Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
JAKE
I woke up way earlier Saturday than I thought I should have, buried under my blankets, with Elle in my fist and my pacifier in my mouth. The day before had drained every ounce of everything from me and I was pretty sure I could have fallen back asleep had it not been for the fullness of my bladder.
My eyes were barely open and my brain only functioned enough to guide me to the bathroom. I was halfway through relieving my bladder when I remembered Esme driving me home the night before. My eyes shot fully open and I didn’t know how I managed to not piss on the floor or drop my pacifier into the toilet as my brain kicked into gear.
Why had I let Esme drive me home? How tired had I been? Tired enough I barely remembered climbing into his car. Definitely tired enough I shouldn’t have been driving. I remembered him walking me to my front door but didn’t remember anything after that. There might have been a vague, foggy memory of him walking me upstairs, though I might have dreamed that. It wasn’t a solid memory by any means.
I finished peeing, washed my hands, looked in the mirror, and ended up momentarily shocked to see the bruise on my face for the first time. “Holy shit,” I whispered, gently touching the swollen skin under my eye and grimacing as pain radiated from the spot.
“Alexa, how do I put on green concealer?” I asked the device on the dresser directly outside the bathroom door while staring at the concealer in my hand. A few seconds later, Alexa’s voice filled my bedroom. “Gently rub or pat with a small sponge or makeup brush…”
I groaned. “I don’t have a makeup brush!”
And what type of small sponge? Would I have one of those? I had a lot of sponges but most of them were for cleaning things. Were those the same as a makeup sponge?
“Fuck it.” I had hours until dinner and the last thing I needed was to scare the hell out of people at the restaurant or the littles at the club. I found my phone miraculously plugged in on my nightstand and pressed on my text string with Logan and the entire group of our friends.
When Alexa tells you to use a small sponge, what type of sponge does she mean?
Logan
Uh, I would think it would depend on what you were using that sponge for.
Almost a minute later, a response from the group’s literal genius, and the only middle other than Logan, popped up.
Dean
Definitely. And how small are we talking? Like, a small sponge to wash an elephant is definitely different from a small sponge to use on detailing miniatures.
Larson
Only you. Why would you think of washing elephants and detailing miniatures?
Dean
Well, small is relative. We need to know how small! It’s important to get the scope of what we’re dealing with.
Logan
I don’t think he’s washing an elephant!
Wait, are you washing an elephant?? If you are, I want in!
Aiden
Me too!
Larson
I think it goes without saying; we’d all want in on that.
This conversation had gone way off track as soon as I’d asked the question and now I had to find a way to get it back on track or I’d never figure out what type of sponge Alexa meant.
Like, to apply concealer with.
Larson
You need a makeup sponge for that.
Why do you need to apply concealer?
Sighing and pinching the bridge of my nose—then flinching because I’d forgotten the bruising had spread—I tapped out a one-handed reply.
I took an elbow to the face last night.
The group chat lit up like a damned Christmas tree, my friends all frantically texting to ask if I was okay, how bad it was, and if I was still up to going to the club tonight. I didn’t have a chance to respond to any of them before a video chat popped up. Larson was always the most logical of the group when things went crazy and I suspected it had something to do with his family.
I hit Accept and my phone pinged repeatedly as everyone joined the chat. Aiden’s voice was the first I heard when the video finally appeared. “Holy shit! Ouch. That’s a mess. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, really. But I don’t want this to be the only thing everyone sees when we get to DASH.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? That looks nasty.” I couldn’t see him well, but it wasn’t hard to tell his narrowed eyes were focusing on the swollen reddish-blue patch of skin below my eye.
“It honestly looks a lot worse than it is. It was his upper arm and elbow that made contact below my eye. I was checked out by the paramedics and team doctor last night. They all said it’s just bruising, nothing to be alarmed about.” There were groups of friends where less was more. In this group, I needed to lay it all out there as quickly as possible or they’d hound me until I gave them all the information they needed.
Larson hummed. “Indy knows her stuff.”
Logan’s face appeared on the screen as he started to talk. “That’s going to hurt for a while. Trent accidentally elbowed me in the face during an apprehension one time. I looked like I’d gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“It’s really not that bad. It’s uncomfortable if I poke at it, but it doesn’t really hurt.” I had no idea if my answer would placate them or not.
“You don’t have to put concealer on for us. You know that, right?” Aiden said, sincerity in his voice.
“Oh, it’s not for you, or me really. It’s mostly because I don’t want to distract people at PenAlety Box or DASH with my giant bruise.”
“We’ll stop at Seth’s on the way to the restaurant. It’s not that far out of our way. He’ll have a makeup sponge,” Larson said with finality.
“Thanks. You guys are seriously the best.”
“We know,” Logan answered for everyone.
“Daddy!” Larson’s voice called over the guys’ laughter. “We need to go to Seth’s house this afternoon.”
