Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills 5)

Small gentle touches.

Flirt gently and increase it slowly.

Remind her you like spending time with her.

Wooing is essential—every woman wants to be wooed.

Mental note to self: look up what wooing is.

Objects that remind her of you are also important. If she has things she likes that you gave her, she’ll think of you fondly when she looks at them.

If she needs help with something, be the man for her.

That was the gist of what they’d told me to do, but some of them had taken it a step further and mentioned underwear, taking my shirt off when I was doing things for her, how to kiss her and make her want more.

Some of those women were sexual deviants, to be honest. You think you know someone, and then they tell you to swipe her nipple with your thumb and make her moan into your mouth. Not that it was terrible advice, just unexpected! I’d walked out of the diner with my cheeks burning for the first time in twenty years. Katy had also suggested I sing to her, but that would have the opposite effect of what I was going for, seeing as how I was tone-deaf.

Groaning at the thought of swiping Zuri’s nipple, I pulled up in front of her place, running through my plan for today.

Give her the present.

Explain it.

Help her out.

Take shirt off while helping her out.

Ask her out for dinner.

Kiss her—a lot.

How could that go wrong?

Getting out, I reached in for the box and then walked up the pathway to her door. This place was a million times nicer than the apartment she’d been in before, and she had more space and privacy. Hell, she even had a bright yellow front door, which was totally not what I’d picture for her, but it suited her perfectly now that I thought about it.

As I was leaving last night, we’d agreed I’d be there for ten. She’d told me just to walk right on in, but that seemed a bit weird now, so I knocked first and waited.

Almost immediately, I heard Zuri’s muffled shout. “S’open!”

Turning the handle, I pushed the door open with one hand and started to hold the box out with the other one.

Today was the day that things were going to change between us, and it all started with what was inside it.

Except, just as I was opening the door and saying hello, the door hit something hard. There was a squeal, and seconds later, something shattered loudly.

And then came the screaming.

Oh, fuck me, the screaming.

I’ll never forget it. In fact, I don’t think the whole neighborhood would ever forget it. I sure as hell wouldn’t forget what was waiting for me as I pushed the door open even more and moved quickly through it.

The first thing I came face to face with was a chair, wedged between the door and the wall behind it. Beyond that were moving legs—thank Christ—and shards of glass everywhere, with Zuri lying on top of what I recognized as the remains of a nest of glass-topped tables that I’d carried in last night.

Putting the pieces together, I figured out what’d happened pretty quick, especially when a heavy picture frame landed on my right shoulder from right above where I was frozen in place. And then came the sharp burning sensation that made me grit my teeth.

Seeing as how she wasn’t screaming anymore, it wouldn’t look good if I started. Would it?

“Well, Miss Hadid. You have a fractured wrist and hand, a good-sized egg on your head, a mild concussion, and there are a couple of glass fragments that need to be removed from some of the wounds on your back before we stitch you back up,” the doctor informed her in an overly happy manner. “We almost had that partridge in a pear tree, but not quite.”

Neither of us smiled at the joke.

“Which bones?” she asked through clenched teeth, the fingers on the obviously broken arm twitching and making her groan.

Tapping the screen of the iPad in his hand, he turned it around. “It’s really quite interesting. You’ve broken your radius here,” he pointed at a place on the screen, “and you also have a small fracture on the metacarpal bone of your middle finger, right here.”

Without moving her head, Zuri’s eyes cut to me, and she glared even harder.

Not sensing the tension in the room, the doctor turned it back to face him and swept his finger from one side to the other. “Now, if you look at this x-ray, you can see some small fragments of the glass. With how they’re showing up, I’d say that was some thick glass you landed on.”

“It was meant to be, yes,” she ground out. “I loved those tables.”

Tipping my head back to look up at the tiles of the ceiling, I did my best not to look as guilty as I felt. I’d been apologizing for the last hour after I’d picked her up and ran with her to my truck, ignoring the fact my shoulder was bleeding. For someone who was obsessive with how clean the interior of his car was, it’d been torture, but she was more important.