Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
But it was.
Significantly.
Time to move on.
“There’s nothing wrong with my room.”
“You’re right. It’s tight. If you got a vagina.”
Ugh.
How had I never noticed he was kind of a jerk?
“I’ll have you know I have male friends who think this room is everything,” I declared snootily.
“They gay?” he asked.
They were.
“That’s beside the point,” I sniffed.
“Only because it makes mine.”
I was offended for the entirety of the LGBTQ+ community. “Not every gay guy is effeminate.”
“Yeah, but most of ’em got good taste, whereas I couldn’t give a shit if my lampshades match my comforter.”
Now I was intrigued. “How did you see that in the dark?”
“You learn to see in it when bein’ in the dark might get your ass nabbed and pushed back into the foster system or other even less fun shit.”
I couldn’t argue that.
Time to move on to something else.
“Can you get off me?” I requested.
“No,” he denied.
“I’m not real sure I can have this conversation with you lying on me,” I gave him my understatement.
“Too late for that. If you wanted to do it another way, you woulda responded to my fuckin’ texts last night. Now it’s gonna be this way.”
Okay.
Wait.
Last night, he laid it out there, his truth, about me.
It was brutal and it was ugly, but I could see, now, he felt bad.
However, it was his truth, brutal and ugly. He’d foisted it on me.
And now I had to make him feel better?
At five a.m.?
“Get off me,” I demanded.
“No,” he again denied.
I pushed at his broad shoulders and was pretty certain they didn’t budge an inch.
Bah!
“Javi—”
“We’re talking shit out.”
“I’m not feeling that at this particular moment.”
“You don’t let messy shit like this fester.”
“Okay, how about making an appointment with me so we can sort this out in order to be able to carry on without any of our friends being sucked into our messy stuff. But that can’t be now. I have plans this morning.”
“At five o’clock?”
“Yes,” I snapped.
“You don’t go to work until eleven.”
“So?” I asked sharply. “I have a morning ritual. I never break my morning ritual.”
“And what’s this ritual that’s more important than working shit out?”
When he said that, he sounded a hint less bossy, but he added more than a hint of curiosity.
“I need to journal.” About you being a big meanie, I did not share. “Make a smoothie. Hit my Pilates class. Come home, have breakfast, shower and get ready to go to work.”
“None of that is important except the last part, babe.”
“To you,” I retorted. “It is to me.”
“Today, you’re making an exception.”
“I am not,” I refuted. “Rituals are important. They’re grounding. The very definition of a ritual is not making an exception to the ritual.”
He let out a big sigh, and even if it sounded, as well as felt frustrated, the feeling part of that also felt awesome.
Because everything about Javi was awesome.
Ugh!
Why me?
“I was a dick last night,” he started (okay, well, that wasn’t awesome).
You were.
“You were being real,” I amended.
“Harlow—”
“And that’s okay.”
“Babe—”
“Well, not okay, because what you said wasn’t nice. But it was honest.”
“Woman—”
“And it hurt. I didn’t like it. But it’s out there now so we just have to figure out how to be around each other without anyone else knowing how much you don’t like me.”
When I finished speaking, my stomach bottomed out because I sensed everything about him change. Get gentle. He didn’t move a muscle, but even his weight felt lighter.
All this before he whispered, “I don’t—”
He was cut off at a hammering on my front door.
I sensed him tense as I saw his shadowed head turn that way before mine did.
I then felt the return of his attention and gave mine to him.
“Who’s pounding on your door at five a.m.?” he asked.
“As you well know, I don’t have much to recommend me, including clairvoyance.”
That was when I felt his body tighten, heard (and also felt, and it was way nice) his low growl, and then he rolled off me and the bed.
“Stay there, we’re not done,” he ordered, still kinda growly, and it was still way nice.
Lord, save me.
He then stalked out of my room.
I saw the light come on down the hall and it was at this moment I realized this was my house.
So why was I letting him order me around and open my front door?
I scrambled out of bed and was hustling down the hall when I heard Shanti say, “Holy shit. You sure don’t let grass grow.”
I hit the living room and saw Shanti was in a pair of killer harem pants under a long tunic, and her hair was still up in her silk sleep bonnet.
She looked like an ad for harem pants. Or tunics. Or sleeping bonnets.
“Trust you to be adorable at five in the morning,” she said to me.
“I need those harem pants,” I told her.
“I’ll hook you up,” she replied.