by Pippa Grant
Everyone laughs.
It’s not funny.
Also not funny?
There are two women hugging, both very attractive in their own ways, and my dick still isn’t playing.
I was on a bed, inches from two women sharing a margarita and also hugging, and nada.
Maybe I don’t need to retrace my steps and get my boners back.
Maybe I need a doctor. I wonder if any of Muffy’s former classmates became urologists.
“Where are you staying tonight?” Daisy asks.
She’s heiress to a real estate empire that she was heavily involved in running until last year, including hotels, and we’re not staying in one of her family properties tonight, despite the fact that I know there are several in the area. Not that she’d judge me one way or another, but I don’t want to discuss it with her. “Hanging up now. For real.”
“No worries. I can track your phone. Expect cookies wherever you are. Oh! Or cotton candy! Wouldn’t cotton candy be awesome? I wonder if you can get vodka-infused cotton candy? I’ll have to make some calls. Hug your girlfriends for me. Funerals suck, though the last one I was at actually gave me West and Remy, so maybe they’re not all that bad?”
That’s Daisy.
Never a boring or conventional conversation, and she loves her random acts of kindness.
“Weather here sucks. Stay in Miami,” I tell her, and then we hang up.
The weather doesn’t suck.
I love this weather. It’s a little warmer than a hockey rink. Overcast so the city lights reflect off the clouds. Mother Nature is wrapping us in a cold hug and promising more winter is on the way.
When I get back inside, Muffy and Veda leap apart.
They’re both sniffly-nosed and red-eyed, though Veda looks like she’s ready to snap a man in half.
I sigh and wave over our server. “All of the desserts,” I tell him. “One of each.”
“You got it, Mr. Jaeger. Can I get a selfie? Huge Thrusters fan.”
I oblige him and smile bright for the camera, then climb back into the booth across from the women. “You gonna let me help you take care of whatever it is that has you so pissed off?” I ask Veda.
I’m done asking Muffy.
She’s made it clear she won’t tell me.
But I know this game. When one won’t tell, you get on the other’s good side.
Veda wipes her eyes with a napkin. “There’s nothing to take care of.”
Someone’s foot brushes my calf under the table.
I jolt.
My dick lifts a sleepy head.
Whose foot is that? Is it Muffy’s? Or is it her friend’s?
Whoever’s it is, it’s not stopping.
It is definitely rubbing me on purpose.
And my junk is tingling like it’s waking up.
Hell. Shit.
That better not be Veda’s foot.
If I’m getting my first semblance of a woody over Muffy’s friend, my life is basically over. It’s a rule. You don’t take one woman to a funeral and then bang a different mourner, even if she’s the head mourner.
But we’re raising the flagpole! my dick cries.
You could do two chicks! my balls chime in. One for each of us!
Jesus.
My balls are talking to me too.
I have issues.
So many damn issues.
15
Muffy
I’m not drunk enough.
I want to be drunk enough, but I’m not, not by a long shot, and now we’re back in our hotel room, just me and Tyler and an inky-dinky bed and a whole bunch of elephants that we’re tiptoeing around.
“You can have the bed,” I tell him.
“And you’ll sleep where? The bathtub?”
“It’s on my bucket list.”
He scrubs a hand over his face and opens his mouth, but I cut him off.
“I get that you’re trying to be nice to me, but the truth is, you’re doing me the hugest favor in the history of favors, and I was an asshole for not telling you that we were coming for a funeral, and so I would very much appreciate it if you’d take the bed, if for no other reason than I know how important sleep is to athletes and I really like the Thrusters to win so I need you to sleep well tonight, then sleep well tomorrow night, and then kill it on the ice Tuesday night so that I don’t have to have any lingering guilt about anything that goes down here, okay?”
“Do you actually breathe when you talk, or do you have secret gills somewhere?”
I flinch.
I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. It’s habit.
And now he’s doing that see-right-through-me thing where he looks ready to whip out a sword and slay dragons. “Talk,” he orders.
“I have a new client and I was going to set her up with D’Angelo from Cod Pieces but he started dating someone the night before I introduced them.”
“Talk about talking,” he growls. “Does someone tell you that you talk too much?”
Did someone take a blowtorch to my cheeks, or am I having a weird reaction to alcohol tonight? “Tyler. I’m a woman. Someone is always telling me I talk too much.”
He crosses his arms and glares, but he also goes a little pink in the cheeks above his thick beard, which is adorable.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess he’s told his sisters they talk too much a time or two in his life.
But the idea that he’s realizing it’s rude because he doesn’t want people telling me I talk too much is making him a little more attractive, and I can’t have that.
Tyler Jaeger doesn’t want me.
But he’s here, isn’t he?
I flick a hand at the room phone. “I’ll call down to the desk and ask for extra blankets and pillows. It’ll be like camping in a bathtub, plus, after a day in heels, it’ll feel good to have my feet elevated.”
“You’re sleeping on the bed.”
“You’re sleeping on the bed.”
“We’re both sleeping on the bed.”
