Blurred Lines (Love Unexpectedly 1)

“Several of them, judging from the state of your bedroom,” she says, tilting her head to study the lime green lamp shade in her hands. “Do you think this would clash with my bedspread?”

“You’re asking the color-blind guy? Like I have any clue what color your bedspread is.”

“Seriously? Don’t act like you’ve never seen it. Two nights ago you flopped onto my bed in your sweaty gym clothes and it took me two washes to remove the man stank.”

I shake my head. “Poor Lance. Do you make him wear a plastic bag when you guys hook up so he doesn’t get his man stank on your sheets?”

“Lance doesn’t have man stank.”

I frown. “Hold up. If I have man stank, Lance has man stank.”

“No.”

I open my mouth to argue, but instead I shrug. That’s another thing you learn having a girl best friend. You pick your battles.

“You have two more minutes to pick your lamp,” I say. “I’m starving.”

Parker adjusts her purse strap on her shoulder. “Oh, I’m not buying a lamp. I was just browsing.”

I inhale deeply to rein in my women suck rampage when I catch her smirk.

“Oh, I get it,” I say as we move toward the end of the store where we’ll pick up my dresser. “This is payback. You’re mad because I made up that story about you having a creepy doll collection.”

“Actually, it was more punishment for destroying the house rules. I’m totally laminating them next time.”

“Or you could just create an online version and keep them in the cloud like normal people born after 1980.”

I see a little lightbulb go on in her head and almost regret giving her the idea. Not that it matters much. I’ve never really followed her fussy rules anyway, although for the most part I try to not be too much of a dick. The towel incident this morning notwithstanding, it’s like I said, Parker loves laundry. I knew she had extra clean ones stashed away.

“Seriously, don’t get that color finish,” she says, shaking her head at the dresser box I’m about to pull off the shelf.

“Wood is wood,” I say with a shrug, starting to maneuver the huge box onto our flat cart.

“No, there’s old-man wood and there’s modern wood.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Old-man wood, huh? You and your kinky fetishes. Do you make the dolls watch?”

She ignores me, and uses her hip to push the box I’d started to move back onto its shelf. “That one.” She points.

“Espresso?” I ask, reading the label.

But Parker is now typing away on her phone. I shrug, pushing her out of the way so I can get at the box she indicated.

“How about tacos?” she asks, glancing up briefly from her phone.

“I just had Mexican last night,” I say through a grunt as I move the box into position.

“You said I could pick.” She gives me a challenging look, her goldish brown eyes practically daring me to argue with her.

“If it was a unilateral decision, why’d you even ask?”

“Unilateral. Good word. And it was a test. You passed,” she says, trotting to catch up with me as she replaces her phone in her purse. “So how did you and Airhead meet? The Beta Phi party last night? She looked like she was eighteen.”

“Airhead?” I ask.

“It was written on her pants. Literally.”

“Oh, right. Those weren’t her pants. Lindsay left them last week.”