Page 43 of My Grumpy Sweetheart
And for the first time since he’d given me one last chance on Monday, I was starting to believe I might not blow it; that I might be able to make this weird thing between us work.
“Do I even want to know what you mean by resting frownyface?”
Bailey giggled, pressing a quick kiss to my cheek right above my beard. “Probably not. No, definitely not. Just don’t ask.”
Okay then. I wouldn’t ask. I’d just stay like this forever.
Well, until Bailey moved, which unfortunately took only another few seconds. Then, he was off my lap again and jumping out of the car.
“Your shoes?” I asked, looking at his bare feet in horror.
He smiled, looked down to his feet, and wiggled with his toes, completely unbothered. “Oops. I guess I’ll have to put them on, right?”
“I doubt they’ll let you handle an axe without wearing shoes.”
Bailey just shrugged, walked around the car, and climbed back in on the passenger side. “To be fair, I highly doubt my sneakers would do much to protect my feet from an axe.”
Looking at my steel toed shoes, I bit my lip. Should I have told Bailey to wear something like that? Then again, I doubted he even owned steel toed shoes.
“It’s fine.” Bailey watched me with his head cocked to the side. “I promise I won’t throw an axe on my foot, so you can stop worrying about it already, ‘kay? Because I want to go have fun and throw axes at… things.”
“Targets,” I said. “Bailey, we’re going to throw axes at targets.”
“Bo-ring,” he sing-songed, then giggled again. “But okay. Today, you’ll show me how to throw an axe and we’ll practice with a target. Next time, we’ll just build a throwing range in your garden and throw axes at fun stuff.”
What had I done?
I got out of the car and had to break into a sprint to catch up with him. “Wait… what do you consider fun stuff?”
He just smiled deviously at me. “Don’t worry about that. You find out what we need to build a throwing range, and I’ll take care of our targets.”
Somehow that wasn’t exactly reassuring, yet I had no doubt that I’d actually end up building an axe throwing range in my backyard if Bailey batted his pretty eyes at me.
* * *
“Noooo!”
What the fuck?
“How the hell did you manage to get the axe stuck in the ceiling?”
Maybe I shouldn’t build that throwing range after all. Or I needed to build it far away from everything else. Far, far,faraway.
“I don’t know. I followed your instructions!”
“If you’d have followed my instruction, your axe would be sticking in the target, not in the ceiling. How do you even manage that? You threw it with both hands, and the ceiling is like twelve foot high.”
Bailey hid his face in his hands, his slim shoulders shaking. He’d lost his ridiculously thin jacket about half an hour ago and was tempting me ever since with his loose fitting tank top that almost showed his nipples. I wanted to tug it down just an inch, and… I couldn’t get a boner here. Especially not now since I’d probably have to call the manager over to confess about Bailey’s… mishap, even though I really had no idea what he’d done. He’d thrown it with both hands over his head, just like I’d shown him for the past twelve times. With the right technique, it shouldn’t even be possible to get the axe in an upward motion.
“I’ll have to call Stan over,” I grumbled.
“I can do it,” Bailey offered, but I just shook my head.
Stan wasn’t the friendliest of guys, and I didn’t want Bailey to be attacked for a minor — or not so minor — mishap. These things happened. However, blinking up at the ceiling and the handle of the ax, I couldn’t help but wonder how often these things happened.
“I think I can see a few other notches up there,” I told Bailey. “So you’re not the first one.”
Bailey pouted for a second, then giggled. “That’s a shame. Being the first one to do dumb shit like that is a real accomplishment. Now I’m just a nobody who’s bad at axe throwing.”
