Which means I could’ve said anything.
I reach for my phone in my pocket, but I’m still wearing my dress from last night.
Which has a pocket.
Waverly’s costume seamstress is a freaking goddess for that.
However—my phone isn’t there.
“Your phone’s on the charger in the bedroom,” Duncan says. “I saw it.”
That’s good news.
I autopiloted plugging my phone in.
Good job, me.
Also,who else did you text while you were drunk last night, me?
“You can look at your calendar later and get back to me,” Duncan adds. “I’m pretty open the next few weeks.”
“Not golfing every day?”
He grins. “For you andCroaking Creatures, I can cancel a tee time.”
Croaking Creaturesis a little niche. It started as a mockery of a popular sim game where you pick what animal you want to be, then go live on an island and grow fruits and vegetables and hunt and fish and raise livestock and build your dream house. The creators ofCroaking Creatureshad been playing the original game and started wondering what would happen if your character had an accident with an axe or didn’t fully cook their recipes and gave themselves salmonella. But it’s morphed into utter chaos in the years since launch.
It seems there’s a new way to hurt yourself and die—and respawn, naturally—every week or so.
Morbid, but hilarious and fun.
And seriously good stress relief.
“You donotplay.” He said he did last night. He named a favorite character.
I remember that part.
He hunches over, leaning his long, corded forearms on the countertop. “Our last away trip, we were on the plane, it’s like one in the morning because we were coming back from the West Coast, and I crowed so loudly in victory when my creature impaled himself on a tree branch while simultaneously having his slingshot malfunction and hit him in the eye that I woke up half the plane and had to buy them all dinner after the season was over.”
I stare at him for a very long beat, and then I crack up, which hurts, but I don’t care. “Double-death! Paisley was serious.”
The man has the nerve to hit me with the full force of his smile. His fucking gorgeous smile that comes with those killer dimples. The smile that swooned me right out of my panties the night we met.
“I’m going for triple next,” he says smugly.
I scoff. “I was out swimming, looking for a treasure chest with the black hole in it to plant at Dorcas’s house because she’s so annoying, but a seagull pecked my eye which made me crack the chest with the black hole, and my medicine turned out to be a poisonous mushroom since I bought it at the market instead of making it myself, but not even that ultimately did me in. That was the day the flying kitten of death attacked as soon as I surfaced with the black hole trying to suck me back in.”
He laughs, and it’s like we’re once again the two people who hung out and enjoyed each other’s company in a totally chill way a few years ago.
No pressure.
No expectations.
It’s why I kept hooking up with him longer than I would’ve normally let a guy stay. He was just so easy to be around.
Before I hurt him.
“You did the triple,” he says. “And with the flying kitten of death?”
