“I will always be here for you. Even when you smell like ball sac,” she teased, a smile in her voice, “I’ll still be here.”
I laughed and groaned at the same time. “God, I know I said they smelled like him but I didn’t even really do a sniff check on these. I mean, Kline is usually a clean, well-groomed kind of guy, but for all I know, I’m wearing a post-rugby practice pair.”
A quiet laugh escaped her lips. “How about you go take a hot shower while I make those amazing Ghirardelli dark chocolate brownies we have in the pantry? Then we can watch humans turn into zombies and eat one another?”
“I really love you.”
“I love you too. Now go rinse the ball sweat off and meet me in the living room.”
A knock at my door picked at my already raging headache with an ice hammer.
“Yeah?” I asked, my voice heavily laden with days’ worth of heartbreak and aggravation.
The door swung open and closed without delay, Thatch starting on one side and ending on the other.
“Good morning, my old, melancholy friend.”
My eyes narrowed in a power-glare. He noticed immediately.
“Right. Not the time, I can see.”
Definitely not. I shook my head.
“You’re missing out, K. I’ve got some really fantastic new material I tried out on Gwendolyn last night.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and tilted it toward the ceiling.
Please, God, give me patience right now.
“All right, all right,” Thatch conceded. “Not in the mood for Gwendolyn either. I get it.”
I sighed.
“I mean, I have a hard time actually getting it, you know? I’m pretty much always in the mood for Gwendolyn. Or Amber. Or Yvette.”
“Thatch.”
“Definitely, Yvette. She does the best work with her tongue.”
I had never been less in the mood for his teasing than I was right now. I wasn’t sleeping, barely eating. I missed my fucking Benny. I didn’t want to hear about any-fucking-body and I didn’t want to listen to jokes.
Nonexistent patience tapped out, I scrubbed through the mess on my desk and shoved the bulleted proposal at him. I’d done my best to outline everything I was looking for it to say, but I was no goddamn lawyer. Neither was he, but he’d know what to do.
Wrinkles formed between his eyes as he concentrated and read.
“Are you serious right now?” Thatch asked, shaking the paper in front of him and looking deep into my eyes. He’d never looked at me that seriously. I was obviously scaring him.
“As a fucking heart attack,” I confirmed.
“K—”
“Just do it!” I snapped, rolling my neck from side to side and blowing out a deep breath to calm down.
Fuck, I was tense. More so than I’d ever been in my entire goddamn life, and my nerves were shot. If people didn’t start doing what I said, right when I said it, I was liable to lose my fucking mind.
He shook his head disdainfully, but either my totally fucked up head was playing tricks on me or the curve of his smile was growing with each pass.
“You are one crazy motherfucker, you know that?” he asked, his lips turned up in a full-on smile. I knew I wasn’t making it up now.
I nodded a few times before the intensity of his happiness had me shaking my head. “Why are you smiling like a goddamn lunatic?”
“Because,” he said in another uncharacteristic display of seriousness. “I’m fucking thrilled to see you this happy.”
Happy? Was he high? I’d never been this fucking heartbroken.
“Dude, I’ve never been this miserable.”
He nearly choked on a laugh. “Yeah, but see, that’s the flip side. Crazy in love can only mean one of two things.” He ticked each option off on his fingers. “Maniacally happy or butt-fuck desolate. It’s one or the other, and it all hangs on the notion of said person loving you back.”
He shook the paper in his hands. “I admire you. Fucking up but fucking doing something about it. This is what makes a man. Buried to shit in the weeds so he takes out a machete.”
I cracked a smile for the first time in two days.
“Just make sure it doesn’t take me four fucking years to cut my way out, okay?”
“I’ll have the contract ready by Friday at the latest. There’s some red tape, but you can thank me again for stopping you from caving to a structure with a board of directors. If you had, you’d have been fucked.”
I shook my head.
He turned an ear toward me, cocked a brow, and waved a hand in invitation.
I rolled my eyes but played along. “Thank you, Thatch, for having the foresight to make it possible to make a last-ditch grand gesture in the name of love without being completely fucked.”