Page 1 of Milk & Cookie

1

VINCE

I’m lost.

The mystery I have to solve is taking my brain in circles, and I can’t quite grasp the answers that must be right in front of me.

I’m supposed to find the bad guys and protect the vulnerable, but I’m a failing piece of shit. Someone needs my help, and I’m too boxed in to think straight. What the fuck am I doing if I can’t even do the thing I’m meant to be best at?

My office chair groans under my weight, as I swivel to look out the window.

Everything is fucking gray in this city, except for the handful of bright white and yellow chamomile flowers, gracing the fading feathery greens in my window box. Though, like a metaphor for everything else I’ve been neglecting lately, they’re well on their way to drooping. A confined window box is not their happy place, and I can relate.

Suddenly all too aware of my hunched shoulders, I lift my head and stretch my neck. I’m definitely in a fucking slump. I bet things would be different if I was living the life I really wanted.

I push up from my chair with a grunt. No point chasing that fucking pipe dream. It’s been months since my heart took its last tumble, and I’m still not ready to fall again. It hurts too much.

Apparently, I’m not husband or father material, and the universe wants me to focus on my work and contribute to the world that way. Fine.

I give the chamomile some water, and then harvest the few remaining flowers for a soothing tea. It’ll be my last real herbal tea for a while. I’ll have to buy the boxes of dried garbage from the store that claim to be organic, when my research has often shown otherwise. I sigh and swirl the petals to watch them dance in the water like floating feathers on the wind.

Fresh everything has always tasted best to me, but I don’t have the space to grow what I need. The huge garden I had, growing up, would have been more than sufficient to sustain a man my size, but as I look around my apartment — which was advertised as spacious —it’s hard to believe there’s any place around here that could truly accommodate my needs.

I miss the country. The fresh air, the wide open spaces, and all of nature’s colors. My friends and family, and the way we all play. I miss laughing.

The photographs on the wall draw my gaze, and they’re a welcome change from the morbid crime-scene pics I spend too much time staring at. I’ve been forgetting what happy faces look like.

I stand taller, and then walk to my bedroom and start packing a bag, so I can take my case on the road. I need a friendly face. One that doesn’t come with a large serving of an enviable family situation, because I’m pining enough for that life already. Besides, I haven’t seen Daryl’s new place yet, and he moved in over a year ago, so I’m sure he’s dying for me to visit.

It’s the perfect time for a change of scenery.

When I wake up to Daryl, jumping on my bed and shouting Earthquake, I know I’m in for some fun, but focusing on my work will be a challenge.

When he bounces me right off the bed, yells Morning is here, and then crows like a rooster, while he flaps and struts up and down the mattress, I should laugh, but I don’t — can’t. He seems to realize at the same moment as I do that it isn’t in me.

Daz shakes his head and tells me to take the day off, to frolic in the sunshine and get my sparkle back. I roll my eyes, and within ten minutes, receive phone calls from Gunnar, Ben, and Jason, to back him up. Eventually, I agree to leave my files in his basement guest suite and go outside, where I find a cute organic bakery and buy an armful of snacks before I return.

Woken by bouncing and hand-trumpeting the next morning, I’m quickly pushed out the door, to get a workout at the local small-town gym Daryl describes as adequate.

I don’t get my hopes up about what I’ll find when I enter the workout space, but nothing could have prepared me for what this gym has.

It doesn’t contain the right equipment to suit my needs, but what is does have, is a compact and mouthwateringly voluptuous angel, performing eye-poppingly enjoyable yoga poses that leave me so awestruck, I forget how to fucking breathe.

Our gazes lock in the wall of mirrors.

She smiles, and it’s so warm and inviting, I feel instantly at home in her glow — literally so welcome and comfortable, it’s like I’ve known her all my life. Known her and wanted her.

An unexpected flood of sensation rushes through my system, and my future flashes through my mind’s eye. I picture her naked in my bed. Then knocked up, with her fruitful belly rounding out her wedding dress as she walks toward me. And finally, walking hand in hand through lush fields and sunshine, while our children run and play alongside us — because my brain is an asshole and wants to really round out the delusion when there’s no way I could ever hope to engage in any kind of consummated marital relationship with her.

She’s beautiful. Radiant. Soft-looking and young. And she is most definitely far too small for me to fuck.

I give her a shy smile in return, and then sit on the nearest bench and get busy loading weights onto a bar, so I can keep my head down while I get myself under control.

Moments feel like years, but I don’t dare lift my head too soon. What if she’s still looking my way with those magnetic blue eyes? If I look up, she’ll know what I’m thinking. It’ll be written all over my face. Maybe she already saw it? Or the way my dick went insta-stiff? That had to be hard to miss.

God, I hope she’s short-sighted. Or long-sighted. Whichever one would make me a blur. My brain won’t work properly to remember — but I’m well aware that a big brute like me, sporting a giant boner, is a terrifying experience for any woman on the receiving end of my interest, and it would be a million times worse for someone her size.

I strain my ears, but the gym remains eerily quiet. Maybe she did see my dick, and she died of fright. Do I risk a peek, to check if she’s still alive?

---