Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

And who called a flight a party?

As they wheeled me through the terminal and into the room where a doctor was waiting for me, I sighed and laid back, hoping that they would realize there had been a mistake, and quickly. I desperately needed to pee again.

Don’t pee. Don’t pee!

I kept singing it inside my head – obviously I couldn’t do it out loud – as Harambe (as the big gorilla will now be known) told the doctor what had happened as he took my vitals.

“She seems okay,” the doctor noted, sounding unsure. “Can you open your mouth for me, Miss?”

I did as the doctor said and closed my eyes, just waiting for what I knew was about to happen.

“Caaarrrriiiiist,” he groaned out. I assumed he was saying Christ, but what did I know. My tongue was currently as fat as my thigh. “Welp, found your problem. Shit on a shingle, girl. What in the gorilla in Manila did you do?”

I truly appreciated the fact he’d used a gorilla reference given our present company – who was now receiving a hard glare from me, again. I really didn’t appreciate having to explain what had happened, especially not with my cow's tongue, and it was his fault.

Alas, I did my best and took a deep breath to fill the kind doctor in.TwoDahliaW alking out of the terminal behind a fuming Harambe – whose full name was Madix Blue, the lucky primate bastard – I sighed and went into my purse to dig for my keys. I was going to get a cab home and try to put this nightmare behind me.

And suck on ice, lots of ice.

Just as I looked up to see where the taxi rank was, Harambe stopped and turned to say something. Unfortunately, this put his foot right in front of mine. One foot hooking later, and I was flying through the air, as were my keys.

I bounced on the sidewalk, groaning at the pain in my knees, my belly button, my tongue… basically everywhere hurt when I hit the concrete.

My keys went flying and bounced off the sidewalk too, then slid across it and went right down a drain.

“What the hell?”

When you have as much happen to you as I did, you make peace quickly with the fact that you make yourself look a complete and utter twat publicly on a regular basis. You get used to the embarrassment, the laughter, the cuts and bruises. So, I did the same right now, even with the handsome giant with the strangest eyes I’d ever seen looking on. They looked almost black until you got up close to them, which I’d had the good fortune of doing when the doc had explained to him that my tongue was unusually swollen for a tongue piercing. As he’d explained it all, Madix had bent over with his eyes squinted to look at the little silver ball poking through the heifer in my mouth. That’s when I’d seen that they were in fact a beautiful dark purplish gray.

And at this precise moment, his weird eyes were burning a hole through my forehead as I looked back up at him, like where I was currently sitting was completely normal. As he continued to stare at me, I noticed something new. He also had a little ring of lighter silver around his pupil. Holy shit, this dude would make a great shifter!

A gorilla shifter!

Because I’d given up trying to talk after I’d drooled my way through the explanation with the doctor (and had resorted to writing it all out when they hadn’t understood a word I’d said), I didn’t even try to explain my current position to him. I just sat there and shrugged even though I was screwed, and not in an ‘ooo, that feels good!’ kind of way.

My dad had a copy of my key, which unfortunately was on his key-chain with him in New York. I had a key to his house, where another copy of mine was sitting, however that was attached to the keyring that was probably winding its way to the ocean – or however drains worked. Added onto that, my best friend was out-of-town visiting her parents, so I couldn’t call her for help or a place to stay either.

Then I remembered Jones, Dad’s best friend. He had spare keys to Dad’s house, but he wasn’t the most reliable person for remembering his phone. He was the last of our emergency back-ups though, so I was going to have to give him a go.

Pulling up his contact details, I hit the screen and waited for him to answer.

His slurred reply of, “Foffff!” had me cursing the world and serendipity and all who sailed in her. Because if you asked me, serendipity was bullshit unless it was the name of a ship.