Welcome to Blissville

by Walker, Aimee Nicole

  I popped the trunk almost as fast as I could spring an erection. The smug smile on his face told me that he had me right where he wanted me–by the balls. Yeah, well, I had my own little victory with him admitting he liked to smell like me. In my book, it made us both winners. If I had my way, we both would be celebrating our victories together after his friends went home.

  I wasn’t addicted to Gabe. I wasn’t addicted to Gabe. I wasn’t… oh, damn it. I was fucking addicted to Gabe. I had spent a few consecutive nights sleeping beside him and then found that I couldn’t sleep once we went back to separate beds. I was surprised I wasn’t shaking from withdrawal and scheming to find a way to get my next Gabe fix. My brain cautioned me to slow things down and that I was allowing him to get too close too fast, but my heart and body told my brain to take a damn vacation from overthinking for a damn change.

  I reached for my phone on the bedside table to text him but stopped myself. It was well past midnight on a work night for him. He needed his sleep to concentrate on solving his drug case and Lord knows I didn’t let him rest much over the past weekend. I also knew he wouldn’t be sleeping much on Wednesday when I did my big studio reveal and routine for him.

  Instead of pestering Gabe, I got out of bed and fixed a mug of chamomile tea to try and help soothe me to sleep. I curled up with Diva on the sofa and turned on a rerun of my favorite cooking show. “Who’s the best kitty in the world?” I cooed while I scratched her ears. Diva purred loudly and bumped her head against my cup of tea so that I had to put it down and use both hands to please her.

  Diva curled up on my chest and tucked her head beneath my chin. The warmth of her fur and gentle vibration of her purring worked better than any tea and I found myself nodding off right when the judges were about to test the food that the reality show contestants prepared. The show invaded my dreams and the panel of celebrity chefs was replaced by Chaz, Meredith, and Gabe. The wide-eyed, hopeful culinary students morphed into different versions of me. There were three Joshes, all in different outfits and obviously, none that I would’ve picked. That flannel shirt lumberjack look didn’t work for me at all.

  Sunday dinners morphed into a judging contest and instead of normal brilliant dishes, I served up octopus tentacle stew and ox tail carbonara. What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck!

  “This tentacle stew is a tad bit under seasoned,” Chef Gabe said with a scowl on his face. “It’s not your best dish in this competition, Josh.”

  Lumberjack Josh looked crestfallen but what the hell did he expect serving up nasty shit like that? Next up was Emo Josh dressed all in black and who clearly had a heavy hand when applying eye liner. I worried that the black skinny jeans he wore were so tight they would cut the circulation off to his cock.

  Chef Chaz took a bite of ox tail carbonara and spit it back out. “I can’t even…” He waved his hand dramatically and a member of the crew came and took the offensive plate away.

  Last up to be judged was Preppy Josh, who I admit was my favorite. That light blue Oxford button-up shirt and pink sweater tied around his neck was a little much for me, but of the three Joshes he appeared to be taking the competition most serious.

  “This is an unusual spin on country fried crow,” Chef Meredith said after taking a bite. She tilted her head to the side as if she couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing. She took another small bite and then smiled broadly. “I like it, Josh. There’s this little burst of heat at the back of my throat that gives it an extra something. Well done.”

  “Yasssss, bitch.” Preppy Josh twirled in celebration.

  “Excuse me,” Chef Meredith said. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d be serving up some crow for Preppy Josh to eat. Dumb fool. Meredith opened her mouth to blast him, but I was ripped out of my sleep by the sound of a car alarm going off.

  I had always heard that moms could always tell their crying baby apart from others in a room and I believed it because I could clearly tell my baby’s cry of distress from my neighbor’s Fiat 500. “Damn cat,” I muttered as I set Diva on the sofa and rose to my feet. Diva was insulted by my comment and snagged my pajama bottoms with her claw before I could walk away. “Aww, not you, baby girl. I was talking about that unfortunate cat who lives next door who sets off a different alarm almost nightly. Scruffy or some stupid shit name,” I told Diva.

