Page 46 of Famous Last Words
“Nah, just a couple of tussles up against the boards. Why?” This time it’s my turn to tease, gently poking her thigh. “You worried about me, Keller?”
“No,” she scoffs. “But it’s pretty fucking hot watching you throwyour gloves down and square up,” she mumbles almost incoherently, and I wonder if she even knows she just said that out loud.
And I know she’s currently high on codeine, but my eyes still widen at that confession. Fran Keller thinks it’s hot when I fight. Noted. But before I can do something stupid like ask her what else she thinks is hot about me, a shrill buzz sounds through the apartment, startling me and waking her from her light sleep.
“What the fuck is this? Visiting hour?” she cries, throwing an arm over her eyes.
“I ordered food,” I say softly. “I’ll go down and grab it.”
Keller cried because I had the food delivery guy stop in at a bodega and grab a pint of Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and a giant packet of Skittles. She actually cried. Real tears. And then she proceeded to consume more than half the ice cream and a few heaped handfuls of the candy mixed in with it, while I ate the entire pizza that I ordered.
Now, between her bathroom breaks and my trips to the microwave to warm up her wheat pack, we’re watching one of theHalloweenmovies on the small flat screen hanging on the wall opposite her bed. I hadn’t intended on staying. I was just going to eat and leave her be. But then she suggested a movie and shuffled over so I could sit next to her on the bed. With her nestled into my underarm nook, the intoxicating scent of vanilla and mango wafting up from her hair, I don’t want to leave, although I know I have to.
“Why would you go up the stairs?” Fran mutters to herself. “Everyone knows if a masked psychopath comes into your house, the best thing to do is to run outside.”
Truthfully, I haven’t been watching the film. Between the conscious thoughts of what Fran feels like pressed into the side of my body, her scent, and the fact that, even though there’s no way inhell I’d ever admit it to anyone, horror movies legitimately terrify me, there’s no way I could possibly focus on a movie right now.
“Yeah, so dumb,” I add, my eyes doing all they can to avoid the screen.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand and check the time. It’s past midnight and I really should be heading back to the hotel, but—and this is something else I’ll never admit out loud—I don’t want to leave.
Stretching, I move my head side to side to crack my neck. This bed sure as hell ain’t big enough for the both of us. I’ve only been laying here for forty-five minutes and already my back is cramping.
Fran cranes her neck, big blue eyes peering up at me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say through a stifled yawn. “I should probably go.”
She checks the time on the alarm clock next to her bed and gasps. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
I sit up with a groan, my muscles sore after tonight’s game.
“You’re probably really tired. Sorry.”
I glance back at her, offering her a slow smile. “Fran Keller apologizing?”
“I take it back,” she snaps, but then a small whimper falls from her lips as she struggles to sit up, and I turn around, helping her, putting another pillow behind her. And although she looks a little less out of it and a little more herself than she did when I first showed up, she’s obviously still in a lot of discomfort.
“You gonna be okay if I go?”
“No. I think my life might actually fall apart without you,” she deadpans.
I can’t help but laugh because there she is.
Unlocking my phone, I scroll to the Uber app to order a ride which is precisely the moment a bolt of lightning flashes outside, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder that causesthe entire building to shake. Less than a few seconds later, rain is hammering hard against the windows, and I reach over Fran, pulling aside the mesh curtain, barely able to make out the buildings across the street through the blanketing sheets of rain.
“Ominous,” Fran says.
I glance at her, arching a brow.
“Maybe you should stay…” she shrugs.
I eye her, scanning the limited space in the bed, forced to swallow around the lump that’s wedged itself in the back of my throat.
“I promise I won’t try to kiss you again,” she says with a lighthearted laugh, hands held up in surrender and fuck me, now I feel like an asshole again thinking about our almost-kiss and how I’ve let her believe it was all her.
I drag a hand over my face, exhaling heavily. “You sure it’s okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll try not to bleed all over you in my sleep.” She waggles her eyebrows menacingly.
