Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6)

by Mary B. Moore

  What the hell had Pops done to them to make them hate him so much?

  Chapter Nine

  Logan

  It’d been three days since I’d seen Bex, and I was still stuck in the bowels of confusion hell.

  I think the biggest problem was that I was scared to say something that’d upset her and make her run away again, and it meant I wasn’t letting myself relax fully around her.

  Sure, years had passed, and she’d moved home, but I kept overthinking what I was doing and saying around her. My brain was stuck in eighteen-year-old Logan mode when it came to her, and it was having problems with adult Logan mode. Like the two were clashing.

  Why was that a problem? Well, maturity for one. I was a Sheriff’s Deputy now, a man who had to think maturely and wisely to do his job properly.

  It bugged me that peeks of teen Logan kept coming through when it came to her.

  Did she look at me? What did that look mean? Did she mean to brush her hand over mine?

  It was messed up, and I needed to get control over it.

  That’s why I was keeping some distance between us. I needed time to get control over myself again. At least, that was my excuse at this moment.

  The reality was that I was running kind of scared. I’d intended to go and see her once I finished work today, but it’d been a long shitty day, and I was about done with it all.

  I had sweat in my ass crack, which was uncomfortable in itself, but add on the vest and all the shit on it and my belt—I was in ass crack sweat hell! I also had a sore eye from where an eighty-four-year-old woman had headbutted me when I’d pulled her off another woman at the retirement home.

  I was over the day and just wanted to have a shower and a beer. So, that’s what I was headed home for now.

  I was just pulling up in front of my apartment when my phone rang, and I saw Bex’s name flash up on the dash. Picking up the phone, I killed the engine at the same time as hitting the answer button.

  “You good?” It might sound a bit abrupt, but did I mention I had irritable ass crack sweat syndrome going on?

  “I got the job!” she squealed as I used my foot to close the door behind me.

  I think my first proper smile of the day came through at that news, and that said something seeing as how I’d witnessed Mark being kissed by a group of old women. He’d volunteered at the home for a couple of years and was remembered fondly.

  Actually, maybe it wasn’t the first proper smile because I’d watched him shudder when one of them licked her hanky and wiped next to his lips to get some lipstick off. Now that was fucking hilarious.

  So, I was going with my second proper smile of the day.

  It still didn’t make my ass feel much better, though. I thought that it was prudent to point that out… to myself.

  Walking over to the steps, I took them two at a time. “That’s great news, babe. When do you start?”

  “Next Wednesday, so that gives me and Prince time to get the house done.”

  Did I forget to mention that she liked the Prince of Darkness name suggestion? Well, just the beginning of it, that was.

  I was about to reply when the smell of something rotting hit me. “Whoa, what the hell is that?”

  “What’s what?”

  Taking a breath in, I frowned and looked over the edge of the railing to see if I could see the source. “There’s a nasty smell at my apartment block.”

  “Maybe it’s you?”

  I would’ve felt like a dick lifting my arm to sniff under it outside my home, but I could feel what my body was doing under my uniform, so today was an exception. Inhaling, I lifted the vest and the collar of my shirt to see if it was coming from under there, but I couldn’t smell anything apart from my laundry detergent and deodorant.

  “I’ve checked my pits and chest, and there’s nothing,” I told her, sniffing the air again. “Christ, it smells like death and sewage.”

  She was throwing a list of guesses at me as I opened the door and stopped before I even put my foot down. There was shitty brown water in the corner of my living room—one that had a cream carpet on it, meaning I zoned out on what Bex was saying.

  I told the landlord that carpet was asking for trouble. Granted, we had no clue that this was going to happen, but there was still a dark brown patch that was never coming back out again.

  “Are you still there?”

  After a brief argument with my vest, I managed to get enough of my shirt to pull up over my nose. “I think a buffalo shit in my living room.”

  There was a brief silence, then she asked, “Do you know where the smell’s coming from?”

  Looking up at the ceiling, I figured it out. “Judging by the bulging of a quarter of my ceiling, the hole in the corner of it, and the water dripping out of that hole onto my carpet—well, yeah.”

  Knowing I needed to get this dealt with, I hung up after promising to call her back and rang the landlord to let him know.

  An hour later, I had the great news that the guys who’d worked on the plumbing for the building had cut corners when they’d made them.

  This meant that what I had on my floor was three apartments worth of sewage that’d gathered in an ‘overflow’ pipe—which shouldn’t have existed but had been installed because the main pipe was too narrow. It’d gotten backed up thanks to rough edges catching wipes and whatever else they’d flushed down it.

  Now, I wasn’t a plumber, had never dealt with anything close to it my whole life, but even I knew that you didn’t do things like that. I also knew that my apartment was going to need a lot of work done to it, a lot of bacteria was going to need to be dealt with, and that it was unlivable for the time being.

  And just to add to that great news, I’d called my parents to say I was going to be staying with them for the foreseeable future, and Dad had answered out of breath with Mom telling him to come back to bed in the background.

  Hell no. I didn’t need therapy on top of shit water in my living room.

