We’re awful.
We’re truly awful.
“If you feel a pull in your back, stopimmediately,” Dylan orders.
And then there’s that.
Careful, cautious concern from someone who has no reason to let me invade his life like this.
It’s a lot different fromCome on, Tavi, ten more minutes on that stair climber! I can SEE your dinner on your butt!
I know my mother meant well. I do. But her “meaning well” fucked me up good.
Although, is he—is Dylan staring at my butt?
Oh my God.
He is.
He’s staring at my ass.
His gaze lifts to mine, andgahagain.
His cheeks go ruddy like he knows he’s caught.
“Stop if I hurt my back,” I repeat back to him with a smile. Anhonestsmile. Dylan Wright is checking out my ass. “Got it.”
I squat, grab the toilet under the bowl, and lift.
He’s right.
It’s heavy.
But it feels good to use my muscles for good, and fixing a plugged toilet for Zoe, the Ladyfingers server whose son is a handful and a half, is definitely good.
“You got it okay?” Dylan asks. “Here. I’m stepping in the tub. Stand back, Grandma Lightly. Tavi, put it right where I was standing a minute ago.”
I lift and stand, move back two feet, and deposit it on the floor. Then I rise again and flex for the camera. “Beast mode,” I say with a toss of my hair and my gag-worthy social media smile.
Dylan’s still aiming his phone at both of us, video rolling, but while I can see my own face doing that half-flaky, half-sexy smile that usually gets me three or four more emails asking me to shill some other product, the camera can’t see his face as he stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time.
His lips are parted, his eyes serious, lids lowered just enough to make me wonder if he’s turned on by feminine shows of strength.
And that question isn’t doing any good for my panties, so I shove it away. “What’s next, Mr.Plumber?”
He shakes his head, but his smile isn’t nearly as easy as it comes back. “Gotta peel off that wax ring, and then, if we were replacing the toilet, we’d stuff a rag in the hole to keep all those icky sewer gases out until we get the new toilet in here, but since we need to remove an obstruction, after we remove the wax ring, you’re gonna go fishing for some raw chicken thigh and Captain America.”
Oh, good.
The gross part.
I wrinkle my nose. “Can I make my grandma do that?”
“No, Octavia,” Gigi replies.
I sigh and roll my eyes.“Fine.”
Dylan talks me through the wax-ring stuff, which is gross, and then the problem in the pipe in the floor comes into clear focus.
