Oh, God. I am otterly fucked.
CHAPTER 9
It’s a Fucking Frittata
Harley
The smell of bacon makes my eyes fly open, and I bolt up in bed, my disoriented, sleep-addled brain looking around my bedroom in confusion. I quickly fling back the covers and jump out of bed, even more confused when I look down and realize I’m still wearing the same clothes I had on yesterday—skinny jeans and a plain white T-shirt. I spot my flannel shirt folded up neatly on the foot of my bed and my ankle boots placed next to each other on the carpet directly below it.
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I try to remember what the hell happened last night. I remember ordering pizza, finding out Dax is a fucking saint, and sucking down beer like it was water while listening to my dad and Dax trade cop horror stories.
Shit! I must have passed out.
I don’t know how in the hell I got to my bed last night, and I can only assume drunk, sleepwalking Harley turned into a neat and tidy person who suddenly stopped flinging her clothes off and leaving them wherever they landed on the way to bed. I’m pretty sure there’s still a purple bra out on the hallway floor from a week ago. But right now, I’m more concerned that not only do I smell bacon, but I can also hear it sizzling and popping while it cooks on my stove out in the kitchen. I sure as hell know I didn’t start drunk sleep-cooking bacon and then come back to bed. I don’t even have bacon in my fridge. I don’t think I have anything edible in my fridge. Most of my meals are eaten in my car in between appointments or at my dad’s house.
Figuring there’s only one explanation, since the last time my dad or brother attempted to cook bacon, it no longer smelled or looked like bacon when they were done, I quickly bend down and grab the baseball bat out from under my bed. No matter how much my mouth is watering at that delicious smell wafting down my hallway and into my bedroom, there is clearly a burglar in my home who took a break from robbing me to cook himself some breakfast.
Sure, this is going to sound stupid when I’m fully awake, but right now, with my hands wrapped tightly around the grip of the bat and the barrel resting on my shoulder as I tiptoe out of my room and down the hallway, this all makes perfect sense.
Kicking the bra and a random black Converse out of the way as I go, I hear whistling the closer I get to the opening of my hallway that leads into the kitchen area. Pausing in the doorway when I get a view of my kitchen table, I forget all about the hungry burglar who brought his own breakfast meat.
At least, I think it’s my kitchen table.
My feet automatically move me right out from the hallway, stopping in front of the table as I stare down at it in confusion. Before I passed out last night, I had a card table that served as sort of a kitchen table, which sat a few feet away from the island. It was basically used as a place to store mail and case paperwork for Claws and Effect, and I sometimes used it to rest my hip on while I went through the paperwork and scarfed down some takeout. Now?
“When the hell did I get kitchen chairs? And a table that doesn’t fold?” I mutter.
“The same time you got groceries.”
“AAAHHH!”
The ear-piercing shriek I let out at the sound of a deep, male voice from behind me is almost as embarrassing as jumping and whirling around so fast I forgot I was holding a baseball bat. It goes flying out of my hands, clamoring across my tiled kitchen floor until it smacks into the base of the fridge and comes to a stop.
“Were you seriously going to hit me with a bat?” Dax complains, moving forward to set a plate down on the rustic, farmhouse kitchen table next to me with four matching chairs, the plate piled high with the crispy bacon that woke me up. “Good thing I rethought my earlier decision of serving you breakfast in bed. You probably would have shot me. There’s water and aspirin there on the table for you.”
It’s too early, and I am too hungover and undercaffeinated to deal with this right now.
“What the hell are you doing in my house? How did you even get in? Why do I have kitchen chairs and placemats? Is… is that… is that a fucking omelet?” I shout, leaning closer to the table to get a better look at the egg dish that looks like it was ripped right out of the pages of a cookbook.
“It’s a fucking frittata with spinach, tomatoes, and feta cheese, thank you very much,” Dax informs me, sliding a blue oven mitt on his hand as he walks over to the oven, pulls out a sheet pan, then sets it on a cooling rack in the middle of the island. “And these are sheet pan s’mores.”
“I own a sheet pan?” I mumble, still looking back and forth between my kitchen table and Dax in bewilderment.
“Shockingly, yes. It was dusty and still had the barcode sticker on it from the store, but I found it,” he replies, pulling off the oven mitt and tossing it on the counter. “I also found your tampons in the silverware drawer. I moved them to the cabinet under the bathroom sink, which coincidentally is where I found the sheet pan. It was like a fun yet weird scavenger hunt with no treasure at the end.”
I try to come up with a sarcastic reply, but my brain is still full of stale beer, and I’m annoyed that I’m not at all annoyed I no longer have to waddle out to the kitchen with my pants and underwear around my ankles for five days every month.
“What do you even eat on a daily basis?” Dax uses a spatula to scoop a few s’mores onto a plate before walking around the counter to set them down on the table with the rest of the food. “Your fridge only had ketchup packets, ten different flavors of coffee creamer, and the entire brewery you drank last night, and your pantry only had a bag of stale pretzels and ten boxes of Lucky Charms with no marshmallows in them.”
“I eat takeout mostly,” I respond, ignoring the brewery comment, since my head tells me he’s right. “If I do have time to throw something together, I do it at my dad’s house. Otherwise, neither one of those overgrown children will eat anything good for them. Or they’ll burn the house down trying to make something.”
Now would be a good time for my brain to wake up and remember I’m pissed that this man broke into my house this morning and redecorated.
“Well, there’s plenty of good things for you to eat now. Except for the s’mores. They’re good, but they’re definitely not good for you. I made those with Nutella and Hershey bars. Sit. Eat,” Dax orders, pointing at the table.
I actually whimper when I look down at the plate of graham cracker sandwiches with chocolate and perfectly toasted marshmallows oozing out of the sides. But then I look up at Dax, and I remember this is not normal to have him in my kitchen, cooking me food that definitely was not in my fridge when I passed out last night, serving it to me on a real, adult kitchen table I sure as shit do not own. It doesn’t matter that he looks so right standing in my kitchen, still wearing the yellow I’m a Ray of Fucking Sunshine T-shirt, while he sternly points at the table. It doesn’t matter he must have spent hours doing all of these nice things for me while I slept, and it’s making me feel unnaturally warm and gooey inside.
He broke into my house to use my kitchen as an actual kitchen while I was sleeping. If that’s not the beginning of a true crime documentary, I don’t know what is.
“I’m not doing anything until you tell me why you’re in my house and where all this shit came from,” I reply petulantly, crossing my arms in front of me and refusing to look at the table or sit down.