7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
G onzo walked into the locker room later that afternoon, nodded to Pete and dropped his bag on the bench beside his friend.
“So how did it go with Bailey yesterday? Did you get her all moved in?” Pete asked.
“Sort of. I mean, her shit’s all in storage.” He grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked it over his head.
“What do you mean her shit’s in storage?” Pete asked.
Gonzo pulled his jersey off the hook in his locker and replaced it with the shirt he’d been wearing. “The place was a shithole, so she moved in with me.”
“Wha…” Pete shook his head in confusion. “What do you mean, she moved in with you?”
He pushed his pants off and hung them on the hook in his locker. With his ball pants in hand, he turned back to Pete. “The place was fucking disgusting. There’s no way I was letting her move in there.”
Pete tilted his head and banged on the side of it like he was trying to knock something loose. “Sorry, I think I must have something in my ears because there’s no way I’m hearing you let your childhood ‘female’ friend move in with you.”
“Haha, funny man.” Gonzo rolled his eyes as Pete pulled on his earlobe and continued to shake his head.
“So she’s staying for a couple days?” Pete asked.
Gonzo stepped into his pants and pulled them up. “Not sure. We’ll see how it goes.”
“What the fuck?” Pete asked. “Seriously?”
“What?”
“Come on, man, you can’t have a woman living with you,” Pete said.
“Why not? You do. And Kendall hasn’t killed you yet.”
“Yeah, but she loves me so…” Pete shrugged. “Besides. I’m not bringing strange girl’s home.”
“It’s fine. Bailey’s cool.”
Pete snorted. “Yeah right.”
“What? She is.”
“Sure man.” Pete’s eyes danced with amusement. “Wait till the guys hear about this one.” Pete reached into his bag and pulled out his cellphone.
“What are you doing?” Gonzo asked.
“Texting Kendall to tell her that I’ll be late cuz we’re going for a beer after the game.”
Gonzo raised his eyebrow in question. “Why? You guys never want to grab a beer anymore.”
Pete made a face. “Yeah, but come on, man. You’re moving in with a girl, that’s huge. This calls for a guys’ night.”
“I’m not fucking moving in with a girl. It’s Bailey. Jesus.”
“Yo, Smitty, Ry, beer after the game,” Pete yelled across the locker room.
“Not sure I can,” Smitty called back.
“Trust me, you want to be there,” Pete snickered.
“Jesus,” Gonzo muttered as he looked at the shit-eating grin that encompassed Pete’s entire face. “Knock that shit off. You look like the fucking Joker.”
Pete rubbed his hands together. “This is going to be so good.”
“Holy fuck, man. She’s a friend who needed a place to crash. That’s all. Stop acting like a fucking girl.”
“Whatever you say, man.” Pete sat down and slid his foot into his sock, then glanced over his shoulder. “So how’s she look? Is she hot?”
Now there was a loaded question. Was she hot? Yeah, she was definitely hot. Shit, maybe this was a bad idea.
Pete snickered again. “I knew it.”
“She’s just a friend,” Gonzo muttered.
“For now.” Pete smacked him on the shoulder and stood up.
“No, not for now,” Gonzo grumbled. “Forever. She’s just a friend. It’s not like that.”
“Sure man. Whatever you say.” Pete laughed. “Now hurry up and get your shit on so we can warm up.”
Gonzo shoved his foot into his shoe and tied the laces. No matter what Pete thought, having Bailey live with him was going to be fine. Nothing was going to happen between them. Hell, they’d slept in her tree fort together all the time as kids. This wasn’t going to be any different. Except Bailey’s ass hadn’t looked like it did now when she was a teenager. And her skin sure as hell hadn’t looked so soft. Fuck. What had he been thinking?
He slammed his foot into his other shoe.
“What’s the matter?” Pete asked.
“Nothing. I’m getting fucking laid tonight,” Gonzo muttered.
“Geez, I didn’t think you’d move that fast on the new roomie.”
“Fuck you.” Gonzo rolled his eyes.
“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Pete taunted gleefully.
“Just because you all are happily in love doesn’t mean everyone wants that. Some of us still like a little variety and there’s a fucking smorgasbord of women out there.” Gonzo pulled his other shoelace tight.
“True. Until you realize what you’ve been missing and you never want to eat anything else ever again.”
“Yeah, I don’t see that happening.” It sounded nice in theory, but so far he’d never met a woman he wanted to be with long term. After a few weeks, he got bored. That’s probably why he’d been friends with Bailey for so long because they’d never had sex. And they never would.
He stood up from the bench. “Let’s win this fucking game.”
The sound of a woman giggling woke Bailey.
Good lord, the way that woman was screaming was ridiculous.
