Penny:*winces* Threw it out the window.
Blakely:WHAT?
Penny:I know, I know. I panicked. When he left, I retrieved the shoe, but it needs a solid cleaning, and I’m not sure how to get puke out of a shoe.
Blakely:Is that why you’re not at work right now?
Penny:Correct. Puke shoe is in the bathroom sink, and I’m pacing, trying to figure out how to fix this.
Blakely:Do you have any of that OxiClean stuff? I heard it works well.
Penny:Will it bleach the shoe?
Blakely:I don’t think there’s bleach in it . . . is there? Uh, I don’t know.
Penny:Not helpful . . . wait, oh God! He’s home. HE’S HOME!
Blakely:Plot twist!
Penny:You’re not helpful.
Blakely:FaceTime me, I want to see his reaction.
Penny:You are dead to me.
“Penny, are you here?” Eli’s voice calls through the apartment. The rumble of his voice is normally soothing, but right now, at this moment, all it does is send a frightful chill up my spine.
What the hell is he doing here?
Shouldn’t he be at the arena doing hockey things? Getting ready for the game? Pumping some iron—I’ve never said that in my entire life—or perhaps taping up a stick? Why is he here? In this apartment, in the middle of my puke shoe crisis!
Does he have a radar that tells him when I’m in an embarrassing, compromised situation, prompting him to report to my side immediately?
“Penny?”
Panic consumes me as his voice grows louder. Oh God, he’s not going to go away. He can’t see me like this, all frazzled, and he sure as hell can’t see his shoe!
“Penny?” AHHHH! His voice is growing closer by the second. Think . . . think.
Paused in the middle of the bedroom, I look to the left, look to the right, think about burying myself under the bed . . . wait, that could work, but the shoe is in the bathroom . . .
And his footsteps are growing closer.
Me or the shoe.
Me . . . or the shoe.
I don’t have time to react. I don’t even have a moment to stick half my leg under the bed to hide before the bedroom door parts open.
He’s here.
Fear creeps up the back of my neck.
My stomach churns in a nasty shade of green, revisiting the nausea from this morning, but this is different. This is the being caught red-handed kind of nausea.
He’s going to see the shoe.
He’s going to see my panic.
