This is why you think before you speak. Or act. Or invite some woman you’ve been too interested in from the moment she marched her cute little ass your way and demanded you go buy cookware to your nana’s. If you just jump into shit, you end up in the kitchen in the middle of the night ready to kiss the hell out of her.
Part of me thinks I just should’ve done it. I’m fairly certain she would’ve been receptive. But what if I’m reading her wrong? What if she’s just really thankful that I bailed her out of her situation? Besides, it’s just asking for trouble in the one place I don’t want it: home.
“So … who was it?” Walker asks.
“When did you become such a nosy bastard?”
He slurps his coffee just to annoy me.
“Dylan,” I say with a sigh.
“Okay. Wait. Dylan. Is that a girl? Or …”
“Yes, Dylan is a girl, you fucker.”
He holds his hands up. “Fine. I’d have been cool with it either way.” He takes another quieter drink. “Who is she?”
I work on the filter and don’t look up. Maybe he’ll get the hint. “Navie’s friend.”
“And …?”
“Oh, good lord.” I blow out a breath and stand. Facing Walker, I hold my hands out to the sides. “Can we make this quick? Someone is paying me to do a bunch of shit, and it won’t matter that you’ve wasted my fucking time today, he’ll be a dick at the end of the day if I don’t get enough done.”
Walker grins. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“He is.”
“Better humor him them.”
I shake my head.
“I’m sorry that I’m a little shocked. I mean, you took a girl to Nana’s. That’s some big shit right there, Peck.”
“It’s not,” I insist, ignoring the stupid twist in my stomach. “She’s just a friend of Navie’s who needed a place to stay. So I offered her a room until she finds something—”
“She’s living with you?”
I watch the realization settle over his features. It starts as shock and ends somewhere around confusion mixed with complete and utter entertainment.
Sliding my hat around backward, I look at him. “What’s it to you?”
“Is she hot?”
“Damn it, Walker.”
“She is. She fucking is, isn’t she?” He laughs, his big ass chest shaking as he humors himself with my life.
I don’t dare tell him how hot she is. Or that I couldn’t sleep last night knowing she was in my house. Or that I had to get up extra early this morning to take care of myself in the shower so I didn’t walk around needing to jack off all damn day.
But it’s not just that. Hell, I’ve been with other women over the course of my life, and I’ve not felt this way about any of them. I want to talk to her. Hear her laugh. Listen to her tease me. Answer questions that she poses that make me uncomfortable.
What is that? What kind of voodoo bullshit is that?
“When do we get to meet her?” Walker asks.
I go back to the filter. “Whenever you run into her,” I say, cranking on the equipment a little too hard.
“So she’s not coming to Sunday dinner at Nana’s?”
“She could be gone by Sunday, Walker. She’s not living with me forever. She had a rental on Vine Street that was full of cat hair. Like piss and fur everywhere, man.”
“There’s nothing worse than cat piss,” Walker says.
“Right?And she’s really allergic. Like, very allergic. So, she’s just landing at my place until she can find a place to rent. How hard is that to understand?”
My teeth grind together as I think about the day she’ll leave. I have no idea why, but the idea already sucks balls.
“I know a place out on Longs Chapel Road,” Walker says. “You know MaryAnn that comes in here with the van that has the bad transmission?”
“Yeah.”
“She and Mike just moved. I ran into him the other day at Goodman’s gas station. He got a promotion, and they moved over to Merom. Anyway, that house they lived in out there was a rental.”
He’s being helpful. I know that. But something about that information just pisses me off.
“I’ll tell her,” I bite out.
Walker busies himself sorting a couple of deliveries. I work on the filter and what to do about Dylan.
My chest rises and falls as I think about her. She’s dangerous. I feel the fire every time I’m around her. It’s like I’ve drunk a fifth of whiskey. My insides are squeamish, my body heated, and all I want to do is enjoy myself.
That’s what she feels like. A fifth of whiskey.
While I’m all about imbibing from time to time, one thing is always true: when it wears off, you feel like absolute shit. And that’s what this will feel like too when she moves on.
Actually, I bet watching her leave feels worse than a hangover. I bet it hurts like hell.