16. Jason
16
JASON
“ O h my God! You look hot.”
I stood in the doorway of Mel’s apartment with my jaw on the floor. That was certainly not the reception I was expecting. When I saw her at Jokers this morning, she was downright frosty. Hopefully, that hangover nap she talked about taking had erased her memory.
Unfortunately, it didn’t erase mine. The second I looked at her retro emerald-green couch, all I could think about was how angelic she looked stretched out on it while she came.
“Uh, thanks,” I said as I closed the door behind me, relishing in the blast of AC that hit me like a freight train.
Mel sat at the kitchen table with a sandwich and her Kindle. “Oh, sorry. No, I mean… Shit—” She groaned and dropped her head in her hands. “I just mean you look all sweaty and?—”
“Hot?” I chuckled as I toed my shoes off and dropped my keys on the coffee table. I wiped the sweat off my face. I was drenched. “Hung out with Pops down at the airfield. Went to head back here and the air conditioning in my truck was on the fritz. ”
Mel nodded and went back to reading. I could tell she wasn’t focused, though. She would stare at her Kindle for a few seconds before her eyes would drift to her phone. After a few bites of her sandwich, she’d repeat the cycle. Every other rotation, she’d look at me out of the corner of her eye.
“You, uh, waiting on a call or something?” I asked as I peeled my sweat-soaked t-shirt off. “You’re real jumpy.”
“I have a date on Saturday,” Mel said, as pragmatic as could be. She dabbed her lips with her napkin. “We’re just working out the logistics. I’m waiting for him to text back.”
Anger, hot and visceral, coursed through my veins. I clenched my fists to keep from pummeling the wall. I gave Mel an orgasm that made her see angels, and she was scheduling a date with another man.
I think the fuck not.
I let out a resentful breath. “So, uh… Last night was…”
“Ugh,” Mel groaned and held her head in her hands. “Don’t let me drink tequila again.”
“Still feel like shit?”
“I feel like roadkill that got scraped off the asphalt, taken home, and then cooked into a casserole.” She gingerly shook her head. “At this point, I can’t remember what was real and what was an alcohol-induced fever dream.”
Bile rose in my throat. “You don’t remember anything?” I gritted out.
She shrugged. “It’s all kind of a blur. Not my best moment.” Mel offered a watery smile mixed in with a nervous laugh. “Just don’t tell the Major General. He wouldn’t care that I’m a grown woman. He’d still threaten to ground me.”
I let out a caustic laugh. Mel’s dad was a hard ass, but he was a good man. One of the best I’d ever known. I owed him a hell of a lot .
“Only because he cares about you.”
She shook her head and bit back a laugh. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“Look, about last night?—”
“Sorry I fell asleep on you,” she blurted out, jumping out of her seat and turning to dump her plate in the sink. The chair nearly toppled over, and the plate hit the bottom of the sink with a clatter. She was flustered, and it brought me the slightest shred of joy.
I pinned her with a heated stare. My shirt was still balled up in my hand. “You can sleep on me anytime.”
Her lips parted, and her eyes widened. I locked my gaze on hers, not breaking the intense stare. We stood, frozen in time. The apartment could have caught fire, and neither of us would have flinched.
We stood six feet apart in stunned silence. I wasn’t backing down. Not this time.
Mel broke first. She looked at the time on the oven clock and said, “I should get to work.”
“Is it cool with you if Chase and I hang out here?” I asked as I tossed my shirt into my laundry bag. “There’s a big UFC fight tonight.”
“Yeah, of course,” she said. “There’s treats in the pantry for Luna.”
Mel didn’t stock her pantry with human food, but of course she had dog treats for the rare occasion that her friend’s dog came over.
“Good, because he’s almost here.” I chuckled as I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m gonna grab a shower before he shows up.” Before I closed the bathroom door, I lingered in the doorway and said, “And Mel? ”
She looked up from where she was double-checking her caddy organizer. “Yeah?”
I smirked. “Getting you off was as good for me as it was for you.” I looked her up and down without a hint of discretion. “Just thought I’d let you know since your memory seems to be a little hazy .”
