Sean.”
    “. . . can I ask you about something because I’m curious, nosy, whatever name you want to hang on it, also cause I don’t see why we shouldn’t know each other a little better. Did you used to be married? Or maybe you are now. I shouldn’t assume.”
    They were coming up on Petaluma but she hadn’t changed lanes and it looked like they were still heading north. Sean said, “You know what we should have done? Let me get my truck, so I can follow you, so you don’t have to drive me back later.” It had been stupid to leave the truck behind. You never wanted to be without an escape vehicle.
    “Oh, I don’t mind driving, don’t worry about that. You know what they say about assume. It makes an ass out of you and me. Are you gonna tell me? Is this like, a sensitive subject, marriage?”
    “No, I’m not married, we got divorced.” The front seat was small enough that they sat almost shoulder to shoulder, which made it hard for him to see her face unless he was obvious about it and turned around to look. “What about you?”
    “Ha. I’ve been divorced almost as many times as I’ve been married.” She laughed at this, pleased with her own joke. “Don’t worry. Every other way but legal, I’m divorced. Whose fault was it, yours or hers?”
    “Depends on who you ask. So