“Sorry, man—I didn’t know you had company,” he says, sitting up straighter, trying to suppress the grin stretching across his face. “I knocked. You didn’t answer, so I let myself in. And here we are.” Winking, he says, “Hi, Beck.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Beck and I both say at the same time.
An amused smile crosses Carson’s face. “And what do you think it looks like?”
“We weren’t doing anything,” she stammers. “I came over to use his bathtub. Right, Ryan?” Her eyes widen as she asks me to back up her claim.
“Don’t be an asshole. While she was having a bath, I was having a shower.” When I see his face light up, I clarify, “In a different bathroom.”
“Well, that’s boring.” His shoulders drop, and he rolls his eyes with an exaggerated sigh.
“Why are you here?” I question my meddling friend.
“I was hungry, so I picked up pizza and thought I would share.” He rolls his hands and gestures one towards the food. “Ta-da. If your truck wasn’t here, I was going to bring it down to Beck’s place.”
It’s then that I notice the three pizza boxes stacked on the counter.
“That’s so nice of you. I love pizza,” Beck gushes as she pads across the kitchen in fuzzy socks and opens the box on top. “Do you guys do this a lot? If so, why have I never been invited?”
“Sometimes. How are you feeling?” he asks, smiling softly at her. “I heard that you’ve been sick for a few days.”
“So much better.” She leans her hip on the island and beams at him. “Did you know Ryan can get anything he wants at the snap of his fingers?” She snaps her fingers in front of her face.
“Can he?” he drawls, quirking an eyebrow as he turns to meet my eyes.
“It’s no big deal,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “I know a guy who makes deliveries.”
“To Emerley? That’s convenient.” I can’t wait for the interrogation later.
“You should see how much cough and cold stuff he bought. You would think I had the plague.”
“I was worried,” I mutter under my breath. She doesn’t need to know, but I would do it again one hundred more times if she needed me to.
“He took great care of me, and now I feel almost as good as new,” she tells him.
Turning back to me and bouncing on the balls of her feet, she asks, “Do you mind if we eat in the living room so we can watch the show I was telling you about?”
“Sure, we can do that.” I don’t think I could refuse her anything right now.
“Do you want to watch with us?” she asks Carson. “It’s a true-crime documentary.”
Over her head, he meets my eyes and smiles slowly. “I would love to. Thank you for asking.”
This fucker.
While I collect plates and napkins, Carson grabs the pizzas and carries them across the room and places them on the coffee table.
Beck helps herself to a slice and then plops between us on the couch.
“So, what are we watching?” Carson asks between bites of pepperoni pizza.
I listen to Beck describe the documentary to Carson in detail before we settle in to watch.
She barely makes it thirty minutes before she’s sound asleep, with her head resting on my lap.
“So, you pulled out all the stops last night and had medication brought in?” He raises an eyebrow, clearly enjoying that little tidbit of information.
Sighing, I say, “I told you it was no big deal; I wanted to help her. I probably would do it for you too if you weren’t such a pain in the ass.”