I heard her squeak as I closed the bathroom door and stripped down. Yeah—I’d be rubbing one out to that memory.
After a quick scrub and spank bank withdrawal, I pulled on a pair of clean shorts and a clean ish t-shirt. Voices carried in from the living room. Chase and Mel were sitting on the couch, catching up. Luna was curled up at Mel’s feet
“Hey, pretty girl,” I chuckled as I knelt and smooshed Luna’s head between my hands. She was appreciative of the attention and made it known with a long lick up my jaw.
“I should get going,” Mel said as she hopped off the couch and grabbed her bag. “Y’all have a good night, and don’t burn down my apartment.” She pointed at Luna, whose ears perked up at being summoned. “Keep these boys in line, Lu.”
She was halfway out the door when Chase called out, “Have a quiet night, Mel! Hope it’s real slow!”
The string of profanities she hurled at him on her way out would have made even the most hardened sailor blush. I couldn’t help but laugh, and Chase was keeled over.
“You know she’s gonna kill you for that, right?” I said.
Mel—and most nurses—erred on the superstitious side. Say that things were quiet or slow, and it would turn into a shift of full-blown crazy. No one dared utter those words.
Chase snickered and relaxed on the couch as I scrolled through the TV channels, looking for the fight. “Counting on it. The nurses kicked our asses at the kickball tournament a few months ago. I had to get her back somehow. ”
“You get that new ink you were talking about when we hit up the range?”
He rolled his t-shirt sleeve back and turned, showing off a massive tattoo that started somewhere on his shoulder and stretched down to his elbow. It looked like an angel’s wing. The art was impressive. Each feather had an insane amount of detail.
“That looks fucking awesome.”
He rolled his sleeve back down. Luna hopped up beside him and curled up at his hip. “I go back for the last session in a few weeks. Gotta finish up my shoulder.”
“Somehow, I made it through my entire military career without getting any tattoos.”
He smirked. “Not even one of Casper the Friendly Ghost ?”
I hit him with a hard glare before shaking my head and muttering, “ Mel .”
Chase laughed. “None of the girls can keep a secret to save their life.”
“Geez, how much do they talk to each other?”
“Apparently, there’s a ladies-only group text. I got close to reading it once when Hannah Jane left her phone at my house, but she threatened to skin me alive if I did.”
Ah, fuck. I’d spilled what went down between Mel and me to Bridget. That meant the whole crew was destined to already know. Not that I was shy about getting it on, but Mel probably was.
“Yeah, I know about your big night last night,” Chase said, reading my mind.
“From who?”
“Mel talked to Bee, then you talked to Bee. She told Maddie, who told Luca who told Steve who told Erica who told?—”
“Fine. Jesus. I get it. No secrets between all y’all.” I didn’t even care about watching the fight anymore.
I was too irritated to enjoy Procházka beating the hell out of Reyes. I was pissed about the fact that Mel was pretending to not remember what happened last night. She had no problem telling her shitty dates to get lost. Was she just playing me to see how long she could string me along?
“What the hell is going on between y’all?” Chase asked when it switched to a commercial. He wandered to the fridge. “I thought things were cool between y’all.”
“I thought so, too,” I groaned.
Luna whined and cocked her head. She blew a disparaging breath out of her snout and nudged my hand with her wet nose.
“We kind of had a… moment last night, and then today she pretended like she didn’t remember.”
“Were y’all sober?”
“Not in the slightest.”
He shrugged. “She’s probably waiting to see where you stand with things before she shows her cards. You know she keeps things close to the vest. A lot more than the rest of the girls.”
“Afterwards, we fell asleep on the couch. I woke up when she was sneaking out of her own apartment. Texted Bee and found her at the bar. When I showed up, she bolted. I gave her space, and it wasn’t any better when I came back.” I picked up a balled-up sock and threw it at the door that hid the washing machine. It hit the wood with an unsatisfying thump. “She’s going on another fucking date with some jackass loser this weekend.”
Chase winced. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
He offered me a beer from the six-pack he'd brought, but the sight of alcohol made my stomach turn.