  She retracted her claw and permitted me to leave. I put on my robe and slid my feet in my slippers before I grabbed my car keys. My Princess sometimes played hard to get and required me to stick my key in the door rather than push a button on the fob before she would stop her crying.

  I flipped on the outside light next to the back door and made my way carefully down the icy steps to the driveway. If I ever cleaned out all the crap in my garage, I could store Princess inside and not worry about her alarm being set off by a dumb cat. I slipped and slid my way over to the car and couldn’t believe what I saw when I got there. All four of my tires had been slashed. I unlocked Princess to turn off the alarm then stood there staring at my baby and wondering who would violate her in such a hateful way.

  An eerie feeling came over me, as if I was being watched. I looked up and down the alley, but didn’t see anything out of the norm other than the street light closest to my driveway was out. It had been working when I walked Gabe to his car earlier that night because I remembered remarking about how pretty the snowflakes looked in the beam of light. The light could’ve gone out on its own, but I had a sneaky suspicion that wasn’t the case. I was too freaked out to investigate so I returned inside the house and called the police.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind it should’ve occurred to me to call my hunky detective of a boyfriend first, but it didn’t. Unfortunately for me, one of the officers who arrived on the scene called him instead of me. In my opinion, four uniformed officers to answer a vandalism call seemed to be a tad bit excessive. Hell, I didn’t even know we had four cops on duty at one time. Regardless, one of the three extra cops had nothing better to do than call Gabe while the first officer took my statement and completed a report. The thunderous look on Gabe’s face when he arrived made me want to hide in my closet, but those days were long past.

  I also noticed that the Three Stooges suddenly got busier once he arrived. One of them even found a clue, admittedly one that validated the uneasy feeling I had when I first discovered that my tires had been slashed. “Detective Wyatt, it appears that the street light in the alley was purposely busted. I found shards of glass below on the ground beneath the light,” he said, interrupting the stare down Gabe was giving me.

  “Stay inside where it’s warm and don’t bother trying to lock me out. We are going to have a conversation when I return.” Gabe’s tone of voice and high-handed behavior should’ve pissed me off, but the shaking I felt in my body had nothing to do with fear or anger. Damn him.

  My tea from earlier was ice cold and disgusting so I made a fresh cup, made myself comfy on the sofa, and flipped on a new show I hadn’t seen before called Who’s Your Fryin’ Daddy? The host went to carnivals and county fairs from coast to coast and featured deep fried favorites. I got so caught up in the weird shit that some people liked to fry that I was able to temporarily forget the damage to my poor, pitiful Princess until Gabe returned upstairs by himself.

  “Where’s the other officers?” I asked. I tilted my head to look around him, hoping that one or more would be following behind him, but no such luck.

  “I sent them all on their way,” Gabe replied sternly. Instead of sitting on the couch next to me or the club chair beside the couch, Gabe squatted down in front of me. “Are you okay?” I was glad to see that concern had replaced the majority of the anger he felt earlier, although I could still see it simmering around the edges of worry in his eyes. I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  “I’m fine, Gabe, but Princess…”

  “Forget the car for a moment, Josh. Your insurance company will replace the tires. Princess will be fixed. It’s you that I’m wo
rried about.” He released a shaky breath and I realized that his concern went deeper than I had first realized. I knew that Gabe had a protective streak, but I thought his reaction to a little bit of vandalism was disproportionate.

  “What am I not understanding here?” I asked him.

  “Tell me exactly what happened?” Gabe avoided my question, which irritated me. It was the middle of the night and I’d had very little beauty sleep so I wasn’t surprised when I felt the ugly coming to the surface.

  “Why don’t you read the report?” I fired back.

  “Now is not the time for your attitude, Josh. I’ll overlook that you called the police department instead of me… for now, but I need you to answer my question. What exactly happened?”

