Tonight is looking up. Thank you, Paul.
Once her eyes met mine, she turned the most adorable shade of red. Looking at her, I could see she was deliciously all woman. Probably older than my twenty-four, but not much. She met my eyes again and emitted a kind of garbled sound that made me laugh. My uncontrolled, unpolished laugh slipped right out.
Oh, God.It was my turn to be embarrassed. Everybody had something to say about my laugh. High school was where I learned tobottle it up. It’s a different kind of pain when people go so quickly from laughing with you to laughing at you. I had been tall, thin, wore glasses, and could barely read. They didn’t really need the extra ammunition, but they had it.
My mind was reeling on how to fix this when suddenly, she smiled. This woman. This storm-drenched little, curvy cutie? She smiled at me like my laugh was the best thing she’d heard all day. And just like that, I was a goner.
I wanted her.
It took time, and it was time I loved taking. Eventually—finally, I was hers, and I made her mine. Until I lost her.
PART I
THE BREAKDOWN
1
THE FAVOR
BECKY
3 weeks earlier
An awkwardclangbrought my attention from the stove to the old ass clock on the wall. An antique find, it was one of the first items Carter and I both looked at on one of our random outings. We heard it go through one of its strange clanking dings and immediately agreed that it belonged in our kitchen. Each arm of the clock is a utensil, and it makes the most unusual half chimes, half dings every three hours. I squinted to see the knife was on the twelve, and fork on the six.Damn.Work was over at four, and I last heard from Carter when he kissed me goodbye in the morning. That last part was not unusual. Not lately, at least.
My third phone call went to voicemail, so I left my usual loving and caring message. The type I tended to leave for my man when he was not communicating with me. "Hey, asshat, where in the hell are you? I actually made dinner tonight that is not boxed or a frozen pizza.” I was standing at the stove in our little kitchen, spoon in hand, fighting the urge to toss everything into the trash and grab that frozen pizza. Instead, I stirred our sad fajita filling aggressively for a moment while continuing my rambling message. “I am having one hell of atime keeping it hot without turning it into burned sludge." My last two words were punctuated by more aggressive stirring and sounded more likeburrruruurnedsludge. I paused to look at the results and shrugged. It was officially too late to save the appearance of dinner—those poor peppers had seen better days. However, the taste was fine.
Probably.
I disconnected the call and quickly typed out a message.
Me
Seriously, honey, I'm actually worried. Please send me a sign of life so I don't have to send out a search party.
The message delivered, but it didn’t get marked as read. Shaking off my unease, I put the phone down, turned the stovetop to low and covered the meal that vaguely resembled fajitas. The clock on the oven read twenty after.Stop checking the time, Becky.
Needing a distraction, I restarted my audiobook and meandered into the living room, plopping myself onto our couch. Sudoku on my screen as my earbud played a new romance by Mackenzie Madden worked great to keep my mind off of Carter. Not half a chapter later, the tell-tale rumbling of my fiancé's old-ass truck pulled my attention to our front door.
The tightness in my chest released, crawling up to my shoulders instead. After an afternoon of dubious communication my emotions warred with each other—relief and frustration.Thank goodness he's home safeare the first words that trickled through my mind. The second thought, the other part of me, was the one that won out once he walked through the door, snapping out loud, "What the fuck, Carter. I was worried and waiting, yet you're obviously not missing an arm or dead in a ditch somewhere."
Honestly, it was a roll of the dice which one it was going to be. Our eyes met across the room as the door thud shut behind him. His were full of warmth and humor—his usual response to my snark. He toed off his shoes, leaving them in the middle of the floor, and came lumbering up to me with a wide grin.
Sigh. I love that stupid grin on his stupid, beautiful, bearded face.
Carter leaned over where I was sitting and gave me a loud smacking kiss. "Dinner smells amazing." He visibly inhaled the supposedly amazing smell of our sludgy fajitas then held out his hands to help me up. I rolled my eyes but accepted his help and verbally pushed him, a little more gently about the timing of his arrival home.
"Yeah, we got a new customer whose car needs a bunch of work, and all our rentals are out.” I raised my brow at him when he stopped there as if that was all I needed to know. Instead of elaborating, he gripped my hand and launched me up from the couch to land practically in his arms. We paused there like that, with him hugging me close and me being held. He ended it by kissing the top of my head. “When that happens, Billy and Paul usually have a few of us play taxi service as a favor while we work on their cars."Hell, I remember them doing that before.He kept a hold of my hand and led me into our kitchen to prep our plates for dinner.
“Were you the only one who could do it?”Slimy Paul likely didn’t even give him the opportunity to choose.
“No, but it worked out where I do the majority of the Taxiing.”He can’t say no to save his life, and everyone is always taking advantage.
“You need to tell them to shove it up their asses next time they ask you to do something they won’t do themselves.”
I had everything out on the counter already, or so I thought. Carter grabbed an additional hot sauce from the designated hot sauce corner of our spice shelf. I placed his tortilla on his plate, and held my breath when he opened the pan to the chicken and veggies. He didn't even blink at the sad state of them, waving away the steam then loading his plate. I shouldn’t have worried so much about how it looked. Carter massacred my culinary delight by topping it off with a massive dollop of sour cream and a small river of hot sauce.
I swallowed my waited for further explanation on Carter’s late return time. When his mouth was full of his third bite of fajita, I recognized he wasn’t going to offer up any explanations.
