I come into the bottom of my shower, grunting and feeling like shit for it. Yep. Good job, Waylon. She’s leaving never and this is your life now.
CHAPTER 7
LYRIC
I’ve been livingwith Waylon for three days now. The first day, I grocery shopped and meal prepped for the week. I made each of us some protein yogurt with fruit, egg bites with bacon, rice with teriyaki chicken, steak and cheesy potatoes, and a pan of brownies. He thanked me like four times while trying not to hover. He would just walk past, crane his neck, offer his thanks, and keep going.
I was given rave reviews on Monday and thanked again after I made us chicken and dumplings for dinner. I’m starting to think he hasn’t had good home cooking in a while. When he eats what I make, he acts like it’s the first meal he’s had in days. Poor fella.
Tonight, I made us some tasty simple tacos with cilantro and lime, and he hasn’t spoken in several minutes and is on his second plate of them.
“Oh my god, thank you,” he says, then sucks the juices from his thumb. Dear Jesus.
“You know, you don’t have to thank me so profusely after every meal.” I giggle.
“Yes, I do,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, I cook okay. But having someone else do it makes it taste so much better.”
“Well, you’re welcome. And just a heads-up, I have to work late tomorrow, so I can’t do dinner, but there are prepped options you can help yourself to.”
There’s a little surprise registering on his face and possibly a touch of disappointment. Is he bummed that I won’t be here to cook a fresh dinner?”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you had late nights?” he says, his inflection making it sound more like a question.
“Just once or twice a week,” I say, shrugging. “That’s why I prep. Sometimes I don’t know until the last minute, and it was annoying to sometimes have a plan and sometimes be shit out of luck. I got tired of going to the drive-thru.”
“That’s fair,” he says. “And though it will be difficult, I will manage tomorrow on my own.”
We smile at each other from across the island and take a few more bites, when I’m struck with regret about not getting any wine while I was at the store. Today was rough and a glass with dinner would have been excellent.
“Do you have any wine?” A girl can ask, right?
“Umm,” he says. His eyes grow hazy like he’s thinking really hard about something or doing long division in his mind. “I don’t have any wine. But I do have weed.”
I giggle involuntarily. Weed always makes me giggly, even before I have it. I don’t smoke often, but every once in a while your girl likes to get goofy.
“I had a really very bad day,” I admit.
Waylon shoves the remaining half of taco into his mouth, and I’m shocked to see the entire thing actually fits.
“Say no more. You need to relax. Let me go change and I’ll grab it. The sunroom?”
I nod. “I’m going to go change too and put my hair up.” I hop off my stool and deposit my plate into the sink, very excited about the idea of relaxing with a little help from the devil’s lettuce.
I slide out of the black dress pants, white blouse, and chunky heels. My bra goes next as I reach into my dresser drawer with a specific shirt in mind. I feel it before I see it. It’s so soft and worn. I hold up the faded purple T-shirt with a picture of a possum wearing a tiara on it. To be clear, it’s not a cartoon possum. It’s a photograph of a real possum wearing a plastic tiara not unlike the ones every little girl used to have back in the day. I cut the neck out of it so the collar wouldn’t touch me too. It will pair excellently with my ratty gray sweatpants that are slightly too big and sometimes slide off me if I have a lot of weight in the pockets.
I replace my pantyhose with mismatched socks, shove my hair up into a knot on top of my head, and I’m ready to giggle. I grab two glasses of sweet tea plus a bag of gummy worms from the counter as I walk through the kitchen.
The sunroom is warm and the small couch I put in here is deep and cozy. I keep a blanket on it for those times I need to be extra comfy too. Waylon walks in right after me, a small wooden box the size of one for shoes in his hands. But that’s notquitethe first thing I see.
Waylon is wearing… glasses. Fuck me, is hewearingthose glasses. Tortoise shell, of course—the sluttiest of eyewear material.
“Since when do you wear glasses?” I try to say it as casually as I can, but holy hell, just when I thought he couldn’t get any more delicious, he slinks in here all tall and scruffy wearing black sweatpants and a white T-shirt, and those… those… slutty little man glasses.
“Since always.” He shrugs. “I normally wear contacts. I know Ridge and Killian have seen them, but I’m not even sure about Banks.”
I contemplate saying something like, “They look good,” but knowing it might come out more like, “Those stupid glasses make me want to sit on your stupid face,” I decide to just not say anything at all.
“I got this from Michigan,” he says, seemingly oblivious to my thirst for his trap.