  I wasn’t one to give in easy. “Well, I couldn’t fall asleep so I fixed myself a cup of warm tea and curled up with the cat on the couch. I was watching some food reality show and next thing I knew I was having a dream. You were there, Meredith was there, Chaz was there, and…”

  “Josh!” Gabe rose to his feet and paced angrily away from me while sliding his hands through his hair. He turned to face me and gave his hair a theatrical yank to let me know how mad I drove him. “Damn it! You could be in serious danger and…”

  “Wait a damn minute! How do you jump from four flat tires to serious danger, Gabe?” I was too shocked to come up with a cutesy name for him just then.

  “Remember when I told you about the threats made to Nate Turner?” Gabe asked. I nodded my head but failed to see what I had in common with a sleazebag night club owner who might’ve been involved in illegal activities. I didn’t so much as cheat on my taxes. “His tires were slashed just like yours.”

  “Coincidence,” I said to Gabe, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he might be right. I did feel an ominous presence when I stood outside.

  “If Nate hadn’t turned up dead in our county then I would agree with you, but he did,” Gabe said. He took his coat off and tossed it over the arm of the couch. “Josh, I have no clue what Nate was into or why he appeared to be bringing it to me, but it can’t be a coincidence. I’d love to pin this on Deputy Small Dick, but in all fairness, this doesn’t seem to have his name on it.”

  Gabe was making serious accusations and basically telling me that my life could be in great peril, but all I could think about was how much I had rubbed off on him already. His Deputy Small Dick talk made me smile and brought happy tears to my eyes.

  A look of panic crossed Gabe’s face then he said, “Josh, don’t cry. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He pulled me into his arms and said such sweet things to me that only made me shake harder, and at some point, Gabe realized I was trembling from laughter and not fear. “What can you possibly find funny about this situation?”

  “Deputy… Small… Dick…” I laughed so hard that I gasped for air between each word. “You might not look like me yet, but you’re starting to sound like me.”

  Gabe closed his eyes as he struggled to find patience with me. If he planned on sticking around long, and I hoped that he did, then he would need to discover a huge well of it inside him. “It’s late and nothing is going to get resolved by us not sleeping.”

  “You’re staying?” There was no disguising the hopefulness in my voice.

  “I’m staying.”

  Once we were tucked beneath the covers, I nestled up close to him and placed my head on his shoulder. He ran his hand up and down my back, but I wasn’t sure if he was trying to comfort me or himself. “Much better,” I said sleepily. The excitement was wearing off and I could feel sleep coming for me.

  “Why weren’t you able to sleep?” Gabe asked. There should’ve been a rule about asking questions when someone was tired and their guard was down.

  “You know,” I replied.

  “Maybe I want to hear the words,” Gabe said.

  I remembered the scared look in his eyes when he returned upstairs by himself and I wanted to do something that would ease his worry, even if it was just for the night. “Because you weren’t here,” I admitted.

  “I wasn’t sleeping either,” Gabe told me. He pressed a kiss against my forehead. “Just say the word when you’re ready to change our sleeping arrangements.”

  I knew he was talking about more than the frequency of sleepovers. I also knew I wasn’t ready for it yet. “You’ll be the first to know,” I simply said.

  “Probably not,” Gabe said. “I predict that I’ll be the…” he paused to count in his head, “third or fourth person to know.”

  “Fourth?” I knew that Meredith and Chaz were probably one and two in his mind. A while ago, he would’ve been right, but I discovered that I didn’t want to talk too much about my relationship with Gabe. For one thing, I didn’t think I’d be able to find the right words. Second, what we had felt too special to dissect over coffee with friends–not that I wouldn’t hesitate to turn to my friends if I needed help.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “The entire town will probably know about it before I do. You’ll do something cutesy like drop a change of address card for me at the post office early one morning and word will spread through town like wildfire before lunch.”

  “That sounds about right,” I said after mulling it over. “Wait, you’re the one moving?”

  Gabe snorted. “There’s no room for a pole dancing studio at my house.”

  “It always comes back to the damn pole dancing,” I said, but I couldn’t keep the smile out of my sleepy voice.