  It was just as I was putting my stuff into bags to get out of there that Bex rang, which was why I ended up moving it all into her house.

  Even though she only had one bed and the couch was at a specialist place to get new leather put on it.

  This meant I would have to stay in her room because I didn’t own any of the furniture in my apartment.

  And I had an even sweatier butt crack by the time I was done, and I’m relatively certain I had the beginnings of diaper rash or something, too.

  Fucking great!

  I doubt there was a greetings card that extolled the virtues and relief of having a clean and non-sweat-ridden butt crack, but there should be. And as soon as it was created, I wanted to buy them to send out to the guys at the department in the summer when I knew they’d understand what I meant.

  That’s how I felt as I pulled on a pair of sweats and a clean t-shirt an hour later. Bex had taken one look at me as I’d gotten out of my truck and had known immediately what I needed. Granted, that might’ve been because of how I was walking, but still.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” she called through the door, making me trip.

  Seven years was enough time for someone to learn how to cook, right?

  That had me thinking back over the meals we’d had together since she’d been back. Had she ever cooked?

  I took the stairs slowly as I contemplated how I was going to word the question. Diplomacy was a virtue that people needed to employ more.

  Unfortunately, I also forgot that mantra when I saw the plates of food.

  “Am I going to die if I eat this?”

  Okay, I had issues with hot food going cold, food being reheated in case it gave me food poisoning, and also dying from her cooking. I could admit to my faults—even though they were rational in my mind.

  Bex, who’d been putting two bottles of beer on the floor—which was our temporary dining table, apparently—froze and looked over her shoulder at me, then back down at the plates. The way she immediately
started chewing her lip didn’t put my mind at ease, either.

  “As in—did I reheat it? No,” she answered hesitantly. “But I did cook it.”

  My reaction would’ve been a hasty step away from the plates, but I managed to hold myself in check. “Uh…” An excuse, any excuse at all, not to eat it would’ve been great at that moment, but in my panic, my mind went blank.

  “I can cook a couple of things now, and this is one of them.” The uncertain tone of her voice said otherwise, and then she added, “But I haven’t made it in a long time.”

  Now, my parents didn’t raise me to be rude, especially given how much she was doing for me, so I bit my tongue and sat down in front of one of the plates and smiled at her.

  “Sounds good!” There, that was polite, right? And science and medicine had come along in leaps and bounds for things like e-Coli, salmonella, listeria, and shit like that—I hoped.

  “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

  Staring at it, I tried to take a stab at what I thought it would be. “Beef stew. I love beef stew.”

  “It’s chicken in a cream sauce.”

  I wasn’t quick enough to hide the body jerk away from it this time. “But the sauce and meat are brown? How’s that chicken and cream?”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared down at the plate on her side of the floor space as I carefully reached around the plate to get my beer. “I don’t know. Wait, maybe I used beef by mistake.”

  I’d just taken a mouthful of my beer and choked on it. There’s no way you could mistake chicken for beef.

  By the time she came back from checking in the kitchen, I’d managed to get air into my lungs and was starting to breathe normally again.

  “No, it’s definitely chicken, so I’m not that dumb. I just don’t know why it’s brown?”

  Because it’s death on a plate?

  Looking down at it and then back up at her, I made a choice. I was going to be grateful, and probably have a funeral next week because I was trying it.

  Reaching out a shaky hand, I picked up the fork and scooped up a piece of ‘chicken in cream sauce’, praying she’d take pity on me before it reached my mouth.

  I had my eyes closed, so when it finally touched my bottom lip I flinched but opened wider to put it in my mouth.

  “Wait, no, don’t do it. If I killed you, I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to eat it, and I cooked it. I’ve got the stuff for subs in the fridge and a good selection of chips, we’ll have that.”

  The second I heard the word ‘wait,’ I dropped the fork back onto the plate and picked up the napkin to wipe my mouth.

  “Thank Christ. I’m sorry for being rude, and I totally would’ve tried it, but the last time I ate what you cooked, I swear I glowed in the dark.”

  The way she picked the plates up and held them as far out from her body as she could didn’t help my nerves, either. That was when I remembered that whatever was on them had touched my lip, so I jogged to the kitchen ahead of her and went about washing it as thoroughly as possible.

  “I was going to suggest you did that,” she sighed behind me as I was ripping off a piece of paper towel to dry my face. “I don’t know why I suck so badly at this. I made dinner for Mom and Dad two weeks ago, and it tasted great.” When I looked at her over my shoulder, she added, “And nobody got sick.”

  “Maybe the cream was off?” I offered weakly. “And the chicken.”

  “Maybe,” she muttered, shaking the plates to try and get the shit off it and into the garbage. No amount of shaking was moving it, though. “What the hell?”

  After using a spatula to scrape it off, we put the dishes in the dishwasher and pulled out what we needed to make subs. The ham was out of date by five days, the shaved turkey by three, but the pickle slices and cheese were okay, so we kept those out.

  They were put straight back into the fridge when she pulled out a bag of hotdog buns that had so much mold on them that we could’ve cured strep throat easily just by sniffing the bag.