My heart was tight in my chest and I knew my smile was stupidly huge. Stumbling across the group at a littles night shortly after I’d joined DASH was the best thing that could have happened in my life. I’d not only gained a group of littles to hang out with at the club, I’d found friends who were the embodiment of ride or die.
“Okay, I need to go get breakfast. See you guys this afternoon.” As I pocketed my phone, I still didn’t know how to put on concealer, but I was happier than I’d been since I’d woken up. Now I had to figure out how to get my car back.
I grabbed the first pair of pajama pants my hands landed on in my drawer, then headed out of my room, still holding Elle in my hands and mentally figuring out if I had anything in the house for breakfast. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone shopping, meaning my options were going to be severely limited. My refrigerator proved the situation was more dire than I’d expected. There was an expired half gallon of milk, one egg, and a container of something growing mold.
I groaned around the pacifier in my mouth and went to the cabinet to see if maybe I had a can of potatoes or really anything I could make a meal out of. There was a box of cereal I hadn’t opened, but without milk it didn’t sound appetizing.
Delivery it was.
I’d barely gotten my phone out of the pocket of my pajama pants when the doorbell rang.
I blinked stupidly at it for a few seconds. No one rang the bell. Hell, no one visited me unannounced. My family was out of state and I’d just talked with my friends and none of them were near my place.
When it rang again, my feet reacted, taking me to the door, and I looked through the small peephole.
Esme ?
What the hell was Esme doing at my place? Had we made plans? Had he told me he would be over? Watching him through the small hole in my door, I tried to remember the details of the night before. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t remember much past sitting down to eat, then a few fuzzy memories of him driving me home and walking me to my door.
While he stood waiting on my porch, Esme began to look more concerned, and I could see the worry in his eyes when he reached for the doorbell again.
“Jake!” he called out as he rang the bell twice, then pulled his phone out. We hadn’t shared numbers—at least not that I remembered—but he was poking anxiously at his phone.
Finally my confusion lifted enough for me to realize I was actively causing him distress by staring at him and not opening the door, and I felt like an asshole. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
“Jake, thank fuck, you had me—” He cut himself off and blinked at me with his mouth slightly parted in surprise.
“I—” I started to encourage him to finish his thought when my pacifier fell from my lips and I dropped Elle as I tried to grab for it.
With catlike reflexes, Esme reached out and caught both my pacifier and Elle before they could land on the floor, then offered them back to me. “I think these belong to you.”
“Fuck my life.” I took the items, though they brought me none of their normal comfort. All I wanted to do was crawl in a hole until my embarrassment faded. Maybe in the next century or so.
Esme invited himself into my house, my body moving out of the way as he did so, and he shut the door behind him. He then caught my chin with his finger, ignoring my mortification, and gently moved my face side to side and up and down, his eyes homing in directly on my cheek. “Damn, that looks painful. How bad is it?”
I shrugged and tried to focus on his words. “It’s not too bad.” So long as I didn’t touch it.
Esme pressed. “Have you iced it?”
“Just woke up.”
“Have you eaten since last night?”
“Just woke up,” I repeated. “Was getting ready to order delivery.”
Esme pursed his lips. “Delivery?”
I used Elle to gesture absently toward the kitchen. “Haven’t been grocery shopping in… well, it doesn’t matter how long. Aside from some cereal, expired milk, an egg, and something unrecognizable, there’s not much in my kitchen. Edible or otherwise.”
The answer had clearly not been the right one because Esme grunted in disapproval. “Come on, you can come to my place. I’ll feed you. You can ice your cheek while I make breakfast burritos.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
He smiled at me. “Yeah. Seriously. I went to the store this morning.”
“This morning?” It was barely ten. “What time did you wake up to already be at the store and back and then make it here?”
“Seven. No, that’s wrong. Six forty.”
My eyes blinked and I was too dumbstruck to form words.
With a small duck of his head, he shrugged. “I’m an early riser. And I wanted to come check on you. You were exhausted when I dropped you off last night.”
“You wanted to come check on me,” I parroted, still confused.
Esme cocked an eyebrow and gave me a smug grin. “Yes, and it seems like a good thing I did. You have no food here, and I have plenty at home.”
If he wanted to act like everything about this encounter was totally normal, I could at least play along. “Do I need to get dressed for breakfast?” Esme was dressed like a runway model in a soft cream turtleneck sweater paired with navy chinos and brown leather dress boots. I wouldn’t have been shocked to see him carrying a Louis Vuitton bag that cost more than my monthly salary. And here I was in a pair of cartoon-printed pajama pants, no shirt, bare feet, and to complete the look, unruly bedhead, Elle, and my pacifier.
He looked me over, his gaze heated, then shook his head. “No, though you might want to put a shirt on. It’s a little cold out there.”
Groaning, I turned and headed up the steps to find a sweatshirt.