10. “Sisters of the Moon”
TEN
“SISTERS OF THE MOON”
(STEVIE NICKS [FLEETWOOD MAC])
F anned out around me were Raye, Luna, Jessie, Shanti and Willow.
I was so into reliving Javi’s kiss and how sweet it was that he dropped me at work (deciding not to think about the part where he semi-kinda kidnapped me so I didn’t have my own car), I hadn’t heard them come up behind me.
“Did you have sex with Javi?” Luna demanded to know.
“If you did, was it good?” Willow asked.
“Shut up, it was obviously good,” Shanti put in, eyeing me closely. “She might have her feet on the ground but look at her. She has her head in the clouds.”
This made me pause to ponder, because if he could kiss me in his truck and put my head in the clouds (and it was), what would having sex with him do to me?
I was in the midst of another hoo-ha quiver when Raye inquired, “Are we good?”
I gave all my attention to Raye.
“We’re good,” I told her.
“I was out of line,” she copped to it. “I couldn’t sleep all night thinking about what a bitch I’d been.”
“Bombs are dropping, children are starving, women are bleeding out in hospital parking lots because they’ve been denied access to necessary healthcare.
Those are things to lose sleep over,” I replied.
“You wanting me to have something I want, at the same time looking out for a friend who you thought I’d wronged isn’t. ”
Raye made a self-deprecating scrunchy face. “I told you to use your words when I could have picked mine more carefully.”
This was absolutely true.
“My guess, this is never going to happen again,” I remarked.
“Never, ever, ever,” she promised.
I smiled. “So we’re good.”
I was ready for a hug from Raye to cement the end of that episode, but Luna butted in.
“Are you gonna lay off about Knox now?” Luna demanded of her bestie.
Raye turned to her. “No.”
Even though I felt Luna’s pain, I smiled wider, because they were cute, at the same time I decided I’d find a moment to take Raye aside and advise her to back off about Knox.
It was no fun being in that place, and it was only Luna and Knox that could work themselves out of it (if they ever did, and we had to back that play too).
“Let’s get back to Lolo having sex with Javi,” Shanti said.
“We didn’t have sex,” I informed them.
Everyone focused on me.
“But we did have our first kiss. And our second. Also our third.” I tried counting.
“All the way to, I think, our twelfth, the one that just happened in his truck, but I think there were more like three in the truck. I don’t know how to count when our lips didn’t disconnect, but the kiss took a different direction, if you get my drift. ”
I got five happy nods.
They got my drift.
“And I lost track of how many times we kissed when we were rolling around on his bed this morning,” I concluded.
“Rolling around on his bed?” Jessie queried.
I nodded. “We slept together. I mean, I didn’t know we were going to, but I’m glad we did so he didn’t have to freeze on his couch. He doesn’t have a throw blanket.”
I notched asking Javi if I could buy him a throw blanket on my mental to-do list.
“Is he a good kisser?” Willow asked into my mental list making.
“I’ve been awake for two and a half hours and we’ve kissed twelve times, maybe more, so the answer to that is hell to the yeah,” I said.
Everyone smiled.
I was already smiling.
“So…” Shanti urged.
Drat it.
Oh well, I’d have eventually told them (probably). Might as well do it now.
“Okay, so, even though Javi and I haven’t fully talked it out yet,” I started, “I’m sensing I kinda get why Javi was mean to me after he dragged me out of Oceans 44.”
“You mentioned that last night. So, spill. How was he mean to you?” Luna asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to say because I don’t want you to think badly about him,” I answered. “Just, I thought he didn’t like me. But he cleared things up last night about that part. He likes me.”
More smiles, maybe because I was smiling like crazy.
“But I was really bummed when I thought he didn’t like me,” I carried on.
“He wanted to explain himself, but that was just how bummed I was. I wasn’t giving him the shot.
He wasn’t into me not giving him a shot, so he took his shot regardless, and in the interim, we found out my apartment had been searched.
This stalled our full discussion. We’re going to finish tonight. ”
“The street stud and the private school princess,” Shanti remarked.
Everyone turned to her.
“What?” Raye asked.
“The dude has it going on,” Shanti said.
“But he grew up on the street. His mom resides in a mental institution and she’s never getting out.
Lolo’s parents are doctors, her mother and brother are surgeons, and they hire people to put up their Christmas decorations instead of doing it like every good All-American family should.
