Not waiting for a response from him, I hurried to the bathroom and opened the cupboard under my sink. I had a kit with an assortment of first aid stuff in it so I grabbed that. Then I plucked out the little plastic basket thing that had painkillers and tampons, picking up the latter and dropping it back on the shelf because they weren’t going to help.
“Sadie, my nose is bleeding again. I don’t want to get it on your couch, so I need to know where the paper towels are.”
Apparently, the tampons would come in handy after all, so I grabbed the box back up and put it in the basket, making sure to get a fresh roll of toilet paper as I headed back to him with it all.
Passing him the toilet roll, I sat down and twisted so that I had one leg on the couch between us and gestured at him to get on with it. “Give it a clean, and we’ll stick a tampon up it. It sounds weird, but it’s a pretty good trick.”
He was already holding a fistful of tissues under his nose, but when I mentioned shoving a tampon up there, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye like I was crazy. “You’re not shoving that shit up my nose.”
Ignoring him, I looked in the box for one in a pink wrapper, not wanting to shove a super plus up his poor nostril.
“The good news is, you can have a light flow one and not the log sized version. Aren’t I kind?” I snickered, pulling one out and tearing the paper wrapper off it.
Leaning slightly away from me, he shook his head as much as he could. “I don’t care if it’s the size of the moon—”
“Trust me, you would.”
“—I’m not having a tampon stuck up my nose. Do you know how unhygienic that is?” he continued, ignoring my sage advice.
“How’s it unhygienic? You just saw me take it out of its wrapper—it’s sealed wrapper.”
“Because…” he spluttered, waving at my crotch. “It’s a vagina thing, not a nose thing.”
Tilting my head, I tried to understand where he was coming from. What was it with men and periods? A majority of women suffered when the little buggers came to town, and he had an issue with something designed to help us with it being put up his nose? I’d like to see him shove a super plus one up his arse and see how it felt after six hours. Inconsiderate bastard!
“Elijah, it might be intended for the vagina, but it’ll be doing the same job up your nostril, won’t it? And it’ll put pressure on the area that’s bleeding and stop it,” I reasoned, doing my best to sound patient.
“If you shoot that up my nostril with that cardboard thing, it’ll end up in my brain, and I’ll be the guy on the internet who has an x-ray of a fucking tampon in his head. Do you know the kind of shit they’ll say about me on social media? The number of reporters who’ll harass me for an interview? How do I explain that? Have you met my family—I’ll never live it down.”
Holding it up in front of him, I removed the aforementioned cardboard from around it, and then pulled the small pair of scissors I had in the basket out, cutting the tampon in half in front of him.
“Take the half that doesn’t have a string hanging off it first. If that doesn’t stop the bleeding completely, I’ll cut the string, and you can replace it with that one.”
Giving me a frustrated glare, he shoved it up his nose and grimaced. “This is just so wrong. It feels like I’ve got a…” he stopped and tried to think of an object.
“Tampon?”
Grinding his jaw from side to side, he scowled at me. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll get you back, and I won’t be gentle.”
Now, why did that make my nipples feel like smarties?Chapter ThreeElijahI’d have to be blind not to see her reaction to what I’d just said, but I was trying to be a gentleman and not stare at them. The problem was, they were pointing at me and staring.
Instead, I went and opened my mouth without thinking about what I was saying.
“I have a question to begin with.” When she nodded as she checked out my knuckles, I let fly the question that’d hit me as soon as she’d opened her door. “What the hell happened to your eyebrows and eyelashes.”
Her head slowly lifted and turned toward me as the hand holding my cut and bruised one clenched slightly. Fuck it, that hurt.
“I’m naturally very blonde.”
“That’s it? You’ve got them normally, though.” I was sure she did—something like that you’d notice.
Leaning in closer to her, I squinted at the areas in question. Sure enough, they were there, but the lashes were practically white.