Page 8 of Sugarlips
She shook her head. “No… friends don’t call each other sexy, remember?”
“Right, right. I almost forgot.”
2
Liam
The next morning, I woke up slightly disoriented and very dehydrated. Even though I’d only had a little bit of tequila, it was a hell of a lot more than I usually had on any other given day.
Chloe’s pillows were so much fluffier than my own. Her sheets were more luxurious than the cotton jersey sheets I buy from Target. And I could smell pancakes, bacon, and coffee from somewhere in the house.
I bolted upright, suddenly remembering the night before, and reached for my phone. The battery icon at the top was blinking red—only two percent left.
There were half a dozen texts, but I first opened the one from Finn to make sure everything at the bakery was okay. Just as I was opening a text from Neil, my phone blinked and turned black.Shit.
With a glance at Chloe’s bedside table, I saw the time—8:30 a.m. I couldn’t remember the last time I slept in past seven… even on my mornings off. I was the guy who woke up early so that I could run along the lake trail before it got too busy. I found that keeping to an early schedule made those 3:00 a.m. wake-up calls that much easier.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and used the bathroom, splashed some cold water on my eyes and gargled some of Chloe’s mouthwash before I went downstairs to find a surprisinglyun-hungover Chloe cooking breakfast.
Um, if you couldcallthat cooking. There was a strong smell of charcoal surrounding the kitchen that you only get when you’ve been burning things consistently in the same pan.
With the Motown blasting, she didn’t seem to hear me come down the stairs. Instead, she flipped a pancake, then pulled the spatula up in front of her mouth to croon along with The Shirelles in her makeshift microphone.
“This is… er… quite the spread you’ve put out,” I said, coming into the kitchen.
Chloe screamed and, when she spun around to face me, knocked the bowl of pancake batter on the ground. Cream-colored batter splattered everywhere, spraying up onto the cabinets and even our pant legs.
Still leaning against the counter, she pressed her palm into her chest and heaved a panting breath. “Oh my God. You scared me. I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”
“Early? This is sleeping in for me.”
She scrunched her nose like I’d said something truly horrific. “Eight-thirty is a late morning for you?”
I laughed as she handed me an empty mug from the cabinet. “Well… yeah. It is for most people who work.”
“Yeah, but it’sSaturday.”
I nodded, pouring a mug full of black coffee and taking a sip. “That’s the busiest day at the bakery.”
Her face paled and her mouth fell open. “Oh, fuck. I forgot about the bakery. And Neil and my sister are still in New York.”
My gut tied in a knot. For the first time in months, I hadn’t been thinking about that stupid reality show my brother had entered in an effort to get us out of debt. And I hadn’t been constantly worrying last night how we were going to make the minimum payments on Mom’s medical bills that had been piling up in the months since her breast cancer diagnosis. Chloe had helped me escape… if only for a few hours. And it was glorious.
Neil and Elaina had made it to the finals of the reality show, which filmed last night. So now? We were either going to have half a million dollars… or still be in massive debt.
“Did they win?” Chloe asked.
“I … I don’t know. My phone’s dead.”
Chloe scrambled for her own cell phone, hitting the top button. “I turned mine off last night after I talked to her. I couldn’t handle my parents or Dan or anyone calling. I would normally check it first thing in the morning, but I just wasn’t ready to deal with the onslaught of texts from my friends, asking questions about Dan.”
I rushed to her, looking over her shoulder as her phone booted up. “Comeon,” she said, shaking the phone as though that would help it load faster.
Finally, she pulled up the dozen or so texts waiting for her and squealed, jumping up and down. “They won!” she cried. “My mom texted me last night! They won!”
“Oh, my God!” They won.Wewon. Five hundred thousand dollars to get us all out of debt. I wrapped my arms around Chloe and spun her around the kitchen as we both laughed.
Slowly, I lowered her back to her feet, my hands wrapped around her ribcage. The light cotton crop top had slipped up in the midst of our victory dance, and I found my thumbs gently pressed against the silken skin just below her breasts. Each breath she took pressed those ribs deeper and harder against the palm of my hand, and in a movement that was so natural, so completely comfortable, I circled my thumb there against the upper part of her abdomen.
