by Emilia Finn
“Not a couple,” Nora grumbles. She pushes her plate to the side, scoots, and squeaks when her foot taps mine beneath the table.
Lazily, like I have no worries in the world, I fold my arms and study her eyes while Evie eats my fries.
“So I heard Nora has another date tonight,” I drawl for Evie. “A date you orchestrated.”
“Mm.” She picks up my chicken leg and takes a bite while Ben slides in next to Nora. “This fighter named Tom. He’s five nine, a hundred and eighty, his left arm is shorter than his right. And if he had to grapple his way out of a wet paper bag…” She stops making out with my food and looks at me. “He’d lose.”
“Sounds like a peach. Could you call him up and cancel tonight? Nora’s busy.”
“Is she?” Evie’s brows wing up high and go to Nora. “You’re busy? Do tell.”
“I’m not busy,” Nora grits out. “Also, my car broke down today, so please tell Tom I can’t meet him at the restaurant, but he’s totally welcome to come pick me up.”
Evie turns to me. “Huh. There you go. Guess she ain’t busy.”
“She’s fucking busy,” I growl. “And if some fighter wants to come to her door tonight, I’ll be sure to come out and introduce myself.”
Still grinning, still with her brows high on her forehead, Evie turns back to Nora. “That oughtta be fun. I’ll be by your place at six to help you get ready. And, ya know… watch the fight in the hallway.”
“There will be no fight!” Nora snaps. “There will be no drama.” Her eyes come to me. “You’re my mechanic, Mr. Morris, and nothing more. Fix my car, do as you’re paid to do, then stay the hell away from me.”
“You gonna clean her sparkplugs, Chuck?”
I smile.
“Wash her bulbs? Pump her gas?”
“Evie…” Ben takes a fry from Nora’s plate and slides it between his lips. “Cool it.”
“I’m so fuckin’ hungry.” She swings her gaze around and locks onto Katrina’s bright eyes. “I would do nasty things for a slice of pie, Miss Katrina.”
“Don’t do them in here,” Katrina rolls her eyes. “This is a family diner. You want a shake too?”
“Yes please.” Her eyes come back to me. “Tune her engine?”
I burst out laughing and catch the tomato Nora pegs at her friend’s face. “She filed a complaint about me this morning.”
Evie looks to Nora. “No! You did not.”
“She did,” I press. “She said I was unprofessional. Incompetent. Rude.”
“Annoying,” Nora adds on a growl.
“She took that shit straight to management, and cost me my next raise.”
“Nora! Why you gotta mess with a man’s income like that?”
“His income is from Angelo,” she scowls. “He’s not gonna fire him.”
“So you admit it! Oh, thanks.” Evie accepts her order and a fork without missing a beat, and digs in. Mouth full of crumbling apple pie, she continues, “You admit you filed a complaint?”
“I did it in front of him! I’m not ashamed.”
“You’re mean. Want some pie, Sasquatch?” Without waiting for an answer, she breaks off a piece with her fork and offers it across the table. “It’s delicious.”
Ben’s trying to be on Nora’s side, he’s trying to be the protective and caring friend, but he loses his battle when Evie pokes his chin with the fork. He wraps his lips around the pie, and makes me feel like a filthy voyeur in the bedroom.
Trying to hide my grin, I turn away, only to see Nora doing the same. Her cheeks blaze red, and her eyes can barely lift above my chest.
Testing her, I take a fry from my plate and lean across the table. “Want some? It’s delicious.”
“Get the fuck outta here with that.” She slaps my hand so hard that the fry splats against the window and slowly, torturously glides along the pane and leaves behind a trail of gravy.
Gasping, she squeaks, “Oh my god! I didn’t think it would go flying like that.”
“You slapped me! You fuckin’ hit me, woman. That’s abuse!”
“You’re being ridiculous.” She grabs her napkin and works on cleaning the mess away. “I smacked your hand. I didn’t punch you in the face.”
So, because an eye for an eye and all that, I swing my arm around and slap her hand against the glass until the fry explodes.
