Now what do I do? There aren’t enough chairs in the reading nook to eat together. Plus, the television is over here.
This is silly. I’m a mature woman. I climb up onto the bed and fold my legs under me.
Vex doesn’t make me wait long. He had to have everything set up before climbing the stairs.
How in the world did he carry all that up without dropping something? I don’t eat much up here because of all the stairs. It’s just not worth the effort to carry it up, but he makes it look so easy. “Hey.”
“Feeling any better?”
I actually am. “Yes, thank you for… um… everything.”
“The sheets are in the dryer, and I folded your blankets on top of the machine. It’s odd that the laundry room is on the first floor.” He sets another beer and my tea down on his nightstand.
“Um, there’s one here too. It’s in a closet in the bathroom.”
“Ah. That makes sense.” He takes a big beach towel off the top of the stack of things balanced in the other hand and sets it on the bed.
“All the other floors have a laundry chute so that I don’t need to carry anything down.” Whoever designed this place was smart about that. “What’s the towel for?”
“The pizza box.”
Duh. Of course. After the big deal I made about him lying on the bed in his street clothes, Vex was thoughtful enough to protect it. He takes another one out of a bag and sets it on the spot he was lying before.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re an incredibly sweet man?”
Vex laughs. “No.”
Chicken Soup
Vex
“Is the whole storyline to this movie things blowing up?” Dahlia takes another garlic knot out of the container.
“Mostly. Action movies aren’t really known for complex plotlines.” I take a sip of my beer and try to watch the television instead of staring at the woman sitting next to me.
How can I find a woman with wet hair and unicorn pajamas on sexier than any woman I’ve ever seen?
“Do you like to watch things blow up?”
Her voice is too soft. I shift my gaze to her, finding furrowed brows and a half-eaten garlic knot hovering in the air. Dahlia isn’t talking about the movies. She’s asking about my life.
All of this is wrong. I shouldn’t be sitting on a cloud next to the most beautiful woman in the world. A monster like me doesn’t deserve her.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.” She sets one of her small little hands on my forearm.
That’s why I’ll never let her go. A good man would have walked away and left her to live a beautiful life with someone else. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Dahlia shrugs. “Regardless of what anyone else sees when they look at you, I see a hero. A good man hiding beneath a veneer.”
“I’m not a good man.”
“What would you call a man who took care of me when I didn’t feel well? A man that made me tea? A man that watched chick flicks with me?”
“Determined.”
Her laugh is just as sweet.
Something about it draws the truth out of me. “No. I don’t enjoy what I have to do sometimes, but that doesn’t stop me from doing what needs to be done.”