Page 14 of Space Crush
But right now, with sweat staining my T-shirt, my blue balls aching, and a stitch in my side from my second race across NASA, my brain is not connecting the dots.
Hell, I can’t evenseethe dots.
She drops her arms to her side on a sigh. “Listen, if you felt I put too much pressure on you too soon, I get it.” Her voice softens. “So it’s better if you just tell me the truth, okay?”
For a second, her impassivity slips, and vulnerability seeps in.
It makes me want to do or say whatever it is she needs to hear.
It’s just too bad I have no idea what that is.
“Kaley, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Spine straightening, her mask falls back into place. “You can’t say I didn’t give you a chance to explain this time.” She shrugs, shaking out the arm holding my phone by her side.
This time?
That’s my only thought before in a quick succession of movements, Kaley winds up, her arm moving in a powerful underhand windmill before releasing the phone and sending it barreling toward me like a bullet.
Reflexes save me from taking the full blow, the phone grazing my thigh before impact. Even still, an explosion of nausea hits, sending me to my knees, my hands clutching below my waist. My brain, kicking into survival mode, doesn’t register the bite of cement and gravel to my knees but rather focuses on my lungs inhaling their next breath while I wheeze.
And when I finally do manage to take a breath, I kind of wish I’d simply passed out, since, now safe from suffocation, my brain allows the rest of my full body weight to feel all the things—including the intense, blinding pain emanating from my groin.
It takes a few minutes, but by the time the pain reduces to a throb, I find myself alone, lying on my back, blinking into the afternoon sun.
“Mitchell?”
Okay, not alone.
Andy, apparently relieved from festival duty, leans over me, along with the distracted members of the said EVA Tools team on either side of him. “What the hell happened?”
As I’m about to answer, my phone, lying next to me, buzzes. Hoping it’s Kaley, I thumb open the screen only to be bombarded with notifications.
DateConnectionnotifications.
And like the accordion-style text bubbles stacked neatly on the screen, everything Kaley said falls into place.
Fuck.
“Evan?” Andy nudges me with his toe. “You good?”
“No, Andy.” I drape an arm across my eyes. It serves to block out the sun but doesn’t do anything to ease the ‘oh shit’ feeling overtaking the previous priority of my possibly bruised dick and black and blue balls. “I’m not okay.”
* * *
“Did it break?” Bodie, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, leans back in his bar stool.
“My phone?” I stare at the object in question lying screen up on the high-top between us, dark from Kaley’s lack of replies from my calls and texts but otherwise miraculously unscathed.
Too bad I can’t say the same for my pride.
“Not your phone.” Ian, sitting next to Bodie, continues to chuckle. “Your dick.”
They both lose it again.
I take a large gulp of my True Anomaly Scout beer. “Very funny.”
I’ve kept these two nothingbutentertained since they helped me limp into Boondoggle’s Pub when news of me splayed out like roadkill and clutching my balls spread around NASA.