Her eyes whip to mine in shock. “Ouch!”
I purse my lips. “I smacked your hand. I didn’t punch you in the face.”
“You’re a douche.” Pushing me away, she snags her third and final cherry tomato and lifts her hand as though to throw it. Smiling, I open my mouth, wait, only to laugh when she drops it into hers and chews. “Mine. And I’m definitely filing that complaint when we get back to the garage. You’re still on work time right now, and you hit me.”
“Yeah?” Standing tall, I lean across the table and smack a noisy kiss to her lips until she squeaks. “Add that to your complaint. It’s for sure against company policy, but I want it documented anyway.” Dropping back into my seat, I chew my newfound tomato, and turn when I feel eyes burning the side of my skull.
Ben and Evie sit watching us. Wide eyes. Slack jaws.
For the first time in her life, Evelyn Kincaid has been silenced.
“Oh my god.” Nora drops her flaming face into her hands and studies the table.
Nora
Date Night With a Douche
“This one.” Evie stands at my bed and tosses dresses at me. Hers. Mine. Her cousins’. She’s raided everyone’s closet for my date tonight. “Try this on.” She pegs black fabric at my face. “This is my lucky dress.”
“Lucky, because you won the lottery while wearing it?” I study the sweetheart neckline. The glittery beading. “Or…?”
“No, lucky, because I fucked Ben while wearing that dress.”
“Ugh!” I toss it aside and lay back on my bed. “You’re disgusting.”
“It has a proven track record!” She moves around my bed and snatches the dress up. “I wore it on our second first date.”
“The fact you needed a second first date is telling.”
“I didn’t wear it on our first first date, grumpy. But I sure as hell wore it the second time, and now look at us.”
“Married and obnoxious? Uh huh. I see you.”
She selects a red dress with a long pencil skirt. “Maybe try this?” She tosses it at me. “That’s Brooke’s. I can’t say for sure if she wore it while fucking anybody, but she’s always smiling, so I bet there’s good juju tucked away in there anyway.”
“Does your cousin know you raided her closet?”
Climbing off the bed with a groan, I push my pyjama pants down, peel off my shirt, and step into the tight, red material.
“It doesn’t fit me.”
“Sure it does.” She comes around to my side of the bed and goes to work on the zipper in the back. “Every dress fits if you want it enough. Hey, soooo…” She lets the word drag out.
“Nope. Don’t even ask.”
“He kissed you!” She works hard and tugs the dress closed. “He kissed you right in front of us. Hell, Nora. That was a dog pissing on your leg if I ever saw one.”
“He’s crude, annoying, smarmy—”
“The fuck does smarmy mean?” She grunts and works on the zipper. “He’s Chuck, he’s rough and tough and takes no bullshit. He’s funny, and cute, and he rides a bike. He knows how to fix engines, so that’s a plus. And he didn’t get the memo about ‘Everyone’s gotta be gentle with Nora,’ like Ben got. Ben will forever coddle you, Nora. He’ll never let you fall. Chuck is gonna shove you until you jump.”
“I don’t want to jump!” I squeak when she gets the zipper home and my lungs constrict. “I want to stay home in fat girl sweats and eat cookie dough while I watch Friends. Why is that so much to ask?”
“You can do both. But you can’t do the second until you do the first. And you can’t do the first until you let Chuck push you out of you
r comfort zone.”
“I have no clue what you just said.”
“Live a little!”
She comes around and stops to study my dress. It’s too tight, too constricting. “No, take it off. Let’s try something else.”
“Thank god.” I breathe the second the zipper is released.
“Let Chuck take you out, let him show you a good time. Then let him fuck you until the bed breaks, and your coochie feels a little sore.”
“First of all,” I step out of the dress and turn to her in my underwear, “sore-coochie sex sounds counterproductive.”
She shakes her head. “You say that now, but once you’ve done it, you’ll be a convert.”
“Second!” I kick the dress at her and try to stifle my smile when she catches it. “I’m going to dinner with Tom. We’re getting dressed for Tom. So why the hell are you talking about sore-coochie sex with Chuck?”
