Chapter Twelve #2
“Probably.” Mayo had oozed out onto her hand, so Chloe looked for a napkin. “It wasn’t spelled out in detail. Are there any napkins?”
Gwen peered in the bag the takeout had come in. “There aren’t any in here.”
Bailey got up, snagged a paper towel, and sat back down. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. How was the sex?”
“On scale of one to ten?”
Bailey waved a hand. “Sure, whatever.”
Chloe thought for a second. “Forty-seven.”
Gwen blinked, the chicken strip in her hand dripping honey mustard sauce on the table. “Wow.”
Bailey got up for another paper towel and handed this one to Gwen. “This is my grandma’s table, you heathen.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Gwen shoved the chicken in her mouth and mopped up the spill.
“Also, I hate you,” Bailey said.
Chloe shook her head sadly. “Jeez, Bails. She said she was sorry.”
“Ha ha. You know I meant you.”
“I don’t know why. You get laid a lot more than I do.”
“Not right now,” Bailey groused. “I’m in a dry spell that makes the Sahara look like Lake Michigan. And I’ve never had a forty-seven.”
Gwen swallowed the chicken. “Not even Nash?”
“He was maybe a forty-five,” Bailey allowed. “A forty-six that one time on my birthday.”
“Is that the time he brought in the sparklers?” Chloe wanted to know.
“Any sexual encounter that ends in a trip to urgent care automatically ranks in the low single digits,” Bailey said firmly.
“They were only second-degree burns,” Gwen said while Chloe snickered.
“What time are you going over there?” Bailey wanted to know.
“Five o’clock. I have to pick up the food from Carrie at four-thirty—by the way, we’re having a sleepover tonight with fajitas.”
“We are?”
“No, but that’s what Carrie thinks,” Chloe elaborated. “She’s making the fajitas, but I couldn’t tell her I was taking them over to Knox and Jesse’s.”
Gwen frowned. “I’m meeting them later to go over menu changes for the restaurant.”
“Which is why I’m telling you,” Chloe said patiently.
“Dammit, now I want fajitas,” Bailey grumbled. “You nervous?”
“A little,” Chloe admitted. “Mostly about maybe doing anal for the first time.”
Bailey nodded. “You know how to prep, right?”
Chloe nodded. “Jesse sent me some good links.”
“Prep?” Gwen frowned.
“Anal douche,” Bailey clarified.
Gwen’s set her soda down with a thunk. “Anal douche? That’s a thing you have to do?”
“Well, you don’t have to,” Bailey drawled. “But it’s the polite thing to do. Don’t you clean your apartment when you invite people over?”
“Yes.”
Bailey shrugged. “Same thing.”
Gwen was silent for a moment, then she said, “That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through when you’ve got a perfectly good, self-cleaning vagina right there.”
“You’re so distressingly vanilla sometimes,” Bailey said.
“I am deliciously vanilla, and I’m not ashamed of it,” Gwen shot back. “And can we please change the subject?”
Bailey rolled her eyes. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Anything except butt holes.” Scowling, Gwen picked up her can of Vernors and gestured at Bailey. “What’s the deal with your roommate? Is she still moving out next month?”
“Oh, she moved out yesterday,” Bailey said, spreading her arms. “Can’t you tell?”
Chloe looked around Bailey’s kitchen and through the open archway into the living room, both of which looked the same as they had when she’d been there last. “No.”
“That’s because she left all her shit behind.” Bailey scowled. “Didn’t even pack it up. She wants me to let her keep it here for another month until Bruce finds a place to store his amps and drums.”
“Bruce is the boyfriend, I take it?” Gwen asked.
Bailey nodded. “He’s in a punk band. I’m pretty sure they’re Nazis.”
“Ew.”
“Which is only one of the reasons I had the locks changed yesterday, and I’m getting security cameras tomorrow.”
“Are you going to get another roommate?” Gwen wanted to know.
“I don’t know. After Joann, I don’t really want to put up with anyone else’s bullshit—or their Nazi boyfriend.”
“Can’t blame you.”
“But I really do hate living alone.”
“You should get a dog,” Chloe suggested.
Bailey sipped her beer. “Dogs need to be walked.”
“Okay, a cat.”
“Cat’s need litter boxes. I’m not scooping anyone’s shit.”
Gwen pursed her lips. “A ferret?”
“That’s a rodent.”
“Actually, ferrets are weasels,” Chloe corrected.
Bailey snorted into her beer. “Yeah, that’s better. Actually, I was thinking of asking Nash to move in.”
Chloe choked on her grape Faygo, spewing it over the table.
“Why can’t you two eat right?” Bailey complained.
“Sorry,” Chloe wheezed and used the non-mayo end of her paper towel to mop up.
“Nash?” Gwen asked. “Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“For one thing, he’s your ex-boyfriend,” Chloe reminded her.
“So?” Bailey shrugged. “That was a million years ago.”
