by Emilia Finn
“I’m wearing tinted moisturizer.” She grits her teeth, like her words might somehow displease me. “And mascara.”
“And lipstick.” I look down at her lips, stained red from lipstick she applied an hour or two ago. The coloring remains, but it’s clear she’s due for a touchup. “Be wild with me, Ally. I promise not to catch feelings tomorrow.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I’m an unpaid therapist, but still, I’d really like to not lose my job. I’ve worked hard to get as far as I have, and sleeping with the hot anger-management case just isn’t conducive to getting business cards.” She opens her eyes. “But if it’s any consolation, I kinda wanna.”
“Kinda wanna?” I slide my fingertips along her cheekbone and over to push loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Kinda wanna what?”
“Sleep with you. Nobody said you’re not pretty, and you’ve got the height and smile too. I’ve yet to see you try to push a pull door, and Sonia clearly agrees that you’re not actually being punished for anger, but rather for being a general annoyance on this town.”
“Wait. Sonia said I’m annoying?”
She barks out a giggling laugh and presses her forehead to my chest. “Sonia says lots of things. None of which I’m allowed to repeat. Can you just…” She pulls away and looks to her right. “I’m staying a block from here. Can you walk me home, but, like…” Her grin is slow, lazy, as she hits her wall and turns sleepy. “Don’t kiss me or anything when we get to the door. I know you wanna, and you’re the guy who’d rather ask for forgiveness instead of permission. But I’m a little tipsy, and I think that run just supercharged the alcohol in my blood…” She stops and frowns. “Yup. Running is bad. And if you kiss me, it’s super likely I’ll just wrap my arms around your neck and go with it.”
“You’re doing a terrible job of convincing me to let you go home.”
“But despite what you’ll have people think – that you’re some kind of scoundrel – you’re really not. You wouldn’t take advantage.”
“False. I take advantage of situations all the damn time.” And to prove it, I lean closer and press my groin against her hip. “Honestly, it would take Herculean levels of willpower for me to take you to your door, but not follow you in.”
“But you would do it. Because you’re a sweetheart who hopes to one day find his one true love.”
“Stop analyzing me! Fuck.”
I push away from the wall, but I grab her hand and yank her with me so we can head toward Main Street. I twine my fingers around hers, and when that doesn’t feel like enough, I pull her in so she tucks against my side, and my arm rests on her shoulders. Her hair is at the perfect height for sniffing, and because of her position, she wraps her other arm around my hip and anchors herself to my side.
“When do you go home?” I ask.
“Now.” She rests the side of her face against my body and snuggles in. “Tired hit me real quick.”
“No, I meant home to wherever your mom lives.”
“Oh! I’ll be here till Christmas. Then I have to go back and present my paper. If I do well with that, then I’ll graduate. Then I can start on my next step toward helping people.”
“You got it all figured out, huh? Everything is laid out in a perfect line.”
“Yup.” She burps, but it’s small and dainty and smells of orange juice. “Wow. That’s embarrassing.”
I laugh and pull her closer, since the breeze is edging toward cool, and Ally’s arms and legs are exposed. “Are you here for Christmas Day?”
We turn at the end of two blocks and move onto Main Street. This is a small town, which means most places are closed by eleven. That means as we walk past storefront after storefront, everything is locked up and everyone is gone. It’s just me and Ally, and an entire stretch of street.
“Did you know my family hosts a fighting tournament in the days leading up to Christmas every year?”
“Your family?” She furrows her brows and tries to work it through her brain. “I mean, everyone knows there’s a tournament that stems from this tiny-ass town. But… wait.” She presses fingers to her temple. “I dunno. I think I knew you were involved.”
We walk past Franky’s Diner. Past the red curtains, and the booths that are older than me. “My cousin, who is sorta just a cousin because we say so, not because there’s blood relation or anything, she’s the one who started the tournament.”
“Oh! The angry guy who gave up fame and fortune for the girl. I remember now.”
