He was going to do that anyway. This just gives me a better excuse. Brody agrees with all the enthusiasm of a kid waiting in line to meet his childhood hero.
Jake rakes his eyes over my body. “Well, it looks like you have shit handled here, so I’m going to head out.” A flicker of amusement flashes in his baby blues when he smiles at me. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Addy.” Then he sees himself out.
I grab a new water bottle and head for the door and shake my head. “You really need to find new friends, Brody.”
Brody stops me just before I walk out. “Yeah. About that…”
Oh no. This can’t be good.
I raise my eyebrows in question, so he continues. “The only way I could convince Jake to come over and play the bad cop was to tell him he could take you on a date.”
He pimped me out… To a cop.
I chunk the water bottle across the room, hitting him in the middle of the chest. He manages to catch it before it falls to the floor. His laughter follows me as I close the door. One of these days, I’m seriously going to kill him.
The scent of French vanilla fills the kitchen in my one-bedroom apartment. I stop for a moment and breathe it in because a French vanilla coffee pod with caramel flavored creamer is one of life’s barest essentials. Kind of like clean water and health care—a priority. And I can’t justify spending five dollars a day for a cup of coffee, so this… this is my little slice of morning heaven.
My life is full of moments, tiny little snippets of happiness that I treasure while they last. It’s all about the little things, really. A Keurig pod and a bottle of creamer. Finding real strawberries in a scoop of strawberry ice cream. Having a dog stop to sniff your shoe and wag its tail when you pass it on the sidewalk. The flash of desire in a stranger’s eyes. Ordinary moments that always seem to pass too quickly. I try to remember to stop and drink them in before they’re snatched away. Life taught me that long before I was ready.
The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was to email my boss with an explanation. The first thing I do when I wake up this morning—after I make coffee—is call Brody to make sure he got Liam to The Taproom on time.
He answers on the second ring. “Morning, sunshine.”
“How’d it go this morning with your mancrush?”
My words echo back at me the way they always do when he has me on the Bluetooth in his car. He’s driving. That’s a good sign. I put him on speaker while I start my morning routine.
“Oh, you know, we exchanged glances, he smiled, I blushed, then we had coffee and I rode off into the sunset.”
Why do his words make my stomach flip?
I pull the spiral ponytail holder from my wrist and wrap it around a pile of hair on top of my head. “Sunrise.”
“What?”
“It’s seven thirty in the morning. There’s no sunset.”
“Jesus Addy, it was a joke. You really need to get laid. Which reminds me, you need to pick Liam up at two.”
“What? Why can’t you do it?” And what does that have to do with me getting laid?
“I’ve been summoned to a meeting with the board this afternoon regarding this whole shitshow. Not sure I’ll be done in time.”
Brody screwed up. We will probably all be feeling the consequences of his irresponsibility for a while. I could have killed him—okay, maybe kill is a strong word—but I would hate for him to lose his job over this. He likes to play like he’s tough, but these kids are just as important to him as they are to me. He lives to see them smile. So do I.
I’ve been waiting for my phone to ring since the minute I hit send on the email. I still haven’t received any kind of response. The silence feels absolute. When I was growing up, the people in my life always used silence as a weapon. There is so much raw power in unspoken words.
It’s paralyzing.
It’s chaotic.
I hate the silence.
Maybe we’ll both be fired. We could always apply for a job at Starbucks. He could spend his mornings flirting with college girls he never really intends on dating, and I’d still get my fancy coffee without spending five dollars.
I grab my one-dollar-and-four-cents-a-cup coffee then take the creamer from the fridge. “I’ll pick him up. And for what it’s worth, I hope they take it easy on you… On both of us.”
“You’re good, babycakes. None of this is your fault. I’ll make sure they all know that.”
Brody is immature, irresponsible, and annoying as shit, but when he cares, he cares big. Kind of like the brother I never had.
“Laters, baby,” he says, and I hear the smile in his voice.
“Tell me you did not just quote Fifty Shades of Grey.”
He obviously got the line from the movie because I’ve never seen him hold a book, much less read one. I stir my coffee, and he laughs then ends the call.
The rest of the morning, I scramble through my usual routine of making my bed, turning the dial to the refresh cycle on the dryer because ironing clothes is for overachievers, then getting dressed.
Next thing I know, I’m leaning over my bathroom counter staring in the mirror with my mouth wide open as I apply mascara and thinking what in the actual fuck am I doing? I changed my top three times before deciding on an American Eagle tank top that looked halfway decent with my jeans, and now I’m cursing God for giving me invisible lashes. I even put on lipstick.
This.
Is.
Ridiculous.
I’m putting way too much effort into my appearance for someone who probably won’t even get out of my car.
I shouldn’t get out of my car.
I won’t get out of my car.
Four hours later, I’m parked in front of The Taproom, staring at a shirtless god and… getting out of my effing car.
Not far from a large wooden sign that reads The Taproom, a tall guy with gorgeous olive skin and jet-black hair is pacing back and forth and having an intense conversation with someone on the other end of his cell phone. Every few seconds, his hands fly through the air as if to emphasize his point, even though the caller can’t see him. Liam is shoveling piles of debris and ash into a steel barrel while Blaze carries a second barrel to a commercial-sized dumpster.
When he lifts the barrel over his head to empty the contents, muscles I didn’t even know existed tighten and flex when he moves. There’s no way that barrel weighs less than a hundred pounds, but he handles it as if it’s nothing. His jeans hang low on his hips, exposing the elastic band of his boxer briefs and I wonder for a split second what it would feel like to run my finger inside the top of that band. I’m going right to hell for the things going through my mind. His golden skin glistens with sweat, and my blood rushes in my ears the minute I find his eyes on me.
He sets the barrel on the ground and wipes his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. Then he walks over to where I stand, swallowing hard when he sees me. “Damn.”
I look away, embarrassed at the way his reaction makes my cheeks heat but inwardly high-fiving myself for not showing up looking like I just rolled out of bed.
Blaze brings his hand to cup the back of his neck the same way he did last night. “I mean… It’s two o’clock already?”
I shrug because for some reason the beads of sweat rolling across his pecs and down his stomach have made me momentarily forget how to speak.