He did, but only after a slight hesitation.
After he dropped it, I offered it to her mom, who took it and shook it in a better grip than I’d gotten from her dad.
“Nice to meet you both,” I lied.
Anderson snorted, catching the lie.
“But it would be nice if you’d check out so we can eat,” I said, unsubtly hinting at them to get the fuck away from us. “Iris has a bit of a drive to get to her hotel room for the night.”
“Hotel room?” Abby asked. “You’re not staying at home? Why would you waste money on a hotel room?”
Iris looked at her sister, and with dead eyes and a snarl on her tongue, said, “I don’t think that our parents would appreciate me bringing Callum home for the night when we can get pretty loud.”
Anderson’s wife choked as Anderson sighed.
Neither of Iris’s parents’ faces cracked.
It was her father who said, “You know that we’re not those kinds of parents, Iris. You can bring your man home. Our rooms are soundproof anyway.”
I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Her parents didn’t care that I would fuck her under their roof?
“That’s just disgusting. How long have you known him anyway? You and Teller broke up, what, two weeks ago?” Abby asked.
There was a long moment of silence and then Iris said, very carefully, “How would you know that? I haven’t even told anyone we broke up until right now.”
Abby opened her mouth and then closed it.
She repeated that for a long few seconds before saying, “Umm…”
Iris narrowed her eyes, and it was then that I realized something. “You did him, didn’t you?”
There was an awkward moment of silence and then, “They were broken up. Mostly.”
“Son of a bitch,” Anderson said as he latched onto Abby’s arm and started to pull her out of the restaurant.
The parents went just as fast, and then we were left with Anderson’s wife.
“We didn’t know,” she promised.
Iris was looking at her plate, her face a mask of indifference.
“I don’t quite think it matters right now,” I told her bluntly. “Think you should probably take a hike.”
The waiter brought our food over then, causing Iris to perk up slightly.
God, her love for food made me fucking happy.
Even the news of her sister fucking her ex-boyfriend couldn’t put a damper on her enjoyment.
“I’ll call you.”
Then the sister-in-law was gone, leaving only Iris and me.
“You should try some of this,” Iris said, holding a chip dipped in queso for me to eat.
I bent forward at the waist and brought the chip into my mouth.
She started to pull her hand back but I caught it before she could, swallowing the chip, and then pulling her finger into my mouth to suck off the cheese.
Iris’s eyes dilated slightly before I dropped her finger and her hand completely, before going to grab my own chip.
“Teller’s looking worse and worse by the second,” I told her. “If I had a better living situation, you’d already be moved into my place, your clothes would be in my closet, and Teller just a bad memory miles away from you.”
Iris’s face softened. “We need to convince Lindy to move into my place.”
I tilted my head to the side as I said, “How would I do that?”
Iris’s eyes crinkled at the sides as she said, “Let me brainstorm about it.”
And she did.
By the end of dinner, she had some pretty solid ideas, ending with an almost foolproof plan to get Lindy out of my house and into hers.
Good thing was, it worked.
Bad news was, Iris had so many clothes I had to completely move all of my shit out of the closet.
CHAPTER 18
My ex has three spirit animals: lion, ass, cheetah.
-Text from Iris to Callum
SHINE
“Hey, Lindy,” I heard Iris’s voice as she walked into the house, acting for all she was worth as if she had every right in the world to walk in unannounced.
Not hearing Lindy’s response, I started to grin.
That grin got huge when she made her way into the kitchen where I was standing barefoot, drinking a cup of coffee.
She returned my smile as she said, “Hey, did the exterminators make it out yet?”
There was a long silent pause and then, “What do you mean exterminators?”
During our dinner two weeks ago, Iris and I had tried to come up with a way to get Lindy to take me up on Iris’s offer to switch houses.
It’d been mentioned that Lindy was deathly afraid of scorpions, but hadn’t actually mentioned it to anyone. I’d mentioned how, one time while at the zoo, Lindy had not only shied away from the reptile room, but had gone sheet white at the mention of scorpions.
Which had made Iris’s wheels turn.
However, Lindy had been gone the last two weeks visiting her parents in Florida, leaving us unable to implement our plan until today.
I’d texted Iris last night—she’d been on a red-eye flight working a pickup flight that would hopefully keep her off for two weeks now—and she’d decided to come over the moment she woke up.
Which, apparently, was now.
“Yeah, we saw a couple of scorpions the last couple of days,” Iris said conversationally. “He was calling the exterminator today.”
“I did call,” I said as I saw Lindy’s face go white like it did that one time at the zoo. “They said there was nothing they could do for scorpions. That they came in when it was extremely wet outside. They said that likely, there’s some way into our house that we don’t know about, and they’ll probably show up randomly until the rain stops. Said, since we have a field outside our house, he was surprised we weren’t seeing mice as well as scorpions.”
Lindy swayed on her feet, her eyes scanning the floors frantically.
“But don’t worry, we haven’t seen any upstairs,” Iris said. “I think that’s why I haven’t seen any at my place. I have a big porch they’d have to go up to get to my place.”
Lindy took a step out of the kitchen. “W-where did you see them?”
“Kitchen, my bedroom, and the laundry room,” I answered.
Which happened to be right next to Lindy’s room.
“Oh, gosh,” she whispered quietly, likely not for us to hear.
My lips quirked behind the coffee cup that I’d lifted to my mouth.
After taking a sip, it was to hear Lindy say, “Hey, I was thinking. You want to go ahead and switch like you talked about? Move in with Callum? Let me take your place?” She looked as if she was trying to come up with something convincing. “I, uh, was informed that my job was liquidating, and they were going to let a few of us go. I want to make sure that I can afford my place on my own salary.”
I didn’t believe her for a second.
She worked for a good firm that was close to her family. There was no way she would be one of the ones being let go.
“Oh,” Iris said, “well, sure, I guess. I was having a problem with my ex anyway. I just found out that he slept with my sister.”
Lindy showed her the appropriate amount of disgust, then said, “When do you want to do the switch?”