“Yeah, them.” I chuckle. “So that tournament is starting on December twenty-first this year. It’s always a fun event.”
“Because you get to fight people without the risk of arrest?”
“Well, yeah. That’s a solid plus. But it’s just a fun time in general. Lots of friends, lots of socializing, lots of laughter.”
“And you’re one of those people who enjoy socializing?” She purses her lips and looks up. “Some of us find socializing to be a drain on our energy. And then there are people like you—”
“I love socializing. I must’ve gotten that from my mom, because my dad is usually one of the first to tell us to fuck off if we suggest hanging out.”
“He sounds lovely, and not at all terrifying—”
Ally jumps with a terrified squeak when a rolling whoop sounds just feet from where we are. We spin so fast that the alcohol sloshes in my brain, then cover our eyes when the flash of red and blue police lights try to blind us.
“The fuck?” I pull Ally back. It’s instinctual, protective, though I know she doesn’t need protection from whoever is in the car. “Turn your lights off, jackass.”
“You best watch your mouth, Luke Fart.”
My heart slows at the sound of Alex Turner’s voice. He’s the chief around here, the big honcho… but he’s also Uncle Alex, and his daughters and wife are like family to me.
The patrol car engine remains running, but the lights die out and allow me a moment to blink away the brightness and catch sight of not only Alex, but in the passenger seat, William Quinn; heavyweight fighter, pain in my fucking ass in my family’s tournament, bigger pain in my ass in our gym. I’m a heavyweight too, but he’s got a whole decade on me, which makes him heavier, stronger, and more patient on the mats.
“Looks to me like you guys are fixing to break the law,” Alex drawls. “I see staggering while you walk, Luke. Pretty certain that’s against court orders.”
“Nuh uh, we’re sober as nuns, Deputy Dawg. Just going for a leisurely stroll.”
“And your friend?” Will tries to lean a little to the right to catch sight of Ally. “She’s legal?”
“She’s twenty-one, and fully capable of making grownup decisions.”
“And if I were to call your mother right now?” Alex pushes, pushes, pushes, in hopes to punish me for all the times my father tormented him across the kitchen table over the years. “What would Mrs. Fart have to say about all this?”
“Honestly?” I chuckle and pull Ally closer when she tries to back away. “She’d remind me to wrap it up and mind my manners.”
Will’s brows wing up with an odd mix of surprise and admiration.
“I’m just walking her home, Uncle Alex. I’m doing the gentlemanly thing and making sure she’s safe. I swear, there will be no debauchery tonight. She already said no.”
“Oh… well…” He smiles for Ally when she pokes her head around and meets his eyes. “You said no?”
She coughs and clears her throat. “I said no. I won’t sleep with him, sir. Not if I want to keep my…” I expect her to say job, or heart, but no, she ends her sentence on “dignity,” and makes Will snort.
“Wow.” I look down and glare. “Wow! Not offensive at all.”
“You’re not driving, are you kids?”
I look back to Alex and lift a hand as though to show him the empty street. “You can’t see it? We’re sitting in it, Dawg. Did my car’s invisibility cloak actually work this time?”
“Yeah?” I shrug. “I guess sometimes it’s hard to get me-time when you’ve got two young boys at home, ya know? They needed a minute for the romance. We shouldn’t shit on that.”
“You won’t find the romance in there, Fart. What you’ll find is a steel toilet backed up with someone else’s shit, and then you’ll have to smell it for twenty-four hours straight, or clean it. Either choice is fine by me.”
“You sure know how to kill a guy’s buzz, Deputy.” I mock-gag so well that it almost turns real. “I don’t wanna smell funky-ass shit.”
“So get her home, say goodnight, then go back to your place. I’m on shift until daybreak, so if I hear any damn thing on the scanner about a ruckus in town, we both know who I’m coming to question.”
“We’re on the same page, Dawg.” I bring a hand up to salute him, smile for Will, then I toss my arm over Ally’s shoulders again and steer her in the direction we were already heading.
