In Too Deep

“Thanks. I can’t even with this.” She pulled her shirt away from her. It was sticky. Her own stomach rolled at the thought of what she was wearing.

She rushed through closing out what she needed, her thoughts focused on a nice, hot shower. On her way home, she remembered that her landlord had promised to install a new showerhead today. He’d texted her this afternoon to say that he’d get it done. That lifted Chloe’s spirits a bit. While it wouldn’t make up for being puked on, it would at least be better than her usual shower.

In her apartment, she peeled off her clothes and shoved them in a bag so they wouldn’t contaminate the rest of her laundry. She gathered a fresh towel and her comfiest clothes and went to the bathroom. Her heart sank. Her new showerhead was still in the package on her sink.

“Fuck. What’s one more letdown on this crappy day?” She texted her landlord to find out what happened and started the water for a shower. Once the water was warm, she stepped in and suddenly water pressure was almost not existent.

She washed as quickly as she could, given the trickle of water she was dealing with. Then the pipes began to rattle and the showerhead came crashing down, thunking her on her head and then smacking her toes.

“Motherfucker!” she screamed. She twisted the knobs and called her landlord to leave a scathing message about what happened. After getting dressed, she stomped through her apartment and debated what to do. She needed to clean her smelly clothes, but she wasn’t in the mood to tromp to the basement right now.

When her phone rang, she assumed it was her landlord returning her call. “Hello.”

“Chloe?”

Ronan’s deep voice rumbled across the line.

“Oh, hi. What’s up?”

“I was calling to see if you wanted to get together when you get off work.”

Emotion swelled in her chest. Of course, she wanted to see him, but not like this. She swallowed hard. “I’m already done for the night. It’s not a good time.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was too high and an idiot would be able to tell she was lying. But the last thing Ronan would want was to be exposed to her rampaging emotions. She rummaged through her freezer, yanked out a bag of vegetables, and pressed them to the rapidly-forming lump on her head.

Ronan knewa lie when he heard one and although he had no place in pushing for answers, he did. “What happened?”

“What the hell didn’t happen?”

He waited, but she didn’t continue. “Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t be good company tonight. I’ll call you in a few days.”

“I might be able to turn your night around. We have a list, right?”

Her chuckle this time wasn’t sexy. It was irritated. “I’ll need a raincheck on that.”

“Oh.” Maybe she was good with it being a one-time thing after all.

A shaky breath wavered in his ear. “Look. I’ve had a shitty day. I got my period, so sex is off the table. I had to cover for a waitress who called in sick. I had a horrible night at work where a couple of kids spit milk at me and then their baby brother puked on me. And I only got a lousy ten-dollar tip from the family. Then to top it all off, my landlord was supposed to change my showerhead today. Not only did that not happen, the old one had messed up water pressure and then actually fell off and smacked me on the head. So, I feel like crap, probably don’t smell much better and although I might be horny, period sex isn’t my thing.”

He listened and understood everything she said, but the message he got clearly was no sex and she was miserable. He should just give her the space she was asking for, but he felt bad that he hadn’t called her since they slept together. Casual or not, he should’ve called. All he’d done was yell at her while she was half-asleep Monday morning and sent a text to cancel plans.

“Okay. Sorry you had a crappy day.”

“I’m sorry, Ronan.”

“You don’t owe me an apology. We’ll talk soon.” He disconnected and grabbed a tool bucket and filled it with some basic plumbing tools.

On the way to her apartment, he made a quick stop at the store. It was late on a Thursday, so her street was pretty crowded. He ended up parking down the block from Chloe’s place. Grabbing his stuff, he trudged up to her building. The front lock was still busted. Someone needed to have a conversation with the landlord. This was bullshit.