A screeched, “Yes, Gonzo, yes,” ripped through the walls.
Bailey eyed the direction of Gonzo’s bedroom. Did he bring home a porn star? Holy shit. Who the hell screamed and moaned like that? The woman was going to burst her vocal cords if she kept that up for much longer.
The bed banged against the wall and her throat tightened. God, why did she feel so jealous? She covered her face with her pillow. It was just because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had good sex. Except when the woman screamed Gonzo’s name again it felt like a whole lot more than that.
Shit.
Bailey threw back the covers. There was no way she was getting any sleep with that racket going on. She padded her way into the kitchen and started digging out ingredients for cookies. If she couldn’t sleep, she may as well do something she enjoyed. No reason Gonzo should be the only one getting some enjoyment tonight. Although he sure as hell sounded like he was having a lot more fun than she was.
Bailey rooted around in the cupboards, looking for chocolate chips. At the bottom of the pantry drawer, she unearthed a bag of butterscotch chips. Good enough. After a quick scan of the expiration date, she tossed the bag on the counter with the rest of her dry ingredients.
She pulled out a large copper mixing bowl. Good lord, he had some nice stuff. His kitchen was like something on one of those cooking shows. Definitely different from the dented metal bowls she was used to using.
She popped a stick of butter in the microwave to soften while she lined up the rest of her ingredients on the quartz island. As she cracked the first egg into the bowl, she hummed quietly to herself. By the time she was mixing the wet ingredients all together, she was singing quietly and moving her hips to the beat.
Bailey scooped up big balls of dough and dropped them onto the cookie sheet. She eyed the stereo remote. If she’d been alone, she would have been listening to it full blast. Little different when Gonzo was home with a guest but given how loud the woman was, maybe he wouldn’t even notice.
She clicked the remote and turned it on low. Gonzo’s guest’s moans grew louder, and she could barely even tell that the stereo was on. She clicked the music higher. The woman screamed. Click, click. She upped the volume a little more. When she heard what hopefully was the woman orgasm, Bailey turned the music down slightly. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be able to hear it. The last thing she wanted was one of them coming out to tell her to turn it down. Bailey tapped along to the beat, then shimmied her way over to the stove to check on her cookies. Mmm, perfect golden brown. She inhaled deeply. Cookies were like crack to her system. Her mouth watered just looking at them. She pulled out the cookie sheet with one hand and stuck a second tray in the oven to bake.
As she turned with the cookies, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and bobbled the tray, barely managing to hit the island instead of dropping the whole thing on the floor. She slapped her hand over her racing heart. “Oh my god, you scared me.”
“What are you doing up?” Gonzo asked.
“Really? Who the hell could sleep through that performance?” Bailey leaned her hip against the island and eyed Gonzo. “Please tell me you weren’t buying that show.”
“What can I say? I’m good in bed.”
“No one’s that good.” Bailey snorted. “That was ridiculous.”
He picked up a cookie, broke it in half and shoved the broken piece in his mouth. He moaned. “Damn that’s good.”
She pointed a finger at him. “See that right there? That’s what a normal person sounds like when something hits just right.” She flicked her thumb toward his room. “Not whatever that was.”
“Believe me, Bay, I hit her just right too.” He waggled his eyebrows and grinned.
“Pretty sure she wouldn’t have been going all overboard with the moaning if you were actually hitting her right, buddy.”
“Trust me, she wasn’t faking.” He scooped up two more cookies in his hand.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.” Bailey leaned her hip against the counter and broke a cookie in half and popped it in her mouth. The warm melted butterscotch chip hit her tongue and she closed her eyes in bliss.
Gonzo cleared his throat. “So um…” He cleared his throat again. “Did you watch the game?”
“I did. Sorry you lost. That sucks.” She nodded toward the bedroom. “Guess you found a way to drown your sorrows.”
He mumbled some kind of incoherent sound, then took another bite of cookie.
“At least you played well.” The timer on the oven buzzed. Bailey slid the oven mitts onto her hands and pulled open the oven door. The smell of hot cookies blasted her face as she leaned over to pull the tray out of the oven. She slid the sheet onto the cooktop. “My dad said to tell your coach, Hernandez’s playing too far off the bag for his speed.”
Gonzo snorted. “I’ll be sure to tell him. So you talked to your folks tonight?”
“You know my dad, he likes to do the play-by-play of the game.”
“I didn’t know you guys still did that.”
“Mmm, we don’t do it after every game, but at least once a week he calls during the seventh inning stretch to make sure I’m paying attention.” Some weeks it was hard to catch all the games, especially since Brad hated baseball and complained whenever she wanted to watch Gonzo play. Her unwillingness to give up watching had caused more than a couple of fights in their relationship.
“And are you?”
