I slide into the dark, and everything is good, until I have no idea how many hours later when I wake up with a gasp.
Rufus is sitting on my chest, sliding onto my neck. People are talking and laughing down the hall. A small human is squealing nonsensical words. And the light filtering through the slats in the blinds has an early afternoon quality to it.
I’m at Tyler’s place.
He came for me.
He found me.
Did he tell me he loves me?
Never mind that.
Did I tell him I love him?
I push Rufus off, throw the covers back, leap out of bed, and my head reminds me that we subsisted basically on alcohol and cheese yesterday, and I go down.
Am I wearing pants?
Am I still wearing my own boobs?
And why does my hip feel like my padding is bruised?
“Aw, Muffy, it’s like finals week again.” Veda pokes her head into the door, smiling widely, and I’d hug her, except I won’t be trying my legs again.
“What day is it?”
“Monday.”
“You’re still here.”
“I’m quitting my practice. It’s not what I want to do, and I wish I’d followed your lead out the door before med school graduation. There’s an opening for a biology professor at Copper Valley University. I have an interview today.”
I gape at her. “Am I still drunk?”
“No. You inspired me, actually. You’re out here, doing what you want to do, making a difference on your own terms, while I—I just don’t like people.”
“Um, you know students are people?”
She laughs. “I know. But lecturing a roomful of possibly jaded, possibly optimistic twenty-year-olds and doing research sounds so much better than listening to everyone’s Aunt Betty and Uncle Milton ask why their goiter is acting up again. At least I know the students won’t listen to my advice, and I can actually grade them accordingly. I can’t flunk someone on their cholesterol test. My dad wanted me to be a doctor with my own practice because he couldn’t. I want to be a teacher because I can.”
“That’s—that’s amazing, Veda!”
“Especially if it means I get to see you more.” She helps me to my feet as the scent of fried something wafts into the room. “Also, Tyler DoorDashed us Cod Pieces.”
“Oh my god, I love him.” I slap my hand over my mouth, but then I whisper it again. “I love him. And he said he loves me. I don’t think I drunk-hallucinated that.”
“Muffy. He passed out at a funeral for you. The man has loved you a lot longer than he’s been willing to admit it.”
“Completely true.” Tyler himself pokes his head into the room and smiles at me, making me warm from my toes to my split ends. He’s in athletic pants and a Thrusters T-shirt, his hair barely damp like he’s been to practice and come home and showered, his black eye ugly but beautiful at the same time, his grin completely intoxicating, but in the good way.
I could very happily have a Tyler Jaeger smile hangover for the rest of my life.
“Fries and fish?” he asks. “Veda swears it’s your favorite hangover cure. If she’s lying I’ll toss her off the balcony.”
My feet carry me to him with minds of their own, and I’m throwing my arms around him and peppering his face with kisses merely because I want to. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
Veda laughs again. “So should I shut the door, or are you going to let Muffy eat her fish while it’s still hot?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, and shuts the door on her way out.
And I suddenly realize why it tastes like moldy shoe leather in my mouth.
I drop back to my heels and clamp my hand over my mouth as Tyler leans in.
He tilts a brow at me over his good eye. “What?”
“I have bad breath.”
“I love your bad breath. How’s your head?”
“A little swishy.” Sort of like my heart. Warm and swishy. But my heart’s all good.
It’s all good.
“You came to find me yesterday,” I whisper. “I thought you were mad about me going on dates.”
“It’s your job, Muffy. I was mad that the tabloids attacked you, and that you were acting like there was anything wrong with you, and that you needed to defend yourself, and that anyone in my family might’ve judged you for being anything other than the determined, big-hearted, amazing woman that you are.”
I drop my head to his chest. “You know I’m always going to feel a little like a disaster, right?”
“And I’m always going to be here to assure you that it’s completely normal to have off days, and that you’ve worked harder and put more heart into everything you do than most people I know.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“Even though you don’t want to get married?” Yes, yes, I’m pushing it.
“It’s entirely possible I’ve realized a life without you would be more torture than a life of commitment and regularly banging your sexy body. So now, clearly, I have to spend the next several months of my life bringing you regular sacrifices of good food and magic penis so that you reconsider your anti-relationship stance too. Fair warning—I play dirty. And I happen to know you like dirty, so the sooner you give up and admit you want me forever too, the better for the both of us.”
I won’t cry. I won’t.
Okay, I’m totally sniffling up the happy tears.
And squeezing his ass.
Oh my god, I love his ass. And the way his cock twitches against my belly. And the way he’s pressing his hot lips to my forehead while he squeezes my ass.
The door bangs open, and I leap and grab my head.
A petite, very tattooed, pixie-haired woman in cat-eye glasses eyeballs me as she flips the laptop in her hand so that the screen is facing us. “You Muffy?” she asks in a six-pack-a-day voice.
“Am I?” I whisper to Tyler.
She’s a little scary.
And while Tyler’s scary too, the buff tattooed guy with a buzz cut behind the woman holding what looks like my laptop is possibly even scarier.
“Yeah. This is Muffy,” Tyler says with a grin.
“Good. I got your website fixed. Upgraded, even. Won’t even have to meet half these guys after their IP address goes through this little extension I installed for you. It’ll pull up full criminal history right down to speeding tickets and any incriminating photos on their phones. If anyone asks, it’s legal and I wasn’t here.”
She does that here, take it gesture, and Tyler grabs it from her. “Appreciate the help.”
“Tell the Zeusinator we expect him in the bedroom at four PM sharp,” she replies.
Her bodyguard growls.
She snickers.
And then they’re both gone.
“What was that?” I whisper.
Tyler nudges me out of the bedroom. “Your site crashed. I know someone who knows someone who could fix it, and the bunnies threatened to castrate me if I didn’t make the call to make it happen.”
“They did not!”
“They might’ve. You were drunk. Can’t tell me otherwise.”
“Muffy!” My Muff Matchers support group is in the living room—every last member, even though it’s a Monday—and they all leap to their feet when we step out of the hallway.