Together while drinking hot cocoa with the mac and cheese bubbling in the oven, which they’ll consume after the decorations are up, then somehow, they’ll descend into bickering or a full-blown fight. ”
I could see comprehension rising in my crew.
And…yeah.
This was part of those threads I’d been trying to grab onto this morning.
“Dude’s gonna hesitate,” Shanti went on.
“Don’t blame him. Especially if the woman he likes is brushing him off.
” She focused on me as my heart squeezed.
“That’s not a commentary on where you were at.
I’m sure you had your reasons. I’m just sayin’, I see where he was at.
I also see, he shows at a classy restaurant where you’re looking cute on a date, even a fake date, it’s gonna tweak him because he’s seeing in real time the life you lived that he didn’t.
Then he sits down with you at said restaurant, you get huffy and walk away from him, well, that’s gonna tweak him too.
Why he lashed out?” She shrugged. “No idea. Also not okay. But I see the triggers.”
I did too.
I so did.
“So you guys are, you know…exploring this now?” Willow asked.
I lifted a shoulder to try to be nonchalant about how excited I was about it.
I failed at being nonchalant and ended up grinning, and maybe I bounced on my toes (twice).
This got me reciprocating grins all around.
Though, I didn’t want to get too excited. It was really new, and Javi and I still had a heavy talk on the schedule.
In order not to let my excitement get out of hand, I changed the subject.
“So, okay, what did I miss while all that was happening?” I asked.
“Not much,” Raye answered. She then went forth to fill me in on stuff I already knew. “Except Cap’s lost hold on his inner caveman, and Eric’s exposed he has one too. We have bodyguards. And they think they’re taking over this case.”
“Can I, at this juncture, ask why we wouldn’t let trained private detectives with years of experience take over a case that got suddenly scary really damned quick?” Willow queried an excellent query.
“We’re not in this for fun,” Raye replied.
“I thought we were,” Shanti said under her breath to Jessie.
But it was Raye who replied. “Right. We’re in it for that too. But mostly, we’re in it for justice.”
I was all for justice.
But the only thing I wanted broken in this mess was my mushroom.
“Okay, so Javi and I are…”—I paused to count—“fourteen hours into us exploring an us, but I already know he’s overprotective.”
“Shocker,” Shanti quipped, a twinkle in her brown eyes.
“And my apartment is a mess,” I kept going.
“Willow, Raye and I are gonna get on that,” Luna told me. “After work. The boys got what they needed out of it, so they said we’re good to do a cleanup.”
I was interested to learn what the boys got out of it, but first things first.
“Aw, that’s sweet. But you don’t have to.”
“When the meeting tonight descends into a party, we’re probably looking at a late night, so when are you gonna do it?” Luna asked me.
“No rush. She’s got at least a weeks’ worth of stuff at Javi’s,” Jessie shared.
Everyone looked at me again.
“Don’t look at me, I didn’t pack it,” I said. “And I’ll be talking to Javi later about it, because I know he wants me to stay with him so he can keep me safe, but I’m not moving in with him while he does.”
“Why not?” Shanti asked.
Why not?
“We’ve had one date that I’m still on the fence about declaring official because it was so weird,” I explained.
“I can’t move in with him after one date.
Especially not a weird, maybe unofficial one.
” I looked to Jessie. “If we need to play things safe, do you think Eric would mind if I stayed in one of his extra bedrooms?”
“No, Eric wouldn’t care,” Jessie replied readily. “What I think is, Javi would lose his goddamned mind if you tried to move into one of Eric’s bedrooms, in essence, letting Eric take over keeping you safe.”
I sensed this was true.
However…
“It’s too soon,” I declared.
“You were rolling around in his bed with him this morning,” Willow pointed out.
Raye was looking at Jessie as she said, “She’s gonna need an in-service in dealing with these guys.”
“An in-service?” I queried.
“A tutorial,” Raye said. “On how to deal with an overprotective alpha.”
This was a super good idea because I was thinking my alpha was more alpha than their alphas, and their alphas were pretty danged alpha.
“That’d be super helpful, guys,” I gushed.
We all jumped when the door behind us crashed open.
And, of course, Tex was there.
“Are you having an Angels confab without me?” he demanded.
“We haven’t gotten that far. Mostly we’re talking about Harlow and Javi—” Jessie began.
Tex lifted a beefy mitt. “I don’t care about that.” He then noted, “I thought servers served.”
“We had to check in with Lolo because her apartment got trashed,” Luna pointed out.