“What does the salt do?”
“Cleanses. But in the less literal way. It’s kind of like smoke cleansing or sound cleansing.”
“Yeah, babe, I’m lost again,” I admitted, watching as she sent me a patient smile as she went over to her mail table to light a stick of incense, then pick up a little silver bell.
“Okay. Smoke cleansing,” she said, running the incense up and over then back down the door jam. “And sound cleansing,” she said, shaking the bell with the other hand. “It clears negative energy,” she clarified, going over toward the windows. “Oh, speaking of bad energies…” she grumbled.
And Billie wasn’t usually much of a grumbler.
“What is it?”
“Mrs. Barnard.”
“Neighbor?” I asked.
“She calls me 4A like it is my name despite having introduced myself to her and her Nazi dog about a dozen times.”
“I’m sorry, circle back to Nazi dog,” I said, a weird snorting sound escaping me.
“She named it after Coco Chanel. You know, the actual Nazi. She’s actually a sweet dog. It’s the owner that is a problem.”
“What did she do?”
“Well, the last time I saw her, she complained about my curtains being open, called me a slut, and told me to stay away from her husband.”
“She called you a slut?” I asked, spine straightening as I moved across the room to stand behind her shoulder as she tucked the incense stick into a holder.
“She did.”
“But she’s the one looking in your windows like a creep,” I said, wrapping my arms around her midsection.
“That’s exactly the point I was trying to make. If you don’t like seeing me walk bare-ass naked in my own damn apartment, don’t look inside it,” Billie declared, pushing the blinds open fully.
I had no idea what her intentions were when she turned with a light dancing in her eyes. But I knew that look well enough to know she had something crazy planned.
I didn’t know how crazy until she was lowering herself down in front of me, and reaching up toward my fly, a dark smile tugging at her lips.
“This is insane,” I told her, shaking my head.
“But so much fun,” she told me, reaching inside for my cock.
I had a feeling that those words were going to explain my future with Billie perfectly.
Insane.
But so much fun.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Billie - 3 weeks
“Vi, have you seen a baggie of screws and washers?” I asked, rifling through my disorganized junk drawer.
“I don’t exactly snoop through all your shit, Bills,” Vi said as she poked at the soup I’d made her with a grimace. “This smells peppery.”
“It is peppery. It’s going to burn that cold right out of your system,” I told her.
“Will I have any lining left in my mouth and throat after?”
“Stop being such a terrible patient,” I demanded. “Drink your water and your tea, and eat your soup, or that cold is going to hang around a week longer than it needs to. Did you take all your vitamins?”
“There were eight of them!”
“And all eight of them have a purpose,” I said, nodding.
“Can’t you just like… wave some crystals over my face and make the ick go away?”
“Sure. If this was some cheesy TV show, I could totally do that,” I agreed, closing the tea cabinet. Why I was looking in the tea cabinet for a baggie of screws and washers was beyond me. But sometimes things could end up in the strangest of places if I got distracted when I was trying to organize. I once found my flavored massage oil in my spice cabinet. “And put some of that salve under your nose or on your chest.”
“It burns. It burns worse than the store-bought cold stuff.”
“Because it works better,” I told her. “Do you want me to get Rowe on the phone to tell you about how much better my pain salve works than the store-bought stuff?”
“Ugh, him again.”
“You love Rowe,” I reminded her.
“I loved him until I heard you screaming his name at two in the morning,” she told me, leaning up over the back of the couch to shoot me an outraged look. It was underscored by her red nose and puffy sinuses, though. She’d come back from her latest skip with a major head cold and a decently high fever.
And Vi, well, Vi was a terrible patient. She always had been. So bad, in fact, that her mother used to beg me to come and pick her up when she was sick because Lou had a worse bedside manner than most of the guys in the club, so her sick and high maintenance daughter was too much to handle.
“I know. Your poor, virgin ears, huh?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“Listen, I am pretty sure that the rules of hostessing say that the hostess and host may not have loud, unruly sexcapades when they have a single and sexless guest crashing on the couch.”