“Don’t look back,” I whisper just for her. “They’re trained snitches, and they don’t even care about potential ditches.”
“Gross,” she grumbles. “Why are people that way?”
“Beats me.”
I wave when Alex and Will cruise away, albeit slowwwwwwly. They creep along the street, and slow at the next intersection, and when they can’t avoid it any longer, they turn the corner and leave us be.
“Cops are weird folk, Allyson. In a way, a therapist is kinda the opposite, right? You get people to snitch to you, but then it’s locked up in the vault inside your brain where no one can touch it, not even lawyers or judges.”
“Well, I mean, a therapist’s notes can be subpoenaed for court proceedings, right?”
“I…” I purse my lips and try to think. “I dunno. I guess I never really thought about it.” Then I shrug. “Will you testify against me when I go back to court in a couple months?”
“Potentially. If you annoy me too much, I might be inclined to mention the drunk and disorderly behavior, and your penchant for ignoring me when I say we’re not gonna sleep together.”
“Oh please. I listened. We’re not fucking, are we?”
I wait for her answer, and smugly bark out a “No!” when she doesn’t speak. But then I stop when something catches my eye. “Though I did say we should get wild.” I look ahead of us, three or four doors down, to the Holy Grail of all stealable items. “Ally. You have a very important decision to make right now. Both options include getting wild. One is with clothes, the other is without.”
“I don’t know what yo—”
“Sex or no sex?
“Luke, I—”
“Sex or no sex!”
“No sex!”
“Deal.” I grab her hand and drag her along until she’s running all over again. “Move, move, move, move.”
Ally
Ludicrous
Sunlight filters through lace curtains, and a soft breeze follows so the lace ripples and draws me out of my fitful sleep. My eyes sting, and my mouth tastes like what I imagine the floor of a bar tastes like at the end of a long night. My skin is tight, feverishly hot. My nose is all stuffed up, dry and sore, which means, last night, I was a mouth-breather, and that’s gross.
I lay on my stomach, in a bed I don’t recognize, and when I try to turn over, I find I’m pinned to the mattress and unable to move.
My brows draw closer as my sluggish brain slowly comes to.
I try to move again, then a third time, and realize my skin is boiling hot because more than two hundred pounds of muscle hold me down, and a thick leg that probably weighs fifty pounds alone is pulled up and draped across the small of my back. My hair is splayed across my face, the ends tickle my nose, and below my cheek is a wet patch from my gross mouth-breathing and the resulting dribble.
I’m so effing classy.
My body aches, but I work on leveraging my companion’s leg off my bottom half.
My companion being Luke fucking Hart. Despite the fact I swore I would not.
He’s so heavy, so all-consuming as he drapes himself over me, but I inch my way to the right. Away from his arms, away from his legs. I fight for freedom, and pray to all the gods that I don’t wake him.
I don’t want an awkward morning-after talk. And though I can swear with almost a hundred percent certainty that we didn’t actually have sex – what, with the fact my dress and panties are still on, and there’s no ache between my legs that would be obvious, since it’s been much too long since I was last with a man – I still don’t want to chat. I don’t want the awkward ‘I told you so’ or the smug grin, so I worm my way to the edge of Luke’s bed, then I drop to the floor with an undignified squeak when my depth perception is still a little drunk, and I misread the distance from the bed to the floor.
One leg remains on the bed, while the rest of me splays on the floor on a pile of gym clothes – they smell of laundry detergent, not sweat, so that’s a plus – but still, my tailbone aches, and my legs are spread in a completely unladylike way.
Luke doesn’t move. Not a single inch, not even a snort or a repositioning to get comfortable after his human pillow left him. So I sit on the floor for a moment more, rub the heels of both hands over my aching eyes, and let out a soft groan. Because whether we slept together or not, we still slept together, and I’m still going to have to do the walk of shame.
“Shoulda just had sex,” I whimper. At least then, the walk wouldn’t be for nothing.
