Dani
Opening Day
The only thing better than pound cake at two a.m. was getting pounded at two a.m.
Unfortunately, the only one getting pounded tonight was my roommate’s girlfriend. The two of them had been going at it for over an hour.
I nearly tumbled from my perch on the kitchen counter when the cuckoo clock in the dining nook chimed—the one Pink had insisted on bringing back from Germany last month, despite the astronomical shipping cost.
Make that two hours.
I scooped up another bite of cake, topping it off with some Cherry Garcia, a handful of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and finally, the pièce de résistance, one of Pink’s homemade bread and butter pickles. The guy might have painfully loud, wall-banging sex, but at least he knew his way around the kitchen.
Andgarden, for that matter. Our fridge was stocked with more homegrown produce than most farmers’ markets thanks to hisgreen thumb—er,Pinkthumb. Who would have guessed that living with a pro-baseball player would yield so many benefits?
Just notthosekinds of benefits.
A series of moans and groans echoed down the stairs, keeping pace with the headboard thwacking the wall. For fuck’s sake, I knew that athletes—especially those nearly ten years my junior—had incredible stamina, but they had to come up for air at some point, right? Or, at the very least, replenish their . . . fluids.
Bleh.
I suppressed the urge to gag. It was probably best not to focus on my friend-turned-roommate’s fluids while eating. He had already tainted donuts for me when I’d walked in on him and Nessa acting out some phallic ring toss fantasy in our living room on Valentine’s Day.
There was no way he was taking Ben and Jerry from me, too. Especially not when I needed them most.
Growing up, ice cream had always been a luxury, one reserved for every other birthday—to “keep me humble”—or when my mom had brought home more tips than usual. It had been all she could afford, and I’d accepted that. But I’d also more than made up for it as an adult.
These days, I kept at least one pint stocked in the freezer at all times. It was a hard and fast rule of mine, a reminder of just how far I had come since leaving our one-bedroom apartment in South Baltimore fifteen years ago. Just yesterday, I had restocked my supply, opting for Cherry Garcia and something called Spuds and Fudge.
Nothing exorcised my personal demons quite like a bowl of Vermont’s finest—it was my therapy in a cardboard cup. That or a long run. I could outrun half of the guys on the team, and I had the gold medal from this past fall’s Rosé Run to prove it.
Pink was still salty about that one.
I rested my head back against the upper cabinets and focused on the swirl of cherry, chocolate, and pickle brine coalescing in the bottom of my bowl, like a chocolate milk and pickleback hybrid. Minus the alcohol, of course.
Fuck, I was gonna miss vodka.
“Hey.”
I looked up just as Nessa padded down the final few steps, clad only in a T-shirt, panties, and that “I just get railed” smile.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.
“It’s a little hard to, what with all the . . . banging.”
A pink hue colored her cheeks. It wasn’t a blush born from embarrassment, but rather satisfaction—earned and shameless—the kind of glow that came from good sex and zero regrets.
And why shouldn’t she be proud? Nessa, a born and bred Rose City native, had baggedtheJared Pink, Cy Young Award nominee and, as of last year, a World Series champion. On top of that, business was booming at her romance bookstore, Smutty Buddies, though that had less to do with who her boyfriend was and more to do with her being a boss ass bitch.
Then again, it didn’t hurt that several of the guys on the team had started their own book club and were known to stop by the shop at any given moment. The Rose City Roasters had officially made it to Booktok.
Nessa and I had become fast friends even before she and Pink had started dating. No surprise there, though. Two tattooed, bisexual girls who used sarcasm as a defense mechanism? We’d basically been cut from the same dysfunctional cloth.
“Right,” she said, biting her bottom lip like she was almost sorry.Almost. “Guess we weren’t exactly subtle.”
I gave her a look.
“Subtle? Ness, the drywall moved.”
