“Excuse me,” I said, grabbing my coat off the back of the booth and slipping it on as I walked toward the front doors. When I pushed them open, icy air caressed my skin. Unsurprisingly, Albert was reclining against the car at the curb smoking a cigarette. His eyebrows lowered as I made my way over to him. I leaned against the car next to him and breathed in the cold, industrial smell of the city.
“Your face is all blotchy,” he said indifferently, blowing out a breath of smoke.
“Albert,” I sighed, “sometimes, a girl doesn’t want the truth. Just like when she asks you if her butt looks big in that dress, she doesn’t want you to tell her so.”
He frowned. “Someone said you have a big butt?”
No, they just called me a us
eless whore.
“Something like that.”
“You do not.”
I released an amused breath. “Don’t look at my butt.”
“I am a man. We look.”
Right on cue, a heavily pregnant woman walked by, and Albert’s eyes didn’t hesitate to settle on her ass.
I smacked his stomach. “Stop. She’s pregnant, you perv.”
“That only means she puts out.”
The male mind was an enigma.
“What is a perv?” he asked, his gaze following the woman down the sidewalk.
I laughed softly. “You know, a pervert.” He still looked confused, so I continued, “Today, it just means someone with sex on their mind all the time.”
“That is every man.”
“Maybe, but not every man wants to gag and spank women, Igor.”
He blew out a breath of smoke and met my eyes with a significant look that sent a shiver down my spine. “You’re not in Miami anymore, blondi.”
After a moment of awkward silence, I held my hand out for his cigarette. Albert eyed me suspiciously before he put it between my fingers. Feeling bold, I inhaled deeply, which brought on a cough so hard I thought a lung would come up.
“Oh, my god, that’s awful!”
He took the cigarette back. “What did you expect?”
“I expected to look really cool,” I complained between coughs. “Like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“I do not know what you’re talking about.”
That was such a travesty, I couldn’t even speak of it.
I put a hand on my chest. “God, I can already feel the cancer.”
He laughed.
A dizzy buzz rushed so fast to my head I stumbled. Albert steadied me by placing an oversized paw on my arm.
“Whoa,” I said with a laugh. “I think I’m high.”
“Fuck,” he chuckled. “You are a lightweight.”