  “Go to sleep, babe,” Gabe whispered into the darkness. “You’ll have a busy day tomorrow reporting your claim to your insurance company and then making arrangements to have Princess towed to have new tires put on. Unless…”

  “I’ll take care of it.” I appreciated that he was going to offer, but I had the day off and was quite capable of doing the tasks he mentioned.

  “I’ll leave my Charger for you in case you need to drive someplace. I’ll have Adrian pick me up here in the morning.” Gabe loved that car with the remote start, heated seats and steering wheel. I couldn’t believe he’d let me drive it, but then I realized that I probably ranked higher in his life than even I knew. The scale was leaning majorly toward the thrill side, but there was still an edge of terror remaining when I thought about how close we’d come in so little of a time. Breathe, Josh. Don’t fight it.

  “You want to tell me why you didn’t call me last night?” I asked as I toweled dried my hair after a shared shower with Josh. I tried not to be insulted and offended or take it the wrong way, but it was hard to do. He needed help, I wasn’t the first person he turned to, and it didn’t sit well with me. At all.

  “It was a kneejerk reaction,” he said with a casual shrug. Truthfully, I felt he was way too nonchalant about the entire vandalism ordeal.

  “Kneejerk reaction.” I rolled his words in my mind while I repeated them out loud.

  “Yes, when there’s trouble you call 911.” He looked at me like I lost my mind.

  “But you didn’t the night that Oscar Davidson broke into your home to kill you. You called me,” I reminded him, as if he could ever forget. I sure as hell wouldn’t forget sprinting through dark back yards in my attempt to save him from a fucking mad man.

  “I did.”

  I hung up my towel and placed my hands on my hips. “Why?”

  “I can’t take you seriously with you standing there all naked and sexy looking,” Josh said. He was clearly stalling because he could barely stand up after the orgasm I had just given him, so there was no way he was ready for more. I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him my best menacing scowl. I was freezing my naked ass off, but I wasn’t budging from the topic. “That’s not helping because I can still see your dick.”

  “Josh.” My tone said I was done playing.

  “Fine!” He snatched his towel off the rack and began rubbing himself furiously. “I wanted to hear your voice one more damn time.” I couldn’t see his expression because Josh kept hi
s eyes focused on what his hands were doing, but the flush on his body told me he was embarrassed. “Even then I knew there was something more between us, even if I didn’t want there to be. If those were going to be my last moments…”

  I closed the gap between us and tugged on his towel until he looked up at me then tugged until he was as close as I could get him considering the side of the bathtub was between us. “They were never going to be your last moments.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked skeptically.

  The answer to his question was simple: he was meant to be mine. At the time of his attack, I knew only two things about him: he drove me crazy and I couldn’t get enough. We hadn’t known each other long then and we weren’t sure we liked each other. I suspected that my move to Blissville was fated, but to be with him instead of Kyle. I wouldn’t tell him any of that right then because he wasn’t ready to hear it. Soon, I told myself. To him, I said, “I know these things.”

  “Yeah? But you didn’t see…”

  “… Blah blah blah,” I finished for him. The Wanda Honeycutt jokes were getting old. I wasn’t the only one fooled by her sweet church lady routine and at least I could say I’d only known her for a few months. The rest of the knuckleheads knew her their entire lives and never saw her devious nature.

  “Josh,” I said seriously. “Call me first next time.”

  Josh scrunched up his nose and frowned. “Damn, I hope there isn’t a next time,” he replied.

  “Me too, but if there is…”

  “… You’ll be the first to know,” he said obligingly. Josh lowered his voice and whispered, “We’re starting to finish each other’s sentences. Next thing you know, you’ll be wearing…”

  “I’m not wearing skinny jeans,” I said cutting him off. I lightly bit his bottom lip then stepped back so he could get out of the tub and get warmed up. I couldn’t help but notice Josh’s nips were hard enough to cut glass. I noticed his hot, naked body even though he had milked every last drop of spunk from my balls in the shower. I figured only death would keep my eyes from feasting on his beauty, but I doubted even that would stop me.