3. Cat
3
Cat
Nice Biceps, Jerk
I clearly have no guardian angel, no little voice of reason on my shoulder, telling me not to make a stupid bet with a hot stranger that could result in us sharing a house for a week.
For all I know, this guy could be a psychopath. It might be smarter for me to stay downstairs if he wins. Closer to the door, although we’re still one story up since the house is on stilts, so I’d have to get down the outside stairs before he caught me.
I’ll worry about what floor to stay on when the time comes. It would be hard to give up that balcony. And that bathtub.
What the hell am I thinking? I can’t actually stay here with him. This is by far the most reckless proposition I have ever entertained.
Then again, if I were smart at all, I wouldn’t be here right now. I used to make good decisions, I swear.
I think there’s even a chance I used to have a guardian angel. She probably gave up on me when I took my ex back for the second time. Or the third. Who could blame her? At least one of us had the good sense to leave early and stay gone.
I got over my terminal attraction to Aiden, eventually.
I’ve been done with him for six months now, but my life still feels like it’s teetering on a high wire more often than not. I should be back on solid ground by now. Why haven’t I regained my footing yet? Why am I still so unsure of myself at every damn turn?
All I wanted for so long was a shot at a deal on Lions’ Den, the TV reality show where you pitch hugely successful business icons for a chance to partner with them. I got my shot. And I blew it.
In front of the whole world.
I lost followers.
I lost myself.
But I’m bouncing back, and I’ll be smarter and stronger than ever.
“How long have you been a professional organizer?” Nash asks, and then he adds, “I didn’t even know that was a job.”
“Since I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen? You’ve known what you wanted to do since you were sixteen ?”
A tomato falls off my fork as if his shocked tone has slapped it back onto the plate.
“I wasn’t an influencer at sixteen, but that’s when I started my first blog. It was aimed at other teens with tips on keeping their rooms organized, assignments on track, stuff like that.”
“Wow. You must’ve been popular.”
“I didn’t care about being popular. I cared about being successful.”
“At sixteen, you wanted to be successful? And you knew professional organizer could be a job?”
Does his tone really have to be so incredulous? It’s not like I didn’t have normal teenage issues; I just had ambition to go along with the acne and the angst.
“There were already people doing it, and yeah, it was definitely my goal to turn it into a career. I started taking on small organizing projects for my mom’s friends. Then I advertised in our neighborhood newsletter and got more clients. And then I expanded my social media reach, and things started to take off.”
“In high school, you were using social media to advertise your organizing skills?”
Okay, now his tone is just flat-out judgmental.
“I was focused. Driven. What were you using it for, sharing dumb memes and pictures you had to delete before you turned in your college applications?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Like most normal kids.”
“I knew what I wanted, so I made a plan and I worked it. In college, I got a part-time job with a professional organizer, and then I did two internships for a national brand that grew out of a blog and took off on social media, just like I was trying to do with my own brand.”
“Did you ever have any fun?”
I sigh. That’s what no one ever understood; I was having fun. I was having a fucking blast—the time of my life—and I’d go back to those days in a heartbeat.
“It’s cool to have goals,” he says. “And it’s great to like your job, but it’s not cool for your job to be the only thing you enjoy. What do you do for fun these days?”
My laughter is hollow. “I’m not having much fun these days. I’m too busy excelling at another F word lately.”
His eyebrows lift and his eyes widen. “If you’re not having any fun at that—”
“Failure,” I clarify. “And I’m not any good at it.”
“You’re not good at failure?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’m going to assume you mean you’re not handling it well. Why would you be? You’re not supposed to enjoy failure. But it happens to everybody.”
“Well, it never used to happen to me.”
“Maybe you peaked too early.”
“I have not peaked!”
“Okay, but either you accomplished everything you ever attempted with little to no effort, or you failed at some point. Everyone who succeeds fails. It’s part of the deal. Otherwise, you didn’t succeed, you just got lucky.”
“Lucky, my ass! I have worked so hard, harder than anyone knows. Yeah, I’ve had some things not go as well as I’d hoped, but the last several months have been an entirely tragic era.”
“Sounds like it’s time to pivot.”