I climb to my feet with slow, painful movements, and as I peek around the room, I find nothing of mine but what’s on my body. No clutch, no phone, no shoes. Either they’re buried under the loads of laundry tossed around, or they’re simply not in here.
With a last glance for Luke and how annoyingly godlike he looks laid out half naked in his bed, I turn away and head through his door and into the hall. Looking left, then right, I decide the communal spaces are to my left, which means so is the exit.
In bare feet and on the tips of my toes, I make my way along the hall, past more baskets of clean laundry, and into the kitchen, only to muffle my yelp and jump back until my elbow slams against the doorframe.
The table is littered with shot glasses, playing cards, and an empty bottle of Jäger. My hand automatically goes to my stomach, because perhaps now I have answers. A dozen shot glasses, all empty, but all sticky with leftover alcohol, and beside them, the bottle, turned on its side, no cap.
My stomach swirls at the memory, and my brain insists I will never again think ‘Jägermeister’ without wanting to barf all over and curse Luke Hart to the universe.
Strangely, despite the booze and the memories slapping the back of my brain, that’s not what makes my heart race. Because beside the fridge is a plastic statue that stands at least six feet tall and is shaped like a soft serve ice cream. His feet are massive, his smile creepy, and he has his thumb up, as though to help sell it all… whatever “it” may be. Beside him, a llama of the same height. Polka-dot-bikini-wearing, and a wicked grin, like the ice cream man and the llama had their own Jäger fun last night, minus the alcohol poisoning.
My purse rests on the llama’s head like a pill hat, and on the floor in front of his two front feet are my heels. He’s not wearing them, but perhaps for a moment last night, I wondered if they would look good with the bikini.
With no warning, a coffee machine on the counter to my right starts sputtering. It’s like rise of the machines, like the universe thinks I can handle more surprises right now… though if I were able to think clearly, I would acknowledge that coffee machines have timers these days, and perhaps the universe is looking out for me.
I remain standing in place, but I scour the kitchen for cups. For mugs. Hell, a frying pan would suffice at this at this point. So when
I find a stack sitting high up above where I can reach, I tiptoe to the kitchen table and grab one of the chairs I must’ve occupied last night. The chairs are wooden, dented, and mismatched, but they’re solid. Not a single creak or sway.
I silently move the chair to the counter, and climbing up, I snag a mug that reads ‘Griffin Industries – from alleyways to empires’ and boasts a lion’s head.
My phone is a Griffin. And the laptop I left sitting on my bed last night before going out is a Griffin. In fact, I’m fairly certain the television in my room is Griffin too, and the fridge. It wasn’t until this very moment, still half drunk, while I stare at this chipped mug, that I realize Griffin Industries has taken over my world.
And why I care right now, while my head throbs and my eyes ache, is incomprehensible to me.
Climbing down, and thanking the universe for making me barefoot in this moment in my life, I put the chair back and turn to the coffee machine with my eyes on the cup, only to jump and scream when Luke stands shirtless in the doorway, and watches me with polite curiosity.
“Dammit!” I press a hand to my chest and grunt when my brain throbs from excess alcohol consumption. “You scared the shit out of me. The coffee machine started on its own, so I…” I show him the mug I snagged, wave it around a little like that might help.
He remains perfectly silent.
“It just started,” I continue. “I didn’t touch it, so I guess it was on timer. So then I…” Awkwardness. I guess that’s what we’re going for. “Whatever.” I lose all the manners my mother halfheartedly tried to teach me over the years, and help myself to the fresh brew. “I need to drink some of this. Just one mug, then I’m going, and we can pretend none of this happened.”
“What’s with the llama?” he asks. I look up in time to see his eyes scour the bikini-clad farm animal. “He belongs to Miss Dixie.”
“I don’t…” I shake my head and try to clear out a little of the fog. “I don’t know. I don’t remember it, but he’s wearing my shoes, and holding on to my purse, so I suspect that cements my culpability in the matter.”