If I left Kingstree in June, she’d move on. Probably find some other guy who didn’t play the drums or guitar or sing. The fucker might have heard of Emma Grant before meeting her. Might even be a fan and consider it his duty and privilege to cook for her. If gods loved me, he’d be terrible in bed. Otherwise, Emily would let him stay for more than ten minutes.
It was a predictable outcome. And unreasonable of me to expect she’d pine away for me or swear off other men forever. But her with some other guy sat in my belly like a lump of cold, congealed fat. I wanted to barf, even as my legs moved faster, my strides long and furious.
My jaw ached. I forced the muscles to relax. My dentist would be unhappy if I cracked a molar.
After looping around the trail three times, I headed home. Billy’s Plumbing had replaced my water heater, and it was producing plentiful hot water.
But I’d be damned if I’d take advantage of that.
I grabbed my stuff—and breakfast ingredients—and went over to Emily’s house. It was after eight, so she was probably up. Or maybe she’d be sleeping in after finishing her project.
I knocked extra quietly just in case. If she was sleeping in her room, she wouldn’t hear me. But if she was in the living room, she would.
She opened the door with a confused look, squinting at me through her glasses. She’d told me she wore them when her eyes felt too dry for contact lenses or if she’d stayed up too late. I hoped she’d been up all night thinking about me. But it was more likely she’d been thinking about her next book.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sweeping her gaze over my sweaty body.
I watched her mouth move as she spoke. Everything inside me tightened, blood pumping hotter and faster, even though I should have been cooling down after the run. “Here for a shower, like always.”
“Isn’t your water heater fixed? I saw the contractor’s van outside your house yesterday.”
“Oh…you did? Yeah, uh, the water heater they brought over was DOI.” Dev would be proud. He believed white lies were perfectly ethical, if done in the service of getting a girl you wanted. I wasn’t a fan of lying in general, but I had kept my promise not to play the drums, so I felt like I’d earned the right to use her shower.
“DOI?”
“Dead on installation.”
Her frown grew deeper. “Seriously? Didn’t they test it before bringing it over?”
“Probably not. If they’d installed it in somebody’s house, it wouldn’t look new. People don’t want to pay new equipment prices for stuff that looks used,” I said, certain she wouldn’t know anything about contractors or how they worked. Most people didn’t. Hell, I didn’t. The crew that had come yesterday probably tested the water heater before leaving their office to make sure they wouldn’t have to come out a second time.
“Oh. Well, okay.” She let me in and went to her tablet on the coffee table.
I followed her inside, thanking my lucky stars Emily bought my story. The house looked tidier. No empty beer bottles or candy wrappers.
Since I was sweaty, I put the pancake mix and bacon on the counter and went upstairs for a quick shower. I still didn’t have a plan for what to do about leaving in June and Emily being in Kingstree. I couldn’t exactly ask her to come with me. We weren’t anything yet.
But I felt like I couldn’t leave her behind, either.
The thing was that I didn’t know how to move us to the next stage soon enough that when I broached the topic of going to Dallas, she wouldn’t look at me like I’d lost my mind. If it had been any woman but Emily, things might’ve gone smoother and easier. I could’ve dazzled her with my fame or songs or whatever. But then, if Emily were the type to drool over all that, I wouldn’t like her.
Catch-22s were a bitch.
I should let my subconscious work it out. A perfect plan would probably bubble up from somewhere. Running hadn’t produced anything, but maybe sticking my finger into a live socket would. Self-torture might work, the way Emily had claimed.
When I was back down in the kitchen, Emily was tapping at her tablet, her eyebrows pinched. I made pancakes and fried up the bacon—feeding her could never hurt whatever plan I’d come up with later—then served everything on the dining table.
“Breakfast is ready,” I said.
“So soon?” She sniffed. “Mmm, bacon…”
Her smile made my chest puff out like a peacock. She came over and we sat down to fill our stomachs.
“Hey, which do you like better?” she asked, showing me a picture of a book cover on the tablet. After a moment, she flipped to another image. The model was the same, but the lettering was different. One had a swirly font in hot pink and baby blue, and the other had a blockier one in red and white.
“Is that your cover?”
She nodded. “I didn’t get to finalize it earlier because my cover artist was sick.”
“I like the pink and blue.” My sister would like that one, and Emily was selling to women.
“Really?” Her eyebrows went up. “Not the block font?”
“Women like pink.”
“Hmm. True.” She looked at the pink and blue version again. “You’re probably right.” She grinned. “The model’s hot no matter what font you put around him.”
Was he? I wasn’t paying attention to the guy at all, but I should’ve known that would be Emily’s focus. “Lemme see that again.”
She gave me the tablet. Yeah, he was a handsome bastard. Smirking, his eyes on the potential reader. The suit worked for him, too. But I bet he didn’t look nearly as good out of his clothes. Most men didn’t, I decided, ignoring the small bit of acidic burn in my belly. “You like guys in suits?” The last time I’d put on a suit was Grandma’s funeral.
“Oh yeah. Nothing says billionaire like a man in a suit. And I like ’em pretty. Real pretty. As long as they’re pretty, they don’t have to be in suits.” She gave me a long, speculative look, opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then cleared her throat. “So. When are they coming back to replace your defective heater?”
No way that was what she wanted to ask. And she didn’t have to sound so eager to get rid of me. I’d been a pretty decent hot-water borrower. “They weren’t sure. Next month, maybe?” It was the first thing that popped into my head. So I added in mumble, “Something like that.”
She dropped her jaw. “Next month? Who are they again? I’m going to blacklist them.”
Sorry, Billy. But I’ll leave a fair review on Yelp. Which actually wouldn’t be all that complimentary, especially given how uncaring and uninterested their phone person had been when I contacted them. “They weren’t very specific.”
“You didn’t pay them for the nonworking heater, did you?”
“Uh, no. Not yet.” Oh look: my nose seemed to have grown two inches. “I’ll pay them when they replace it.”
“Next month, geez. Are they mining the iron to make the heater with?”
“Probably.” I laughed as her eyebrows moved up and down in outrage. I didn’t think she was aware of the tic, and it reminded me of an angry marmot I’d seen on a documentary once.