I already pivoted, genius. I turned over a new leaf, got rid of the asshole who was ruining my happiness. Instead of improving, my life became a minefield of missteps, followed by an explosive failure—a giant televised eruption of hahahahaha, your fifteen minutes is over, you suck, you’re done, and the whole world saw you crash and burn.
“Wow. That’s deep,” I quip. “You should write a book. Start a podcast, at the very least. Maybe you—”
“You know what? You’re right. I probably have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s not like I’m at the top of my game right now.”
“No? Why not?”
“Personal shit.”
“It always seeps into the professional shit, doesn’t it? No matter how hard you try to keep it separate.”
I try again to laugh, but making light of things doesn’t seem to be possible for me right now. Maybe Nash was right. Maybe I have always been too serious. I’m certainly not the friend anyone comes to when they need to be cheered up with trash TV and silliness.
I’m the one they come to when they need solid advice or direction in life.
Damn, I wonder how many people I’ve steered wrong. How many times was my advice complete shit?
Look where it’s gotten me. I’m having dinner, compliments of a total stranger, who I have absolutely nothing in common with, all because I can’t even keep my own fucking calendar straight anymore. This isn’t a date or the result of someone else’s scheduling ineptitude.
“I guess we have that in common,” he says, and then he holds up two fingers.
What is he talking about? Oh, uh-uh, no way. If he thinks he just took the lead, he better think again.
“That’s bullshit. You can’t count that. Not being able to keep personal drama from interfering with your professional life, and vice versa, is a universal human trait. Being human doesn’t count as a thing we have in common. The score’s still even at one.”
Why is he staring at me like he has something more to say, but he’s holding back? If he wants to argue, he should just go for it. Hell, I like to argue. I’m good at it. Or I used to be, anyway. Hopefully, I haven’t lost my edge there, too.
He smiles, and his whole face softens. His expression is nothing but kind, and I don’t like it. I don’t trust it. What is he up to?
“All right,” he says. “I’ll let you veto that one.”
Oh, come on. He gave in way too easily. I know he wanted to say something else. Why’d he let it go? He’s obviously got a plan. Competitive people don’t just give up, and this guy is competitive.
That’s a real thing we have in common. I can’t say it because that would score a point for him, but my not saying it doesn’t make it any less true.
Of course, if I just say it about him, it becomes a point for my side because it’s one more thing I figured out about him.
“You’re competitive,” I say as if it means nothing.
“Extremely,” he agrees with his guard totally down.
“So, that would be another thing I’ve uncovered about you then. And that means . . .” I hold up two fingers. “Two for me.”
His smile falters, and his eyes narrow. Oh, damn. That’s hot. I break our eye contact immediately, but my breath has already shallowed, and I’m pretty sure he’s noticed. I think it would’ve been hard for him to miss, given the way I just struggled to swallow.
“You’re every bit as competitive as I am, Cat.”
That severely lower octave he’s suddenly speaking in goes straight to my knees. It’s a good thing I’m sitting down.
“Sooo,” he continues, all drawly and domineering. “I’ll take my point for discovering that we have that trait in common as well.” He holds up two fingers again, and the rich density of his inflection unfurls like a weighted blanket being lowered on my back. So much soothing warmth out of nowhere.
He doesn’t look like a man who could turn up the bass like that. His conversational tone isn’t high-pitched by any means, but holy shit. When he goes deep, he goes deep . . . straight to my core deep.
This guy hasn’t even been here a full day, and he’s made a complete cluttered mess of the living room. He is an absolute slob who doesn’t care about order or neatness at all, but his current demeanor just triggered a tingly twitch that led to a hard clench in my pussy, and that makes me believe he might very much care about control in certain situations.
The only situations in which I like to give up control. And I don’t need to know that about him.
He can’t know that about me.
But when he looks at me with his eyes narrowed and glassy, I feel like maybe he already does.
Stop it. Stop making him into something he’s not. You’re exhausted and sad, and obviously, needy. This nonchalant dudebro is the last thing you need. No matter how nice his arms are. That’s a broad chest for a guy who spends so much time playing video games. Jesus wept! Stop undressing him with your eyes. So obvious. So pathetic.
“I guess we’re even again,” I concede. “Should we put a deadline on this bet?”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because if we don’t, we’ll be up all night, both trying to get our third point.”
