Page 43 of Spark
“Nope.I have a cranky cat named Gary living under my chair.”
“I didn’t know you had a cat,” Tyler said, taking a step toward the chair, not taking another one when Gary hissed.“Check that.I didn’t know you had the world’s angriest cat.”
Chloe nodded.“In fact, I have the world’s angriest, oldest, one-eyed cat.The vet’s best guess is that he’s seventeen, give or take.But he’d been at the shelter for years and he needed a home.I needed a grumpy attack cat.He’s really not so bad, once he gets used to you.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Returning to the living room, she handed over the water, parking herself cross-legged in front of the couch and in between boxes.Tyler shifted to the floorboards beside her, his gaze traveling over the boxes before landing on her.
“Okay, what’ve we got?”
Chloe grinned her excitement, pulling one of the favors she’d already put together out of the box beside her with a flourish.“Hangover kits, of course.”
He laughed.“Hangover kits.”
“Open bar, remember?”She shook the four by six-inch cellophane bag at him.“With all those beer and wine flights, not to mention the champagne we’ll have coming out the wazoo, I thought these would at least be functional.”
She tossed the kit to Tyler, who broke the seal with a finger to take a look at the contents.“Powdered electrolytes, breath mints, packages of Saltine crackers—nice—acetaminophen, sanitizing wipes, Band-Aids…Chloe, this is fucking brilliant.”
A flush stole across her cheeks, but she shrugged.“I can’t take too much credit.I got the idea online.I know not everyone attending the party drinks, but the stuff inside is pretty universal.Oh!And check out the best part.”
She rummaged through the padded mailer on her coffee table to pull out the stickers she’d had custom printed to go on the bags.
Tyler’s laugh bordered on a snort as he read,“But did you die?God, that’s such an Addison thing to say.Ryan, too, come to think of it.”
“Right?”Chloe waggled her brows and nudged his knee with hers.“Anyway, I got through assembling about half of the kits, but the rest of the bags need to be stuffed and sealed, then they all need to be stickered.I got stickers for the opposite side of the bags with Addison and Ryan’s names, plus the date of the party, too.”
“Stuffed, sealed, and stickered.Got it,” Tyler said.
They took a few minutes to organize the contents of the bags and supplies, then figure out the best two-person system to do the work, which turned out to be him on stuff duty and her handling sealing and stickering.Tyler had, of course, been right.The process was far easier with two people.The repetitive motions—peel, stick, seal; peel, stick, flip; repeat—were actually kind of soothing, and pretty soon, Chloe found her muscles loosening.
“I’ve got to admit,” she said, not breaking stride with the peel-stick process as her thoughts barged directly past her brain-to-mouth filer, “I never thought I’d see you putting together party favors for the pre-game to a wedding.Not even Ryan’s.”
Tyler, being an eternal cyborg, seemed unruffled by her mention of the W-word.“I help set up for Station Seventeen’s holiday open house every December,” he said, passing her an assembled kit, then reaching for a new cellophane bag.“It’s pretty much the same thing.”
Chloe’s laugh came out as an actual “ha”.“It would be, if you despised Christmas the way you do weddings.”
“I’ll admit they’re not my favorite events, butdespiseseems a little extreme,” he said, and she paused just long enough to arch a brow at him.
“Tyler, please.You should have seen your face when Marina thought we were the bride and groom and said we were ‘just thecutestcouple’.I mean, I get that you’re not into me, personally.Message received when you ran screaming from me on St.Patrick’s Day.But?—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Tyler said, and Chloe noticed—too late—that he’d lowered the half-assembled kit in his hands to stare at her.“You think that was because I wasn’t into you?Are you crazy?”
Chloe’s chin snapped up, her heart rising to her throat.He was looking at her with equal surprise, as if he’d had no warning the words would come out of his mouth, and for a second, they simply blinked at each other, processing.
Of course, he recovered first.“Sorry.We agreed to forget about it.I shouldn’t have?—”
“Oh, yeah, no.Absolutely not.”Okay, so maybe she was being a bit forward, but there was zero fucking chance she was letting a bombshell likethatslide.“Tyler Gates, explain yourself.”
He exhaled, but to her surprise, he didn’t clam up.“Okay, yes.That kiss happened in the heat of the moment.But I didn’t stop because I didn’t want you.Christ, is that what you thought this whole time?”
She blinked and very eloquently said, “Uh, yeah?You practically ran out of the room after Addison barged in, then didn’t speak to me for two months.”
“You didn’t speak to me, either,” he said without accusation, and Chloe knew she was staring—goggling, really—but wow, there was no controlling it.
“I got tipsy and flung myself at you.You avoided me like a typhoid outbreak afterward.Of course, I thought you had regrets.”
Tyler’s laugh was all irony.“More like a really inconvenient attack of scruples.But you’re my best friend’s little sister.You deserve more than a casual hookup, and like you said, I’m not exactly a commitment guy, so I backed off.”