“Because I doubt Tom is capable of fucking. He’s slow, sweet loving with Barry White music playing in the background while he asks you seventy-three times in the space of three minutes if you came yet.”
I turn away and hide my furious blush when I think of Chuck and his negotiations. “Sweet, slow loving might be exactly what I need. You know I can’t do loud and rough.”
“Uh, no. You say you don’t do loud and rough, but somehow you love me, you invite me into your space on the daily, you smile when I’m loud and rough. And I don’t think I was the only one who got a tingly hoo-haa when Chuck smacked your hand at the diner today.” Looking to the ceiling, she grins and shivers. “You can do rough, Nora. You just tell yourself you can’t, because you like to stay in your comfort zone.”
“The comfort zone is comfortable!” I catch a new dress when she tosses it. “It’s comfortable, and safe, and warm, and probably has pie.”
“Mmm, pie.” She comes around to my back when I step into the new dress, and helps me zip it up. “The comfort zone is where mold grows. It’s comfortable and undemanding, but you remain still and bored until you get all moldy.” She finishes the zipper and spins me around to face her. “The comfort zone is fine for a minute here and there. But when you step out of it, that’s when you grow. That’s when you learn new things, and try new experiences. It’s when you shoot toward the sky, and soak up all the sun, and bloom like a beautiful flower.”
“Well…” I turn to my mirror and study the new dress. It’s black, but with no sleeves, a high neckline, and a floaty skirt. “That sounds poetic and all, but I like sitting in the shade. Less chance of skin cancer.”
“You’re impossible. And you also look beautiful.” She reaches up and pulls my hair from its ponytail. Snagging a comb from the bed, she works it through my long locks, and smiles at our reflection in the mirror. “Go to dinner with Tom tonight, but I want you to think about something.”
I roll my eyes. “What?”
“When he’s holding your hand, or opening a door, or pulling out your chair or whatever, think about how it feels in here.” She winds a hand around to my stomach. Then covers my heart. “And here. Then, just for fun, think of all that same stuff, but with Chuck.”
“I doubt Tucker would open a door to be chivalrous,” I grumble. “More likely, he’d slap my ass and send me skipping through.”
“And when he holds a chair out for you?”
“He’d sniff my neck like a creep, and make a big deal about howling at the moon or something equally ridiculous.”
She continues with the comb and smiles. “Ridiculous is fun too, ya know? You’re allowed to be silly and crazy sometimes. You’re allowed to have fun. And hell, if you wanna kiss a dude in the diner, I’m there for that too.”
“I didn’t kiss him.” And yet, my stomach tingles. “He kissed me.”
“He sure looked like he enjoyed it too. Was that tomato tasty?”
If by ‘tomato,’ she means him, then yes.
“I don’t know how to meet him on his level,” I admit. “He’s the poster boy for spontaneity and crazy.” Because his family already died, I remind myself. He’s about living it up now, because he could die at any moment. And I’m about staying safe at home… because I could die at any moment. “He and I aren’t compatible.”
“Bet you could be if you tried.”
“We’re complete opposites!”
“Oh yeah, because Ben and I are totally in sync and carbon copies of each other.”
“But you’ve known each other your whole lives,” I whine. “You were able to grow together, learn each other. Work through your differences.”
“What the hell do you think dating is about?” She tosses the comb, only to start braiding my hair between her fingers. “You meet a guy, you go to dinner, you learn each other’s quirks, and if you like each other a reasonable amount, you go to dinner a second time. Sex is optional. Eventually, you decide if you like each other enough to keep on doing that, and around and around you go until one of you dies from excess pie consumption.”
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
“Oh my god, yes!” She spins me around and squeals. “How did you know?”
“The pie, for starters. The cake. Your obsession with sweet foods. The way you watch Ben lately like you might eat him up. The way he watches you like he’s afraid you’ll spontaneously combust, and he’ll lose everything he loves.” I pull her into my arms and squeeze. “I’m so happy for you guys.”
