Fireball (Cheap Thrills 1)

I nodded and gulped harshly, wiping my face and hoping I wasn’t as pink as my hair. I loved the color, but I never aimed for my entire face to match the shade I’d carefully chosen, and took great lengths to maintain in my hair.

“Well?” Ellis pressed, grinning widely at the ball of human holding a pale blue cushion tightly against her face. “By the way, I can see you.”

“No, you can’t. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me either,” Jose replied, her voice muffled seeing as how she hadn’t moved the cushion away.

Chuckling, I took my next mouthful of coffee, choking yet again when the attention was turned back in my direction. “Well, Tabby? You wanna explain what a mammaroni is?” The big shit head standing beside me asked me this time.

Shaking my head furiously, I swallowed the hot liquid before it could burn my lungs. Once I was sure I was in the safety zone and could feel it burning somewhere in the stomach region it was meant to be in, I replied. “No.”

Both men’s eyebrows lifted at my one-word answer, but it was Dave who wouldn’t let it drop. “No? That’s all we’re getting out of you?”

When I just glared at him and Jose continued to suffocate herself with a cushion, Ellis let out a dramatic sigh and plucked his phone out of his back pocket. “Mammaroni, mammaroni,” he muttered, his thumb moving on the screen of his phone. “Ah, here it is. Big pepperoni nipples on a lactating woman…” he broke off and then shut the phone down and shoved it back in his pocket.

What followed could best be described as Jose trying to hide between the back of the couch and the wall after a quick ninja style body flip and dash, and Ellis’s face turning the same shade as my hair while he studied the wall next to the front door. I started memorizing the pattern on the rug, remembering mashing Rita Slutita’s face into it only days ago and trying to see if I could find an imprint on it, while Dave burst out laughing beside me.

“I’m not here. You all need to leave,” Jose yelled from her hidey spot, her ass poking out into the room.

“Dave brought bagels,” Ellis murmured, like this was important information.

Not missing a beat, her mind focused on surviving the trauma of it all, Jose yelled, “I’m bagel intolerant. Thanks for coming!”

Still laughing, Dave walked back over to the counter and then moved to the fridge, pulling out jelly, peanut butter, butter, and then bananas.

“You keep your peanut butter in the fridge?” I asked Jose’s ass, unscrewing the lid and looking down at the solid mass of peanut sludge in the jar.

“And her bananas too,” Dave pointed out, trying to peel the skin off one. “What temperature do you have that thing set to?”

That was all that was needed to bring her out of hiding. “The dickhead with the traveling penis set it so his beer was ice cold. He also put the peanut butter in there so it wasn’t watery and nasty, or so he said. More than likely, it was because he knew it pissed me off,” she growled, walking over toward us. “And the bananas I put in there because I was putting them in those prenatal shake things I found the recipes for online.”

“I only ever saw you drink one of those,” I frowned. If she was meant to drink more of them, why hadn’t she?

Wincing, she opened the fridge and pointed at a mass of greens in a bag. “Because the second time I had one, something terrible happened to it. Juiced kale,” she shuddered, glaring at the vegetable. “It said to juice the kale and add the bananas to it. Have you ever had juiced kale?” she kept repeating the name of the vegetable, spitting the word out like it was poison, which they may well be. I like vegetables, but even I had an issue with kale. “There’s no coming back from it. I had one mouthful, spat it out, and I can still taste it.”

Both men started laughing, but I focused on trying to get the next bit of skin off my banana. I didn’t want to even imagine what the juiced kale tasted like, and if I tried I was pretty certain I’d never eat again. Now that was a diet.

“I like kale in my smoothies,” Dave shrugged, smearing butter on his bagel. “And celery.”

And I was done.

Throwing the solid banana mass on the counter, I picked up the plain bagel and bit into it.

“Tab hates celery,” Jose told the men who were staring at me. “As in – hates it. We went to the store to buy food for her house before I got the call and we had to leave to get home because my neighbor had seen Larry going in there with Slutita. In the vegetable aisle, I asked her what vegetables she wanted, and she told me if I bought celery I’d be giving birth to it along with Olivia.”