The fight only lasted two rounds, so Chase switched it to SportsCenter, and we commiserated the short-lived entertainment with takeout.
“So,” he said after shoveling in a bite of his burrito. “Two weeks here, and you haven’t upgraded from the couch to the bed?” He swallowed and shook his head. “That sucks.”
I picked at my fajitas. “The couch is whatever.” I chewed on that sentiment as I looked at Mel’s closed bedroom door. I tossed my fork down into my styrofoam takeout tray. “Am I wasting my time?”
“It’s been two weeks. Slow your roll. Did you and her even stay in touch when you were in the Navy?”
I shook my head. “We lost touch after high school. It wasn’t personal. Just how it is when you’re moving somewhere new every two or three years.”
“Seems like out of all of us, Mel would get that more than anyone.”
He had a point. Didn’t mean I liked it, though.
Part of the reason I hadn’t settled down yet was because of Mel. Not because I was waiting for her, but because I remembered how hard it had been for her growing up—feeling like an accessory to her dad’s military service. I didn’t want to put a wife or a kid through that.
“Maybe it’s all in my head,” I muttered, stabbing a strip of green pepper. “I should’ve gotten my own place by now.”
“And that’s where you and I disagree.”
My head snapped over, and I stared at Chase like he had sprouted a third eye. Even Luna perked up and let out a questioning whine.
“Wanna elaborate on that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “When we were at the range, you told me straight up that she’d grown up real good.”
“And?”
“And you’re still treating her like you did back when y’all were neighbors.”
Well, damn .
Chase shrugged and continued. “Look, I’m the last person who should be giving you relationship advice, but my take on it is that you gotta make her notice you. Don’t do the whole pick-up-where-you-left-off thing. You don’t wanna be going back twenty years in time. Meet her where she’s at now. Both of y’all are different people now. She’s grown up a lot, but she’s still stubborn as hell.”
He pointed to the basket of dog toys and the bag of treats Mel had stashed away for Luna. “She takes care of everyone else to keep from needing anyone else. Don’t let her fool you. She isn’t as close to everyone as she pretends to be. Sure, she shows up to poker night and girls’ night and hangs out with everyone, but she doesn’t let herself need other people. The one time she actually put herself out there, she told Steve that she was into him, and he shut it down hard.” Chase shrugged. “Steve was kind of a jackass back then.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.” I set my food down on the coffee table. “Probably sucked.”
“It sucked a lot. For both of them. She and Steve were tight before all that went down. They haven’t been the same since.” He finished his burrito and wiped the crumbs off the couch. “And you know what happened? Steve got with Erica when she was pregnant with a baby that wasn’t his, and even though Mel was hurting, she threw Erica a baby shower. That’s just the kind of person she is.”
“Damn…”
“So, my take on it is she’s not looking to get hurt again and make things weird with someone she cares about. In her mind, it’s probably better to go out with dipshits who can’t hurt her.” He shrugged. “You know, apart from them just being god-awful dates.”
I balled up my napkin and huffed as I threw it into the trash can with a swish . “Sounds like I should move on. ”
Chase shook his head. “Nope. You just need to make her want you like you want her.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
His mouth split into a shit-eating grin. “You gotta seduce her.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that ripped out of my chest. “For a second, I thought you were serious.”
“I’m fucking serious, Jase. Do whatcha gotta do. Make her horny as hell. You live together, so you’ve got that working for you. Don’t hold back either. Go balls to the wall. She isn’t the best at picking up hints.”
“Tell me about it. I gave her an ‘O’ that had her speaking in tongues, and she accused me of teasing and messing with her like it was just some game.”
He grimaced. “That’s brutal.”
Maybe Chase was onto something. There were sparks between Mel and me. Even she couldn’t deny it—I knew she felt it, too. Still, getting her to admit there were sparks was going to be a hard-fought battle. Especially if she was as guarded as Chase was saying.
Maybe it was time to full throttle.
Our phones buzzed simultaneously. Mel had texted us a photo from the nurses' station. She and the entire ER staff posed with middle fingers in the air.
Melissa
Quiet night my ass. I wouldn’t show your face around the emergency department anytime soon, Brannan.