“Chrissy?” He asks, when I still haven’t said anything.
“Hmm?” It sounds almost dazed, slightly love drunk, leaving my closed lips.
“Is that Chrissy texting you?” His voice is harder now.
The thought strikes me that these past weeks I’ve had more fun than I’ve had in a long, long time. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. This youthful, bubbling feeling inside of me hasn’t been present in eons.
Giddy, joyous, inspired, hopeful for the future. All the telltale signs of the heart falling for someone new. If I weren’t lying down already, I might be knocked down by the realization that I think I’m falling back in love withmyself. And in this case, I think it’s the reflection of who I used to be, before life got soseriousall the time.
Fuck, I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed her. It’s good to see her back again. Like the first wildflower after a rough winter, I nurture the signs of life stirring within me, vow to protect and give it the right environment to grow, flourish, bloom.
I wipe a straggler of a tear from my eye as I sit up, pushing my torso off the floor and turning to face David head-on.
I shake my head at him, still smiling. “Oh, no, just someone from work. That kid I was telling you about, the one apprenticing.”
He screws his face up. “Ashton?”
“Asher, yeah.” I climb back up to the couch, reclaiming my spot on the middle cushion, the one no one ever wants to choose, but it’s worth it to be close enough to sneak some snuggles in with my man.
“Oh, right.” He pauses, looking consternated. “So what’s so funny?”
“Oh, it’s dumb.” I wave a hand at him, getting embarrassed already at what he’d think of my reaction if he saw the meme, or the joke that followed.
“What is it?” His determination is kicking in.
“Just a meme we’re joking about using for a client’s campaign.”
“Let me see.”
I shrug and pull up the picture on my phone, tilting it toward him so he can see it, too, and I laugh again at the ridiculousness of it. Truth in advertising, but not in a helpful way.
“I don’t get it,” he says flatly.
“It’s…it’s just a dumb joke. Saying there’s no rats in the pizza isn’t a very comforting advertisement, that’s all. It was just silly.”
His eyes narrow. “That’s what had you rolling around on the floor?”
My shoulders hunch in a bit, I pull the phone back. “Well, that started it. Then I laughed so hard it made me laugh even harder, and then there was another joke about—”
He pulls back from me, rolling his eyes and blowing out a breath, effectively shutting down my explanation wordlessly.
“I said it was dumb,” I defend.
“It sure is,” he says under his breath, nose buried back in his phone. Probably looking at spreadsheets, financial projections, the things I wouldn’t be surprised to learn are on his mind as he comes at nine-seventeen on the dot each and every Saturday night.
Where did that thought come from?
Unusually callous, unexpectedly snarky of me. But I still suspect there’s a fifty-fifty chance my sarcastic subconscious was right.
The thought almost starts another round of uncontrollable hysterics, and I force myself to keep it together until I get back to our room, where I let the real me out again. In private, away from the lack of understanding that seems to be creating new boundaries between the man I’ve invested years in and myself.
This festering uncertainty with David is becoming an infestation, eating away at my conviction in what the future holds, planting invasive seeds of doubt in the roots of our compatibility—in more areas than just the bedroom.
* * *
“The Ratless Pizza Campaign,”Asher singsongs, pretending to type in the title of our proposal on an imaginary keyboard. His chair is pulled up next to mine behind my desk, so we can both see my computer screen as we get all of our ideas organized into something anyone else will be able to understand and approve, give us the green light to bring them to life.
I snort. “Definitely not going with that one today.” He smirks at me. “I learned last night that there’s a cutoff in age, or maybe maturity, on that one.”