“There’s not room.”
“That’s another thing—your parents are dicks. No one gets to judge you based on how you look or what size you are. No one. You know what’s important? How you feel. That’s what’s important. Fuck everyone, especially your parents, for telling you otherwise. If Donettes give you good energy and make you happy, eat the fucking Donettes, okay? Now get ready for bed, and get in the fucking bed, and go to sleep.”
His chest is heaving and those bright pink spots are growing over his beard. Fists clenched and tendons straining in his neck like he’s holding himself back from punching the wall. And I want to throw myself at him and kiss him until I can’t breathe.
I won’t.
I basically can’t.
Even if I thought he did want me, I’ve rejected him every possible way I can reject him. I don’t get to kiss him.
I surrendered that privilege when I didn’t try to contact him either after the thing in the fridge.
And I’ve never regretted anything more than I regret not being able to leap at him and kiss him until we’re tearing each other’s clothes off and trying that naked carnal humping thing again.
Not because I’m especially horny—though I’m getting there—but because no one has ever defended me to myself quite the way he is right now.
And until this moment, I didn’t know anyone needed to.
“I—” I start, but he brushes past me with another irritated noise, grabs his duffel bag, and slams the door to the bathroom.
“Get ready for bed, Muffy.”
Bed.
Right.
Sleeping.
With Tyler next to me.
Nope. No way. Nuh-uh. I’m sleeping in the bathtub. I am not sleeping in the bed next to him. For starters, because I like to sleep in a T-shirt and panties, and I don’t trust myself to not touch his bare leg with my bare leg. Next, because I’ve never shared a bed with a man overnight at all.
Ever.
&
nbsp; And finally, because I like him.
I like him.
But I don’t like anybody. Not like that.
And why don’t you? a voice that sounds very much like Tyler’s pissed-off growly voice demands in my head. Because you’ve been absorbing all the subliminal messages from your parents for years that only thin, quiet, successful people deserve love?
Dammit.
I’ve cried seven oceans already today. I ran into Dr. Richardson, and he recognized me, and I recognized him. Veda’s lonely and I want to help her, but I can’t because I know I’ll let her down the same way I’ve let so many other clients down. I took Tyler to a funeral without warning and he passed out.
Today is not a good day.
But there’s this little flower of light struggling to poke its head out of my heart, a warmth that I don’t understand or recognize, and I think it’s because Tyler Jaeger doesn’t see me as a size fourteen disaster who still lives with her mom, has a failing matchmaker business that’s only miraculously still hanging on, and who’s in very real danger of defaulting on the student loans that she’ll never pay off.
He sees me as a person worthy of being friends with.
Or at least worthy of help.
And he’s under absolutely no obligation to feel that way.
Nor is he anywhere near the top of the men I know whom I would’ve expected to volunteer to help me.
I swipe at the streams leaking out of my eyes and falling on my boobs and dive for my luggage. I should’ve hung up tomorrow’s dress when we first got here, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to open my bag and show off all my underwear and Slimzies in front of him.
I yank out my usual overnight T-shirt, remember it has a giant Thrusters logo on it, and silently debate with myself if Tyler will think that me wearing his team’s gear is an indication that I’d be more interested in telling people I had sex with a hockey player than it was that I was into him as a person, or if I’m seriously overthinking this because I’ve been a Thrusters fan basically since birth, since I was born cousins with Kami, whose parents have been Thrusters fans forever too, and Tyler has nothing to do with it.
Then I re-think everything I’ve been thinking and understand why he asked if I have gills.
Fish have gills.
He knows I’ve been pulling a few shifts at Cod Pieces.
Was he making a joke and I took it way too personally?
The bathroom door opens, and I slam my luggage shut lest my Slimzies make Tyler turn into a cringing puddle of man-wimp. Body-shaping underwear can do that sometimes.
Or so I hear.
And then I see him.
He’s in a skin-tight T-shirt—the fancy kind that athletes wear—and gray sweatpants and bare feet, his hair mussed, his blue eyes weary but still alert, those tattoos peeking out from under his sleeve and traveling down to his forearm, and if my mouth knew how to form words, it has now forgotten.
He tosses his bag into the small closet alcove, glances at me gaping at him, and stands there, holding my gaze, like he’s asking me a question that I should know the answer to, except I’m not sure I’m reading the question right.
Someone knocks at the door.
He does one of those closed-eyed sighs like he knows who’s on the other side, but I fly past him to answer.
Everything inside this room feels stupidly intense right now, and I don’t know why, and I don’t like it.
A distraction? Yes, please.
Maybe Veda came back.
Maybe she wants me to stay at her house.
Maybe— “Holy shit. That’s a lot of cookies.”
“Compliments of a random stranger,” the front desk clerk says as he hands me a platter almost too wide to fit through the doorway.
Tyler makes a noise.
Poor guy.
All that temptation.
I shove the cookie tray back at the clerk. “Can you leave them in the lobby for everyone here to share?”
“We have sixteen more trays in the lobby, ma’am.”