“You can stay up as late as you want, but I need sleep. You’ve got a few more hours at most to try and win this bet tonight. After that, I’ll be in bed. If you’re still here when I wake up in the morning, I’ll assume the bet’s still on.”
His voice sounds normal again. Am I so sleep-deprived that I imagined it changing? “Yeah, I could probably use some sleep, too.”
He stands and takes his plate to the sink. “I’m going to change clothes and go for a run on the beach. Wanna join me?”
How’d he know I was a runner? “We should’ve run before we ate.”
“Technically. But I need to ensure I’ll be able to sleep tonight, and right now, I’m not feeling too confident about it.”
He’s appraising me through those narrowed eyes again, and I wish I didn’t like being looked at this way. I hate how he leaves the door open for me to flirt back, while keeping his toes on the line, making it ambiguous whether he’s really flirting with me in the first place.
Self-preservation. If he doesn’t truly put himself out there, he can’t be rejected.
And I wish I didn’t understand that so well.
I already know we have way too many things in common for me to win this damn bet, but I can’t help but wonder if I point out this one, will he say he sees it in me, too, or will he let me have the point?
Maybe I’m successfully bluffing my confidence with him?
I’m so curious where I stand, but if I call out the insecurity that I suspect in him, and he doesn’t see it in me, it could come across offensive. Mean, even. He wouldn’t be the first person to think I’m mean.
Vicious was the word my ex liked to throw in my face. I’m not, though. I just like to cut to the chase. Honesty is the key to efficiency, and I like efficiency. Superfluous niceties don’t facilitate progress. They hamper it. They’re unnecessary and quite frankly, manipulative.
I bring my plate into the kitchen. He finishes rinsing his and sets it in the sink, turning on his heels to go change into his running clothes.
“Um, excuse me,” I say. “The dishwasher is right there.”
He nods. “Very good. And that is the stove, and this is the sink, where my rinsed plate isn’t hurting anything. I’ll put it in the dishwasher later. Or in the morning.”
“Just do it now and be done with it.”
“No. It’s not bothering me by being in the sink. If it bothers you, you can feel free to put it in the dishwasher.”
“I’m not putting your plate in the dishwasher. You are a grown man. You can put your own plate in the dishwasher.”
“Yeah, and as a grown man, I can also decide to leave it in the sink. It’s rinsed. It’ll be fine. If I left it there all week, it would be fine.”
I physically shudder. “That is so lazy. It would take you less than ten seconds to put it in the dishwasher.”
He shrugs. “I don’t care. I’ve done all I’m doing with that plate right now. And the world won’t end because of it.”
I’d like to do something with his plate right now: throw it at the back of his head as he’s walking away from me! “Why are you being so stubborn over something that doesn’t even matter?”
“That’s my question. Why are you being so stubborn about it?” His voice trails off as he walks into the downstairs bedroom.
I rinse my plate and put it in the dishwasher, trying not to look at his in the sink. Who am I kidding? I can’t walk away and leave it there.
Dammit. Now, I need to run. I grab my bag and stomp up the stairs with it.
“If he thinks I’m cleaning up after him all week, he’s delusional. That plate was the extent of it. I’m not his fucking maid.” I realize I’m mumbling my complaints out loud as I yank my hair out of its messy bun and gather it into a pony tail.
I pull on a pair of shorts and change into a sports bra, and spend a few seconds debating if I need a shirt. It’s ridiculous. We’re at the beach. I don’t need a shirt. I don’t wear one to do yoga or when I’m working out at the gym. Nobody wears a shirt to run on the beach.
When I jog down the stairs and find Nash waiting for me, watching me round the corner into the living room, I see I’m not the only one who decided to forgo a shirt. And I was definitely not imagining the breadth of his chest earlier.
“I didn’t think gamer guys worked out.”
“Damn. I could be offended by the stereotype or flattered by the fact that you noticed I work out.” He tilts his head like he’s contemplating the choices. “I think I’ll go with flattered.”
“Don’t sprain your ego.”
“It would take so much more than that to hurt my ego.”
“Liar.” I don’t mean to smile when I say it. It wasn’t intended to be a teasing comment, but the corners of my mouth betray me.
He triggers my body’s friendly instincts, no matter how much I dislike his plate left in the sink or his sandy shoes in the middle of the floor or his snack wrappers on the coffee table or . . . damn, those biceps.
Jerk.