38
***Cass***
After a long morning and afternoon of running around a paintball course and winning multiple rounds, I was physically tired but still wide awake. Aunt Jolene was out for the night so I put on a pair of cute pajamas one of the girls from the USC cheer team had given me as a gift before they all turned against me. They weren’t anything I’d have chosen but I was obsessed with them. The shorts and top set were both pink with cute little teddy bears on them. I didn’t even know why I liked them so much, other than maybe because they were the first set I’d ever had. Dad hadn’t been a matching pajama kind of dad.
I made some popcorn and curled up on the couch with a bottle of cherry coke and the remote. It was time for me to catch up on all my cheesy reality shows. They were a guilty pleasure, a dirty secret that I kept from everyone. I’d heard the guys talk about how lame they were when I was growing up but no matter how hard I tried to find them lame, too, I got sucked in. The cheesier, the better.
I was two episodes into a new housewives season when I heard a knock at the door. That quickly I’d lost the remote so I couldn’t pause the episode or even turn it down from the deafening volume it was at. One of the housewives had just slapped another one and they were all screaming at each other on an island somewhere and I didn’t want to miss a thing. I ran to the door and yanked it open, expecting Elvis or someone else for Aunt Jolene. I nearly screamed when I realized it was Hayes standing on the other side of the door with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face.
I watched him take in my pajamas and raise his eyebrows at me. “Shut up. Come in. I need to see what happens on this show really fast and then you can tell me what you need.”
He shut the door and followed me and didn’t say anything until the final credits rolled after a cliffhanger. While I searched the couch for the remote he bent down and picked it up off the floor behind the couch. “Looking for this?”
I grabbed it and paused the show. With the house suddenly quiet I winced and grabbed one of the pink pillows from the couch to hug. My braids were half undone and I felt like an idiot standing there in my girly pjs, so hooked on a show that I’d just yelled at him to come inside and shut up. “Hi.”
He gripped the back of the couch and grinned at me. “You look fucking adorable.”
I rubbed my cheeks to try and hide the fact that I was blushing. “Um, you’re here. Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just at home and I thought about you. About the game today, I mean, and how you kicked ass. And I thought I’d come over to tell you that…? Shit.”
I laughed at his awkwardness and motioned to the couch. “You can sit if you want.”
He did. He sat on one end of the couch and I took the other. He motioned to the TV. “You can watch. I don’t mind. I want toknow what happens after that blonde woman throws her drink on the other lady. Do these things go full on wrestling or just a little bit?”
I wanted to be annoyed but when I looked at him I could tell he was being genuine. He wanted to watch reality TV with me. I grabbed the popcorn from the coffee table and accidentally knocked over an old pasta jar full of chunky glitter. It tipped just enough to pour out onto Hayes’ shoes. We both stared at his shoes and then at each other before he silently kicked the shoes off and sank back into the couch.
“You can keep those.”
I laughed until tears were leaking down my cheek and I’d somehow gotten closer to him on the couch. It was hard not to with the way the couch dipped in his direction. It wasn’t exactly built for giant men to sit on. Not that he didn’t look right at home sitting on it. He looked good. He was freshly showered and even though I’d seen him just a few hours earlier, I had to wonder if his arms were even bigger.
In jeans and a t-shirt with his socked feet stretched out in front of him, he looked way better than the popcorn I was clutching to my chest. “Is your aunt home?”
I shook my head. “She’s out at a show, maybe. Or on a date. Or just strolling through town to find a man to fuck with. I never know.”
His blue eyes somehow looked even bluer surrounded by all the pink in the house. “Is a glitter spill something she’d get choppy over?”
I grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and scooted a little closer. “Nah. It’s a pretty normal occurrence here. You should see my text books.”
“I’ve seenyou. You always have glitter all over you. West’s had his truck cleaned so many times and there’s still glitter everywhere in there.” It was his turn to laugh at me whenI looked horrified. “Yeah, you’re a walking glitter bomb. We thought you knew.”
“No!” I slumped back into the couch and arranged the blanket over my legs. It was pink faux fur with a picture of Queen Elizabeth wearing a Dolly wig and a bikini on it.
Hayes stared at it for a few seconds before clicking his tongue. “Well, that’s just in poor taste.”
I laughed so hard that I thought I was going to pee myself. Sharing the oddities that I’d found in Aunt Jolene’s house with someone else was fun. I ran to the bathroom and when I came back I saw that Hayes had moved over so he was more in the middle of the couch. I sat next to him and smiled when he tossed the blanket over both our legs.
“I can’t for the life of me imagine what store sold this horrendous thing.”
I slapped his leg and grabbed the remote. “Respect the blanket or go, Ford.”
He stretched his arm out behind me on the couch and grunted. “Fine. But I think it’s setting unrealistic body standards for old ladies everywhere. That bikini is… It’s sitting pretty high.”
“Old ladies can get boob jobs, too, Hayes. Don’t be closed minded.”
39
***Hayes***