  Picking up my phone, I ordered a pizza to be delivered and then went back to where she was now laughing her ass off in the living room.

  “I’m so sorry,” she choked out, wiping under her eyes. “I keep seeing your face with the food on the fork. And when you touched your lip…” she laughed so hard that she snorted. “That might’ve been the worst I’ve ever made.”

  Throwing an arm around her shoulders, I pulled her into my side. “Thank the lords of food that places deliver.”

  Whatever she was going to say was cut off by a sharp pain on my shin, followed by the blur of the assailant running across the floor. “You little evil bastard.”

  Initially, I was going to give Doyle—who was chewing a bone in his bed that was the size of my femur—my pizza crusts to get him to like me. Now I was giving them to him because the cat was an asshole, and I wanted him to know it.

  This was the day from hell. Then again, I might have come out of it with diaper rash and a flesh wound, but at least I wasn’t sleeping in a sewage-scented apartment or dying in hospital from her cooking.

  It’s the little things…

  Three days later…

  Sayings like what I’d said only days ago and ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ were responsible for my current predicament.

  Why? My little thing wasn’t little anymore. In fact, I swear the penis I knew well had mutated since we’d moved in here.

  Also, Bexley saying about our sleeping arrangements, “As they say, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it,” was the reason for the above problem.

  I’d offered to buy an inflatable bed on my way home the next day, but she said it was fine and just like the campouts we had when we were kids.

  Maybe it was my memory, but I was fairly sure we never slept in the same sleeping bag back then. I also never woke up pressing my morning glory into her ass. I also don’t remember waking up in the morning in a fix like that. Furthermore, I don’t remember her wrapping herself around me during the night like she does now.

  I loved it and hated it at the same time.

  And I was at work in the shittiest mood I could also remember being in. Ever.

  “It’s not hard, is it?” Alex asked, making me wince.

  “No, but it’s quite stiff,” Naomi replied.

  “What about if you jerk it or give it a shake?” Mark suggested about whatever it was they were discussing, which wasn’t related to my predicament but resonated with me strongly.

  Throwing my half-eaten apple in the trash, I pushed away from my desk to go anywhere but where they were when DB called out, “Yo, Richards. How’s the new living arrangements going?”

  Not turning around, I walked over to the room I’d been looking at paperwork in when he’d woken me up and snapped, “Drop dead.”

  There was some snickering from the group of assholes, and Mark chuckled, “Well, then.”

  Just as the door was closing, though, DB shouted, “No giving it a jerk or shake in there, man. We all have to use that room at some point.”

  I was surrounded by the world’s worst comedians.

  And I also knew doing that wasn’t a cure for my issue. Trust me, I’d tried.

  Chapter Ten

  Bexley

  “So, you’ve been here for four days,” Tamsin, Garrett’s girlfriend, pointed out just before she bit into her sandwich. “How’s it going?”

  “I love my job,” I replied, holding out a bag with carrots and celery in it.

  “Have those two been mixed in that bag the whole time?” she asked, staring at it like I was holding out a rattlesnake.

  Looking into it to see if there was a bug or something in there—which would make both items inedible—I nodded. “Well, ever since they were cut up this morning. Why? What do you see?”

  Shuddering, she held a hand up. “No thanks. I have personal issues with celery. It tastes like hell, and those stringy bits are the Devil’s pubic hair
s.”

  “Gross. I only took some because Logan kept saying it’s good for me, and I like carrots when they’re in little pieces.” Obviously. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten celery.”

  “Oh, you’d remember.” The barfing noises she added were unnecessary, seeing as how I now had no intentions of ever eating the Devil’s pubic hairs, but it also got our table glares from the other teachers in the teacher’s lounge.

  Picking up my sandwich, I unwrapped it and peeled back the top layer to make sure none had gotten into it. Thankfully, no, it hadn’t.

  “How’s living with Logan going?” she asked after I’d taken a bite.

  Chewing slowly, I thought about how best to answer the question. Ever since I’d started work, Tamsin and Tabby had been good to me. They were supportive, helpful, hilarious, and made me feel comfortable from the moment I’d pulled up on my first morning. I could be honest, couldn’t I?

  “Hey, girls,” Tabby greeted, dropping down into the seat beside mine. “How’s it hanging?”

  Tamsin pointed at me. “I was just asking Bexley how things were going living with Logan.”

  Tabby looked at me expectantly, so I caved. “It’s going okay, and he’s great when it comes to helping out with the work I’m doing on the house, but…” I trailed off.

  Both women leaned in closer to me. Looking around us, Tabby whispered, “But? Girl, don’t keep us hanging.”

  “But he’s in a perpetually bad mood.” There, that wasn’t worded badly, was it?

  Tabby shocked me by nodding. “Yup, Dave says the same thing about him at work. The guys have some theories.”

  “Oh, I heard about those,” Tamsin added, making me more curious.

  Don’t ask and be a gossip, Bexley Anne Heath.

  As if listening to your inner angel ever worked. “What are the theories?”

  “Well, the tamer ones are like the thing that happened with his apartment,” Tamsin shrugged, sharing a look with Tabby.