“You are?” She pulls back, but holds me close. “You really, really are?”
“Yes. Ben is basically my big brother.” And then my eyes start itching. “I’m basically gonna be an aunty.”
“Not basically,” she corrects. “You are. And not only that, but we want you to be our squish’s godmother.”
“Shut the front door!” I burst into tears – happy tears, crazy, wild, noisy tears – and pull her in for a crushing hug. “Are you serious? Are you seriously serious?”
“Yes.” She pulls back and swipes the moisture from beneath her eyes. “Will you be our squish’s godmother? The job doesn’t really entail anything, except you get the title, and you have to love our baby like he or she is your own blood.”
“I would love the baby like that even without the title. Oh my god, Evie. You make my heart explode. When are you due?”
“Six months,” she sniffles. “We haven’t told my parents yet.”
“You haven’t?” I’m shocked. “Your mother didn’t guess? She knows everything!”
“I know.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been working really, really hard to hide it from her. I want to surprise her.”
I frown and study Evie’s pale face. “Is she going to be mad? Are you scared she won’t approve?”
“No.” She sucks on her bottom lip and smiles. “I think she’s going to be really happy. Worried,” she qualifies, “but happy. She’s going to go nuts making sure I eat well, she’ll take a trillion pregnancy photos, and then she’ll want to be at the birth, but too scared to ask. She would never intrude, but in her head, she’ll be begging to be there. She’ll want to take the pictures, she’ll want to hold my hand. She’ll want to see her grandbaby.”
“You’re going to invite her in?”
She cries. And laughs. And smiles. And wipes her tears. “Yes. Ben said he’s totally cool with it.”
“I suspect Ben will need her there,” I laugh. “He’s going to lose his ever-loving mind when you start screaming in pain.”
“He really will. That man is not going to create a small baby, so it’s gonna hurt. He’s going to wanna punish himself for doing that to me, so I think he wants Mom there as much as she will want to be there.”
“When are you telling them?” Gone is my worry about my date. Gone are the butterflies from Tucker and his kiss. It’s all gone, because my best friends made a baby, and they want me to be a part of it. “Will you do it soon?”
She nods. “I found out two weeks ago, but we decided to wait for the three-month point, ya know, just in case,” she whi
spers. “But we had a scan this week, and everything looks fine. So it’s time.”
“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
She shakes her head. “We don’t know, and I don’t think we’ll ask. Spontaneity, remember?”
“You’re impossible,” I huff. “Next thing I know, you’ll announce you’re having a home birth, but like, in the damn cornfield.”
She giggles and moves back around to work on my hair. “No, I’ll be taking my ass to the hospital. But I think I can handle buying yellows and greens until it comes out blue or pink.”
“You know the baby won’t actually be blue or pink, right?”
She tugs my hair in punishment. “It’ll be fine. Stacked Deck is coming up, so—”
“Wait.” I meet her eyes in the mirror. “You’re not fighting, right? You can’t.”
“Nah. I’ll sit it out this year. There’s no way I would risk it, and there isn’t a doctor on the planet who would sign me off as cleared to fight.”
“And then there’s Ben.”
She snorts. “Right. I bet he’ll have a problem with me fighting at all after this. You know what he’s like.”
“Is he happy?” I sigh. “Did he blubber?”
Slowly nodding, she looks me in the eye and smiles. “He’s really, really excited. We both are.”
“I’m so happy for you guys. And yes, I would be honored to be your squish’s godmother. I won’t let you down.”
“Thank you.” She wraps her arms around my shoulders and rests her cheek on the back of my head. “Love you.”
I sigh. Because I swear, I had no clue my life would go this way. “I love you too. Even when I don’t like you.”
Laughing, she pulls back and finishes my braid with fast flicks of her fingers. She pulls my hair tight, plaits all the way down to my shoulder blades, then spins me and works on tugging pieces away from the braid to frame my face. Her breath smells like something sweet, her eyes a bright, sparkling blue.