Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills 6)

“Thank Christ. I’m sorry for being rude, and I totally would’ve tried it, but the last time I ate what you cooked, I swear I glowed in the dark.”

The way she picked the plates up and held them as far out from her body as she could didn’t help my nerves, either. That was when I remembered that whatever was on them had touched my lip, so I jogged to the kitchen ahead of her and went about washing it as thoroughly as possible.

“I was going to suggest you did that,” she sighed behind me as I was ripping off a piece of paper towel to dry my face. “I don’t know why I suck so badly at this. I made dinner for Mom and Dad two weeks ago, and it tasted great.” When I looked at her over my shoulder, she added, “And nobody got sick.”

“Maybe the cream was off?” I offered weakly. “And the chicken.”

“Maybe,” she muttered, shaking the plates to try and get the shit off it and into the garbage. No amount of shaking was moving it, though. “What the hell?”

After using a spatula to scrape it off, we put the dishes in the dishwasher and pulled out what we needed to make subs. The ham was out of date by five days, the shaved turkey by three, but the pickle slices and cheese were okay, so we kept those out.

They were put straight back into the fridge when she pulled out a bag of hotdog buns that had so much mold on them that we could’ve cured strep throat easily just by sniffing the bag.

Picking up my phone, I ordered a pizza to be delivered and then went back to where she was now laughing her ass off in the living room.

“I’m so sorry,” she choked out, wiping under her eyes. “I keep seeing your face with the food on the fork. And when you touched your lip…” she laughed so hard that she snorted. “That might’ve been the worst I’ve ever made.”

Throwing an arm around her shoulders, I pulled her into my side. “Thank the lords of food that places deliver.”

Whatever she was going to say was cut off by a sharp pain on my shin, followed by the blur of the assailant running across the floor. “You little evil bastard.”

Initially, I was going to give Doyle—who was chewing a bone in his bed that was the size of my femur—my pizza crusts to get him to like me. Now I was giving them to him because the cat was an asshole, and I wanted him to know it.

This was the day from hell. Then again, I might have come out of it with diaper rash and a flesh wound, but at least I wasn’t sleeping in a sewage-scented apartment or dying in hospital from her cooking.

It’s the little things…

Three days later…

Sayings like what I’d said only days ago and ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ were responsible for my current predicament.

Why? My little thing wasn’t little anymore. In fact, I swear the penis I knew well had mutated since we’d moved in here.

Also, Bexley saying about our sleeping arrangements, “As they say, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it,” was the reason for the above problem.

I’d offered to buy an inflatable bed on my way home the next day, but she said it was fine and just like the campouts we had when we were kids.

Maybe it was my memory, but I was fairly sure we never slept in the same sleeping bag back then. I also never woke up pressing my morning glory into her ass. I also don’t remember waking up in the morning in a fix like that. Furthermore, I don’t remember her wrapping herself around me during the night like she does now.

I loved it and hated it at the same time.

And I was at work in the shittiest mood I could also remember being in. Ever.

“It’s not hard, is it?” Alex asked, making me wince.

“No, but it’s quite stiff,” Naomi replied.

“What about if you jerk it or give it a shake?” Mark suggested about whatever it was they were discussing, which wasn’t related to my predicament but resonated with me strongly.

Throwing my half-eaten apple in the trash, I pushed away from my desk to go anywhere but where they were when DB called out, “Yo, Richards. How’s the new living arrangements going?”

Not turning around, I walked over to the room I’d been looking at paperwork in when he’d woken me up and snapped, “Drop dead.”

There was some snickering from the group of assholes, and Mark chuckled, “Well, then.”

Just as the door was closing, though, DB shouted, “No giving it a jerk or shake in there, man. We all have to use that room at some point.”

I was surrounded by the world’s worst comedians.