“It was seven years ago,” Gwen corrected her, “and that breakup was…”
“Brutal,” Chloe supplied. “You almost didn’t graduate because of him. And it was, what, two years before you started dating again?”
“Okay, it was a bad breakup,” Bailey admitted. “And yes, it took me a while to get over it.”
“Two years,” Chloe repeated.
“But I’m over it now,” Bailey said pointedly.
Chloe had her own opinion on that, but wisely kept it to herself.
“Isn’t his apartment in that high rise downtown?” Gwen asked. “Would he even want to give it up?”
“His rent’s going up when it renews in June, so he’s looking around to see what else is out there. He could pay half the mortgage and utilities here for a third of what he’ll be paying after the increase.”
Chloe exchanged looks with Gwen. “What’d he say when you offered?”
“I haven’t yet. It’s just something I’m thinking about.”
Chloe resisted the urge to sigh. She’d been friends with Bailey for a dozen years, and knew that by the time her friend got around to discussing an idea, ninety-percent of the time she’d already decided on a course of action.
She glanced at Gwen, saw the resignation she felt echoed on her face.
“Well, at least you know he’s not going to bring a Nazi boyfriend home. ”
“A definite plus,” Gwen agreed. “But I still vote for a ferret.”
“If you say ferret one more time, I’m going to explain anal douching,” Bailey warned. “In detail.”
Gwen’s brown eyes went sad behind her glasses. “Why do you always have to make it weird?”
“Just my little gift to the world,” Bailey said and got up for another beer.
* * * *
Chloe pulled up at the church house, as she’d affectionately dubbed it, just after five. She had an overnight bag, an insulated carryout bag she’d borrowed from the pub, and a sparkling clean, ready to be fucked and/or vigorously eaten asshole.
She was kind of hoping for some of both.
She climbed out of the car into a blanket of freshy fallen snow, bumped the car door closed with her hip, and started up the walk.
The door opened before she was halfway there, and a smiling Knox stepped out. “Hey, there.”
“Hi.” Topping the steps, she beamed at him. “I have something for you.”
He took the insulated carryout bag with a curious smile. “What’s this?”
“Dinner.”
A frown appeared immediately. “Dinner? I thought we were ordering pizza.”
“Nope. Jesse and I made a deal.” Shifting her overnight bag to her other hand, she rose on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I would stay overnight tonight if you guys let me bring dinner.”
The frown deepened. “I didn’t know about this.”
“Because he thought he tricked me,” Chloe said and aimed a smile at Jesse when he appeared in the doorway. “Didn’t you?”
“Didn’t I what?” he asked, stepping around Knox to greet Chloe with a kiss. “What’s all this?”
“Dinner,” Chloe said cheerfully at the same time Knox said it with considerably less joy.
Jesse looked the bag in Knox’s hands, then at Chloe. “I thought we were ordering pizza.”
“Only because you thought you tricked me,” she told him and slipped between them into the warmth of the house. Stomping the snow from her boots on the tile of the entry way, she walked through the open door into the living space. “But I am not so easily tricked.”
They followed her in, Knox a step behind Jesse, and shut the outer and inner door behind him. Still holding the bag, he pointed a finger at his husband. “What’d you do?”
“She said she’d stay over if she could bring dinner,” Jesse said. “I knew you wouldn’t agree to that—”
“Damn right.”
“—so I told her to bring your favorite meal. Fajitas.”
“There are no Tex-Mex restaurants in Braxton.”
“This is true,” Chloe said, peeling off her coat and toeing off her boots. “But there is an Aunt Carrie.”
Both men turned to stare at her, and, enjoying their looks of confusion, she smiled.
“Carrie?” Knox said.
“Uh-huh. You know, my aunt? The chef?”
“I’m familiar.”
“Well, when I told her I needed steak fajitas for three”—she looked at Jesse—“you didn’t specify steak or chicken, so I made an executive decision.”
Jesse blinked. “Ah…okay.”
“When I told her that, and asked her where I could get such a thing in or around Braxton, Ohio, she offered to make them.”
Knox stared at the bag in his hands. “She made them?”
“With all the fixins’.” Pleased with herself, Chloe rocked back on her heels.
Knox looked at her, awe in his wide hazel eyes. “She made them?”
“She kept them on the rare side, so we can warm them up without overcooking them. Oh, and there’s guac, queso, and homemade tortilla chips.”
Jesse was grinning. “You pulled it off.”
She sent him a narrow look. “You tried to trick me.”
“I’ll never do it again,” he vowed and laughing, scooped her up. He swung her around in a mad circle, then dipped her back and while her head was still spinning, took her mouth in a wild, passionate kiss.
Then he swung her upright and spun her into Knox’s arms.
Breathless from the kiss and laughter, dizzy from the twirling, she clung to his broad shoulders. She had a moment to recognize the heat in his hazel eyes, the hard press of his body against hers, then he was kissing her too, hot and hard and wild.