Page 81 of True Sight
“Oh, Hardie, thank you!” I jump up and down and pull him into a hug, causing him to grunt unpleasantly. I step back and hold him at arm’s length. “You and your men have been working so hard and I’msograteful for you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re welcome,” he gripes, trying to escape my grasp. “But just so you know, there’s no hugging in construction, so please let me go.”
“Oh, sorry,” I apologize quickly and take another step away from him. “Maybe you should hug in construction though, it lowers your cortisol levels and blood pressure.”
“My corti-what?” he questions, looking at me like I’m speaking another language. He waves a hand at me. “I appreciate your gratitude, but still no hugging. I gotta get back to it or else my guys will start to get lazy. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will, thanks, Hardie. Oh, just as a reminder, I’m going out of town around the holiday and will be gone for five days. If you need anything, just ask Alex. I taped her number behind the counter for you.”
“Oh trust me, dancer boy, she’s told me all about how she’s in charge. She’s a spitfire, you know that?”
I laugh, knowing exactly what he means. “Oh, I know.”
I give him a quick wave and step out the front door tohead home to shower and change. Conrad is coming over once he finishes his work day and I want to be ready for his arrival. The colder it gets, the more I consider calling an Uber to come and pick me up since I still haven’t bothered to purchase a car. While the crisp November chill has cooled the city down to a brisk mid-10 degrees Celsius, it still isn’t cold enough to make me wimp out and call a car. Braving the wind, I wrap my jacket around me tighter and head off for home.
Later that evening, Spotify is playing through my laptop as I build fresh playlists for the studio when a knock comes at my door. Pressing the spacebar, I pause the music and jump up to go and answer it, and I’m met with two paws reaching for my chest.
“Hello, Annie girl, I’m so happy you’re here. Yes, I missed you, too, I did, I missed you,” I baby talk to her, kneeling down to be at her eye level. When an all too familiar grunt comes from above me, I tip my chin up just in time to see Conrad scowl at the two of us.
“What’s the matter, love? Feeling left out? Want me to baby talk to you too?” I stand up and pout at him, spiking the intonation of my voice and making the way I speak to him as dramatic as I can. “Because I can, I can talk to you like this, too, if you like. Is that what you want? You want me to talk to you like this?”
“Would you please shut up?” he growls, looping an arm around my waist and pulling me into a kiss. My hands rest on his chest as we kiss in my doorway and I wish more than anything that time will freeze this moment so it can last a little while longer. Because just like every time he kisses me, everything in my life suddenly feels still and right. The voices in my head seem to quiet and all the worries that I carefully pat down during the day feel like they don’t matteranymore. It’s as if my heart finally releases a sigh of relief and says ‘everything’s okay now.’
“Wow, you can tell me to shut up whenever you like if that’s what I’m going to get in return,” I tease when he pulls away. He gives me a sideways smirk and we all step inside. Annie takes off to her usual spot—a bed I procured for her after he stayed over at my place for the first time—and immediately lays down.
“She’s such a good dog,” I comment, grinning at her from across the room.
“She really is,” he agrees, nodding his head. “She’s given me more than I can ever give her, but I try.”
“You give her plenty, love. More than plenty. She lives a better life than most humans do,” I encourage but he only shrugs.
“Speaking of, did you bring her stuff with you?” I ask, only for him to swing his backpack over his shoulder and unzip it and show me that he has. He’s staying at my place tonight, something we agreed to earlier in the week, which is why he brought Annie with him. If he wasn’t planning on staying, he would have left her at home but I had presented the idea a few days ago and he happily agreed. I couldn’t be more excited.
“She was very curious why I was packing her stuff away as we left the house.” When he pulls out her favorite alligator toy, her ears perk up and she comes running. Snatching it from his hands, she carries the stuffed animal proudly across the flat like she owns the place and throws herself back down into her bed.
“She has more sass than I do, and that’s saying something because I’m full of sass,” I exclaim, looking at her looking at us.
“Please, sweets,no onehas more sass than you do.” Hisvoice is low and now that his arms are free of the bag, he uses them to wrap himself around me again. He brings his mouth to my neck and peppers kisses up and down my throat, creating a growing warmth inside of me.
“Hey, how was Hanna today?” I ask, pulling away and forcing him to look at me. Today’s Thursday, which means he had his standing session with his therapist.
“Well, I didn’t walk in on her coming down from whatever sexual favors were going on between her and the brute of a man who left her office last week,” he mocks and pulls away from me to take off his shoes and jacket. “But, it was fine. We talked about a bunch of stuff I didn’t realize I needed to talk about.”
He moves to cross the entry space and into the living room, plopping himself down on the sofa and spreading his legs out wide like many men like to do. The proverbially ‘manspreading’ that so many women hate because it’s a microaction men use to take up more space than they need. If he were a stranger on the tube I would have been annoyed at his lack of care for the space of others, but since he is who he is I want nothing more than to get on my knees in front of him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I offer as I clear my throat, working to push the semi-pornographic images out of my mind.
Leaning his head back, he closes his eyes and forces out a heavy breath. “No, not really. I just want to move on from it and hangout if that’s okay.”
Snuggling in next to him, he drapes an arm around me as I lay my head on his chest, listening for his heart beat. When I find it, I start to tap the beat with my index finger like I enjoy doing and close my eyes and feel my heart sigh again.
“Of course that’s alright. Anything for you.”
Having finishedthe dinner that I cooked for him, we’re both squeezed in next to one another doing the dishes. While I have a dishwasher, I always prefer to do my dishes by hand and lucky for me, he doesn’t mind cleaning them this way either.‘You cook, I clean,’ he had said before we ate and is now living up to his offer. Adorned with my bright fuschia rubber gloves, he’s wrist-deep in soapy water, scrubbing the pan I’d used to make us dinner. Music is playing from my wireless speaker and I move to the rhythm of the beat, shaking my hips and shimming my shoulders as if I were on stage.
“Do you ever stop moving?” he snorts, following me with his eyes as I dance. When the beat slows down and becomes sultry, I adjust my movements to match.
“Movement is medicine, love. You should try it sometime,” I hum and leer at him seductively.