“Of course. I’d never hear the end of it from him if I wasn’t.” And if he didn’t call her, she always called him for their weekly baseball gab session.
“I’m surprised you kept that up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked much in the past couple of years, not like we used to. I just figured you wouldn’t be watching as often anymore.”
“Just because we weren’t talking as much doesn’t mean I stopped supporting you, Gonz.” She scooped up a ball of cookie dough and dropped it onto the sheet. “Besides, there’s no way my dad or yours would let me stop watching.”
“My dad?”
“Mmm. He’s worse than mine.”
“What do you mean?”
She grabbed her phone off the counter and pulled up her text thread with Juan and pushed the phone across the island toward Gonzo.
He picked up the phone. “Holy shit, this is all my dad?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Every time Gonzo was mentioned on TV, or anywhere online, Juan sent her a link to make sure she hadn’t missed it. The man must have a Google alert set for every possible name combo, so he didn’t miss something.
“Uh…wow…” Gonzo rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I had no idea he kept track like that.”
“He’s very proud.”
He was quiet for several seconds before finally speaking. “Yeah. I just…” He shook his head. “Sorry he blows up your phone with it.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. As you can see, I send him stuff back.”
Gonzo snorted out a laugh. “Where the hell did you find that meme?”
She stood on tiptoe to glance at the phone screen over the island and grinned at the picture of Gonzo dressed like the easter bunny shaking his ass. “I might have made it.”
“Of course you did.” He chuckled. “Judging by the two full rows of laughing/crying face my dad enjoyed the effort.”
“He does enjoy my creative ventures.” Bailey looked up to find Gonzo staring at her with some weird look on his face. Unable to look away from the intensity of his stare, he held her gaze captive.
“Gonzo,” a whiney woman’s voice called, breaking the hold he had on her.
Bailey glanced over at a petite blonde standing at the edge of the kitchen in a man’s button-up shirt with all the buttons undone. Damn, Bailey wasn’t into girls, but even she could admit the look was sexy. If she thought there was a hope in hell she could have pulled it off herself, she’d be tempted to try it the next time she was with a man.
“Oh hey, did we wake you up?” Gonzo asked.
“Who’s she?” the woman demanded.
“Hi.” Bailey raised her hand. “I’m Bailey. Don’t worry I’m not the girlfriend or anything.”
“Obviously, look at you.” The blonde looked at Bailey and smirked.
“Wow, okay.” Apparently mean girls stayed mean girls into adulthood. Bailey glanced at Gonzo. “I’m just gonna.” She flicked her thumb toward her bedroom.
When she tried to slip past Gonzo to get out of the kitchen, he grabbed her arm. “No. Stay,” Gonzo ordered. He continued to hold her arm so she couldn’t escape. Turning to the blonde, he said, “Now that you’re awake, you can go.”
“Pardon?” Blondie’s eyes widened in shock.
“You need to leave.”
“You can’t be serious,” she snapped.
“Very serious. And leave the shirt.”
The woman pushed open the shirt and dropped it on the floor. “Are you sure you want me to leave?”
Holy confidence, Batman. Bailey couldn’t believe someone would be that self-assured to just stand there in only her panties and all but challenge someone to send her away.
Gonzo sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, you need to go. Now.”
“Ugh,” Blondie huffed and turned on her heel and stormed toward the bedroom.
“Gonzo, seriously?” Bailey said.
“Bay, there’s no way I’m letting someone come in here and insult you. Fuck that.”
When a loud noise came from the bedroom, Gonzo dropped her arm. “I better make sure she isn’t trashing my bedroom.”
“Yeah.” Bailey sagged against the kitchen counter. What just happened? She couldn’t believe Gonzo had sent away a gorgeous, willing woman. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had defended her like that. No, that was a lie. She could remember. The last time had been in high school and once again it had been Gonzo defending her.
A moment later, the woman stormed out of Gonzo’s room. “You can have him,” the woman yelled as she slammed the front door.
“That went well,” Gonzo muttered.
“Sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry about?” he asked. “You weren’t the one who was rude.”
“Still.” Bailey shrugged. She was the one who’d made it so that he wasn’t going to get more sex tonight.
“You tired or you want to watch something?” Gonzo asked as he picked up the remote from the end table.
“What’d you have in mind?” She dropped onto the sofa beside him.
Gonzo grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and handed it to her. He flicked through the listings. “Trash TV?” He raised an eyebrow as he looked at her.
“Oh absolutely,” Bailey replied as she covered herself in half of the blanket and dropped the other half on Gonzo’s lap so he could snuggle up as well.
He spread the blanket around himself and settled onto the couch. “Alright, but just a couple episodes because I have to get some sleep.”
“Deal.”