"Fuck you, Dumbo. I was just trying to make Iris feel better." He cocked his head to look at me with an expression that showed how hard it was for him to not bust an amused gut. "Did my Little Red make you feel better about your arm?"
I didn't even have to think about it before nodding. Most of my life, my mom andyia-yiahad told me that the imperfection gave me character, that it wasn't a big deal. And it wasn't. Really. It was ugly, but I'd managed to hide it as well as I could because frankly, more than the looks of disgust, the pity faces I got were what truly bothered me.
Most people thought that the cancer made me into some weak, broken thing. The only thing I'd sacrificed along the journey of four different surgeries was physical strength. My left arm would never be as strong as my right for obvious reasons. I’d lost most of the muscle over a decade.But that was it. The doctors had worried that I'd lose mobility but thankfully—thankfully—I didn't. It was just a little smaller and weaker. Big deal. I couldn't ask for more when the prognosis could havebeen so glum.
I wasn't built out of glass. I'd been healthy and strong my entire life except for those stages throughout my childhood and teen years. It was me who had kept my family afloat when things had withered. No one needed to feel bad for me because of my arm. I was made of tougher stuff than that.
And in that moment, it struck me that I'd felt badfor myself. I didn't need to hide my arm to know what I was capable of, what I was made of.
Because like Blake and Slim had tried to point out, we all had our physical nuances. Blake's ears didn't make him any less friendly or creative. Slim's hair was probably his signature now that he didn't have to deal with a bunch of immature douche-bags.
I felt... renewed and grateful to them.
I couldn't help but smile over at him. "You definitely did," I snorted. "Pippi Longstocking."
To his credit, Slim waited almost a minute before tossing the balled up napkin at my face.
“I think I liked you more when you didn’t talk.”
I tossed the napkin back at him before collecting my leftovers. I opened up the fridge to put my stuff up and spotted Dex’s bottles of Nesquik lined up neatly inside. Snatching one up, I pressed the cold bottom of it to Slims’s neck as I walked past him and made my way toward the front. The office door was closed and so was the private room.
Dex was at his station with a client when I walked by. He happened to look up at the right time, so I held the bottle up and gave it a swirl, mouthing, “For you.” I tipped my head in the direction of my desk and grinned at him.
The smile that came over his face before he mouthed back, “Thanks,” made my chest constrict.
What was happening to me?
~ * ~ *
"You gonna make it all the way home?" Dex asked as we made our way out of Pins that night.
The last three hours had been painful for me to get through. Having such a fitful night of sleep the day before on top of the two hours I spent at the YMCA when Dex had dropped me off that afternoon, and then working, had paid a toll on my body. I'd caught myself falling asleep once or twice at my desk.
I nodded at him after waving goodbye to Blake. "Yeah, I'll be okay." At least I hoped so.
He gave me a weary glance like he wasn't entirely convinced I wouldn't fall off the back of his bike halfway to his house. It'd be his fault though. After I'd told him that morning that I wanted to have a swim at the Y, he'd insisted on driving me there and picking me up. It made more sense to me to drive myself there, and then work, but the man was relentless.
He had shit to do at Mayhem like always.
That shit to do was why I found myself back on his bike, bordering on delusional. So I'd blame the fact I was delusional on how I ended up in his bedroom just minutes later.
Yes, in his bed.
It’d been hard enough to keep my arms wrapped around him so that I wouldn’t fall off the bike. Dex’s warm body and the mind numbingly loud roar of his motorcycle were like a potent sleeping pill. It was only an intense fear of falling off and getting run over by a car that kept me hanging onto him for dear life through my drowsiness. The moment he parked in front of his house, my brain stopped working altogether. There weren’t any cars to run me over in his driveway, thank goodness.
I remember Dex pulling me by the hand across the circling driveway, into the house and past the living room before swiftly pushing me into his bedroom and closing the door in my face with an insistent, “You get the bed tonight.”
I wanted to argue with him, I swear I did, but when I pressed my hand to the corner of the mattress and realized it was a Tempurpedic, that thought went right back out. Just one night. At least that’s what I told myself.
Most of my clothes were stripped off, I rinsed out my mouth in his master bath, and stumbled into bed wearing just the tank top I’d worn that day and my panties. Exactly three seconds later, I was dead to the world. Hunger wasn't even a blip on my radar—nothing was.
Until the bed compressed behind me not long after I laid down.
“Dex?” I asked in a sleepy whisper. I was so tired it couldhave been those masked serial killers I’d been stressing about forever, and I wouldhave stayed in bed regardless.
Something touched my shoulder. A husky voice made a sleepy sigh. “Couch sucks, babe.”
Even though I was tired as hell, I knew that there was something completely inappropriate about sleeping in the same bed as my boss regardless of how hot he was. And that I might have a bit of a—nope, I wasn't going to say it was a crush. That would make me feel like I was sixteen again. I liked him, that simple. How could I not?
