Page 47 of Single Teddy
He unlocked the car and I rushed inside, for what reason, I didn’t know. As if being trapped in a tight space with him would be better for the sanctity of my ecosystem.
“Actually,” he said after he’d turned the engine on. “Before I take you home… I was wondering if you’d like to join me?”
“Join you?” I asked and made the mistake of looking at him.
Was he asking me to join him in the shower? A bathtub? A Jacuzzi?
I wasn’t fussy, to be honest. I didn’t have to be wet to join him. I’d join him in the backseat or the nearest available bed if I could.
“Yeah. I…I’ve got some house viewings and…” He shrugged. “I’d love your input.”
“Oh,” I said, and a part of me deflated. I hoped it wasn’t a part he could see. “You move fast.”
“I’ve been dragging my feet long enough. I need Bear to know I’m here for him so…I set things in motion.”
Dear fucking gods. Just when I was starting to think maybe I was done with this physical boner, he goes and says things like that and—hello, emotional boner!
“That’s great,” I managed to say without sounding drunk or desperate. I almost sounded human. “Bear might not know it yet, but he’s grateful to have you in his life.”
Was it me, or did his cheeks turn red?
“Does that mean you’ll come with me?”
Oh, I’d come with you in an instant…
“Sure, but aren’t we missing someone?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Teddy frowned, and then came the clarity.
“Oh right. Bear. I thought it might be stressful for him.”
“If it becomes stressful, you can take a break, but I think he needs to see you fighting for him, for both of you, and shouldn’t he have a say where he lives too? He’s had so many choices taken from him, it might actually make him a little more confident knowing he’s not being thrown around like a tennis ball. He’s his own person.”
He kept staring at me long after I’d stopped talking, and I froze, unsure what to do with myself. Every second under his scrutiny felt like a century, a wonderful, beautiful century, but a century nonetheless.
“What?” I said when it was apparent there would be no end to that staring, and I was under serious danger of grabbing him by the shirt and kissing those gorgeous lips of his.
Teddy cleared his throat and looked away.
“N-nothing,” he said. “You just… You amaze me with how wise you are.”
“Are you calling me old?” I said with as much snark as I could muster, and I immediately regretted it because the way his whole face—heck, his whole body—smiled was a thing of perfection.
“No. Not at all. Just wise. I wish I had your brains.”
“What? To eat? Are you trying to tell me you’re a zombie?”
Yeah, I was flailing. Yes, I was using my humor to make this interaction less…just less of whatever it was, but I didn’t know if it was working. But I knew what definitely would.
“So…should we pick Bear up and go view some houses?” I clapped my hands together and looked straight ahead, and I didn’t dare look at him again until we got to Slade and King’s house and picked up his nephew.
And as soon as we hit the road again, I was cursing myself for it.
Being in the car with Teddy and Bear, interacting with the little one outside the classroom, getting him excited for the house viewings… Heck, even going with them to said house viewings felt very…familial. Intimate. Something which definitely didn’t help my obsession with Bear’s uncle, and let’s not even talk about how much it would hurt when this was over and I was alone in my house again, with my thoughts, my books, and my plants.
The first house was too big, and from my understanding, too expensive for Teddy, seeing as he almost had a heart attack when he heard the rent price. Needless to say, we promptly left the viewing, but not before I stared daggers at the Realtor, who thought hiding the price until viewing would benefit him.
The second viewing was an apartment on Main Street that overlooked the campaign poster for Jake Wilson, a local businessman who’d decided to take a shot at being mayor. He was also the dickhead that built his entire campaign on promises of investing on the island. By wiping out entire working class neighborhoods and building new, more expensive, more upmarket houses and tourist attractions. And he thought calling himself a philanthropist and volunteering at Duke’s Animal Sanctuary was good enough for everyone to ignore his plans.