“Oh. Um, maybe the next hotel over would like some?”
Tyler reaches around me and grabs the tray, lifting it over my head since he can’t squeeze it past me without dumping it over. “Take the cookies, Muffy. Every hotel on this block probably got hit.” He makes another noise, then mutters, “And the funeral home too.”
“Dead people can’t eat cookies.”
His eyes lock with mine, and the next thing I know, he’s doubled over, laughing into the cookie tray.
I shrug at the clerk, thank him, and shut the door.
Tyler slides down the wall, sets the cookie tray on the floor, sticks his head between his knees, and laughs.
And laughs.
And laughs.
“Jesus,” he finally wheezes.
I slide down the opposite wall and watch him.
I’d eat a cookie, except I had both peanut butter pie and a chocolate mousse for dessert and I’m stuffed.
Actually, I put the chocolate mousse on top of the peanut butter pie, and I’ll basically never eat another dessert in my life that will ever top tonight’s dessert.
“Have you…have you totally lost your marbles?” I whisper to him.
“Yes.”
His laughter is petering out into little chuckles that are somehow both sexy and adorable, and I have to spend the next ten hours alone, in this dinky one-bed hotel room, with this man.
“Why are you here with me?”
“Because my dick broke after I had sex with you, and I’m trying to fix it by figuring out where I went wrong.”
Now it’s my turn for the weird noises.
He quits laughing.
Makes eye contact with me.
Then leaps up from the ground. “Kidding. You should see your face. Everything’s fine, Muffy. I’m here because I’m a nice guy, and there are cookies on the floor because my sister-in-law is a pain in the ass, and we both need to sleep if we’re going to help Veda get through tomorrow and everyone whispering about how she skipped out on her father’s viewing.”
“I broke your penis?”
“No.”
“Tyler.”
“What happened the last time you were here?”
I should tell him. I really should.
But part of me wants to seduce him. See if the hard-on of wonder will make a reappearance, or if his penis really is broken.
Except I’ve eaten more than a hippo today, I still smell vaguely like fish and chips because I’ve absorbed it into my body and I can’t get rid of it between shifts, and Tyler failing to get an erection if I stripped in front of him would be more about me and less about him.
Also, my stomach is so full, there’s a reasonable possibility any physical exertion would make me burp—or worse—and that would basically be the absolute utter end of me.
I make myself stand up too. “Do you want the window or the bathroom side of the bed?”
“Bathroom.”
“Oh. Do you get up a lot in the middle of the night?”
“It’s closer to the door so I can leap up and battle off the invaders who’ll sneak in at two AM to try to kidnap you.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“Good.”
Good? I huff out an irritated snort, but mostly, I’m irritated with myself.
He’s a nice guy. Occasional attitude problems. Thought I was sexy enough to want to have sex with me in a walk-in refrigerator in the dark a couple months ago.
And now he knows I’m a total, complete basket case, right when I’m realizing there’s more to Tyler Jaeger than I gave him credit for.
And this is why I never date.
By the time I realize I can board the ship, it’s already halfway across the ocean, going from a dirty shipping port to some tropical paradise.
16
Tyler
Muffy doesn’t touch the cookies.
I don’t know if it’s self-consciousness or if she’s ful
l, but she sets them on the corner table, leaving them wrapped in their plastic wrap, then digs around in her suitcase and disappears into the bathroom.
And because Daisy is Daisy, the platter is wider than the table it’s sitting on.
I strip off my shirt and climb into bed, propped up against the headboard. As far as hotel rooms go, I’ve slept in worse. Hate the pillows here though. We only have one each and they feel as fluffy as flat rocks.
But instead of dwelling on how my neck will feel in the morning, I text Daisy, because it’s less stressful to text Daisy than to wonder what the hell happened between Muffy and that Gerry guy that she ran into while we were standing in line at the funeral home, which isn’t my drama, and I want it out of my head.
Tyler: Are you serious right now? How did you get seven thousand cookies delivered all over Richmond with two hours’ notice?
Brit: Aww! It’s Tyler! He lives! Why are you in Richmond?
Allie: I didn’t send cookies. That sounds like Daisy.
Keely: Definitely Daisy. Ditto to the Richmond question. How far is that from Copper Valley? And which Richmond?
Brit: Did you know there are like ninety Richmonds? He could be in a foreign country.
Tyler: Ignore that message. It was for Ares. He’s in Richmond playing pranks on random people.
Allie: *gif of Carol Kane screeching LIAR! in The Princess Bride*
Brit: You need to work on your lying game, T.
Keely: *picture of her friend-finder app with Tyler’s location highlighted in Richmond, Virginia*
Allie: What Keely said. We all know you’re in Richmond.
Daisy: Guys, go easy on him. He was at a funeral.
Brit: OMG! Who died? Was it open casket? You okay, Ty? Did you see dead people?
Keely: Better question: did anyone come back to life?
Tyler: *middle finger emoji*
Brit: *gif of a troll saying SOLID BURN*