“I’m going to take a quick shower and be out to try them,” Evan said, moving back to drop his work duffle bag on the table.
I didn’t turn around until he had left the kitchen. I needed to fan myself off. If I was getting hot flashes the moment he walked into the kitchen, I had bigger problems than adapting to cooking with an oven verses over a hot plate.
I tidied up the space, wiping down the counter and waiting for the shower water to cease so I could begin washing the dishes. When I was sure he’d finished, I added some soap to the sponge and started cleaning out bowls and utensils to give me something to do.
“I think I could come home to this every night.”
“Yeah, you kind of do,” I muttered, turning. I stopped dead in my tracks, dropping the silverware I was drying off. It clanged on the floor. He stood there shirtless. Muscles roped into more muscles wrapping around his lean hips, down into his sweatpants. Magical sweatpants that dreams were made of.
“Remi?” Evan gave me a queer look, rubbing a towel over his head and drying off the water droplets still on his perfectly perfect chest. My mouth dried up with the desire to lick off whatever water was left on him. Who needed the calories of cookies when Officer Evan Rooney was standing in front of them half naked? My womanly parts clenched up in a near cramp. I wanted him. I wanted my more than friendly roommate.
“Sorry. I’m clumsy.” Lamely, I squatted down to pick up the forks
and spoons. His hand reached out to grab one, and our fingers touched, igniting those jittery feelings from the contact of his rough skin against mine.
“It happens. Why don’t I pick these up and you go relax?”
“Relax?” I couldn’t recall the last time that was optional, but since living there in Evan’s house, I actually had these little moments of time.
“Yeah, you know, put an indent in those couch cushions that never get used in the living room.” He propelled me in the direction of the living room and nudged me to sit down.
I watched him walk back into the kitchen, his sweatpants firmly molding to his butt under the cotton. I told myself to let it go. Evan invited me to live there out of some misguided white knight syndrome, and the likelihood of him wanting me just wasn’t in the cards as much as I dreamed about it.
Huffing a sigh, I grabbed the remote and turned on the television. Evan had one of those large flat screens with surround sound that took up a good portion of the wall. I turned the volume down, afraid it would wake Ethan. Before I got too comfortable, I checked on him.
Evan called out to me as I snuck by him in the kitchen. “I thought I told you to relax.”
“I am, I will, I just want to put Ethan in his bouncy chair on the coffee table with me.”
“Okay.”
My son slept on his back, hands up and legs out in his crib. He’d kicked his blanket off and looked like a sleeping angel. I loved him more than life itself. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my baby boy.
“Hey, little man.” I cooed to his sleeping form and picked him up, cradling him close to my chest. He smelled like baby powder and butt cream, but it soothed the ache in my heart, knowing I made the right decision to keep him. I shifted him over my heart and carried him to the living room. Evan was going back and forth, taking care of house chores and things he needed for tomorrow while my son and I took over his bachelor pad living room.
Ethan settled fine into his bouncy seat, and I curled up on the couch to channel surf. I stopped on Sports Center. They were doing highlights of the last football game, and I realized it was Ryder’s team who had been playing. I rubbed the hollow ache in my chest, not because I missed the jerk but because he had done such a disservice to his son.
I could take him dumping me and dismissing me. I was young, stupid, and too needy for someone high profile as he was now. Ethan didn’t deserve that from him, though; wanted or not, he should have been a better man, a real man stepping up to the plate. But, big surprise, he was incapable of doing so. I didn’t miss Ryder, and I wasn’t filled with a bunch of what-ifs. I was angry for me, for my son, and for anyone else Ryder would do this too because I was certain he wasn’t done ruining lives.
I watched the anchor review his highlights about the drafted college player on the road to a successful career. They talked about his successful completions and percentages that meant nothing to me. How about being a successful douche-canoe? A deadbeat dad? The thoughts about Ryder connected to my own painful past of living in Mobile, Alabama with my mother and her on-again, off-again boyfriends. My dad left us and my mother raged for years over it, drowning her pain in men and alcohol.
I’d worked after school for years at the grocery store, packing bags until I had enough money for my bus ticket to New Paltz without a backup plan except work and school. Her last handsy boyfriend prompted my decision to accept any school far away from that mess. I didn’t realize my mother had her own plans to skip town on both of us. Leaving was the best thing I did. I got my job at the pub easily, and the boys let me have the apartment upstairs. The university had let me audit classes that weren’t covered by my small scholarship. It hadn’t been all bad.
Ryder West was on his way to a multimillion dollar contract, and I would be just as happy to drop into obscurity and go back to working at the pub, owing nobody anything. Life wasn’t fair; I wasn’t demanding it to be, but sometimes a little help would be appreciated.
I sat deeper into the couch, frowning when a yawn overcame me. I clutched the pillow and let my head rest against it, so tired after all these months, and let it all go. Closing my eyes, I drifted to a place between sleep and reality, wondering what I would be doing next.
24
Evan
I found Remi dead to the world with Sports Center on giving game highlights. I didn’t peg her as a girl who liked sports, but when I heard the recap with Ryder West’s name, it screwed with my head big time. She was in my house, watching a sports reel of her ex-boyfriend and deadbeat baby daddy. I didn’t know how to feel about that, except clenching my jaw hurt like a bitch at the moment and made me dizzy with pain.
The pain in my mouth was from a busted back molar eating one of Remington’s chocolate chip cookies. Sweet sugar and chocolate had made my mouth water, and I didn’t have the heart to turn them down; walking in the door they’d smelled like heaven. I didn’t care if that was blasphemous or not, it was true. Now I was being punished for my gluttony because the pain was intense.
Call it kismet for hurrying home with the crazy idea of seducing her. I’d taken a shower, washing off the shitty day, happy to be in her presence with the goal of kissing her senseless. So while my jaw felt like it was filled with fire and guilt, she napped unaware on the couch. Ethan bounced in the small chair bouncer, happily gurgling next to her. I should wake her up, put her to bed, and call it a night, except for the pain radiating through my jaw and tingling my spine.
Was I jealous of some rich football player? I couldn’t answer that question looking at her fast asleep on my couch with the first peaceful expression on her face in weeks.