Cupid Has a Heart-On (The Holidays #2)

by Tara Sivec

  I huff, crossing my arms in front of me angrily. “That is not at all what I’m telling him, and I know he would never think that in a million years.”

  “Just because you move in with the guy doesn’t mean you’re going to lose your independence. You know this and I know this, so fess up and tell me what the REAL reason is for your refusal to shack up with him,” Scheva grills me, clicking her fingernails against the table in wait.

  “That is the real reason I-”

  “BULLSHIT!” she cuts me off.

  “I’m not kidding. I don’t want-”

  “BULL. SHIT.”

  I grumble under my breath when she interrupts me yet again.

  “Will you stop it? I’m being serious.”

  “What starts with the letter B and ends with SHIT?” she replies sarcastically, leaning toward me across the table.

  “You are not being serious. You don’t spend every day of an entire month annoying the fuck out of me with how amazing and perfect this guy is how you want to spend the rest of your life with him, and then turn around and say ‘You know what? When I said forever, I didn’t mean we’d start now. I mean when I get a job,’” she singsongs, doing her best impression of me.

  I swallow past the lump in my throat and put my head in my hands before I do something stupid like cry in public. It’s bad enough I spent all night sobbing like a girl in my bed alone.

  “I’m afraid he’s just asking me to move in with him because he doesn’t really think we’re engaged, and then we’ll just become this couple who lives together forever and never takes the next step,” I quickly mutter.

  Unfortunately, it comes out as muffled gibberish since my face is still pressed into the palm of my hands. Scheva reaches over and pulls my hands away from my mouth.

  “Once more. In English this time.”

  I sigh, and repeat myself clearly, but ramble through it just as fast as before since it’s completely mortifying to be admitting something like this out loud.

  “Um, didn’t he propose to you on Christmas Eve? And if I’m not mistaken, that’s his mother’s ring, still securely wrapped around your finger.”

  She points to my left hand as I nervously twist the gold band and diamond solitaire around my finger.

  “According to my mother, that was a fake proposal,” I inform her.

  “I love your mother, but she’s mentally unstable and smokes way too much second-hand pot from your father. Why in the hell would you ever listen to that woman?” Scheva questions.

  “She has a point. Sam proposed under false pretenses. He was pretending to be someone else. What if he just told me to keep the ring because he felt guilty about asking for it back? And what if he’s only asking me to move in with him because of that same guilt? I don’t want to just move in with him. I want everything. And maybe this is just me taking after my dad and being old-fashioned, but I kind of want to be officially engaged before I move in with him.”

  Scheva blows a huge breath of frustrated air out of her lips and cocks her head to the side.

  “Uh, didn’t you live with Lame Logan before you were engaged? Why do you have morals all of a sudden?”

  Yes, it’s true, I moved in with my ex, Logan Masters, a month after we started dating and eleven months later I ran screaming from our home when he got down on one knee. It wasn’t pretty and I do not want to repeat past mistakes.

  “This is exactly why I want to do it right this time,” I explain. “I don’t want to screw things up with Sam the way I did with Logan.”

  “Have you told him any of this? I seem to remember you two having quite the little miscommunication snag not that long ago.”

  A sarcastic laugh flies out of my mouth and I roll my eyes. “Yes, because nothing says romance like telling your boyfriend he needs to propose for real since you didn’t quite believe it the first time. And on top of that, Valentine’s Day is coming up, and I hate Valentine’s Day, but for the first time, I actually have a reason to NOT hate it. Do I really want to screw up my first chance at a romantic Valentine’s Day like this?”

  “Everyone hates Valentine’s Day, you’re not special. It’s a fake holiday created by greeting card companies to guilt you into telling someone you love them when you should be doing that shit the other 364 days of the year without flowers, balloons, shitty candy, and God-awful lingerie with red lace and hearts on the ass,” she complains. “Also, I’m pretty sure talking about your mother after your boyfriend went down on you is the exact opposite of romance. Did you at least try to talk to him this morning after he had enough time to cool off?”

  “Of course I did! I’m not an idiot.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a few seconds.

  “You sent him a text, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did! I’m not an idiot!” I repeat. “Do people still use their phones to talk to other people? Because I don’t use mine for that.”

  Scheva reaches across the table and smacks the top of my hand. “Man the fuck up and talk to your boyfriend! And stop feeling sorry for yourself because you guys had a little fight. The best part about fighting is making up. Just don’t talk about your mother this time.”

  She’s right. I know she’s right, but no one likes to admit they’re wrong. I realize I’m acting like a child by not coming right out and telling Sam how I feel, but everything between us is still so new and I’m so afraid of screwing it up by showing all of my crazy. Although at this point, I’m pretty sure the crazy train has officially left the station and he got a front row seat to the departure.

  I know sending Sam a text before he left for work this morning asking him if he was still mad at me was completely chicken-shit on my part, but it would have been worse to call him and have him not pick up. Or even worse, send me right to voicemail. After several hours of checking my phone and wanting to cry all over again that he hadn’t responded, I know I should have done the adult thing and called him. Being an adult is stupid.

  “Now that I’ve given you my expert opinion, of which you will immediately follow so you can continue making me sick with all your ‘Sam is so hot’ and ‘Sam is so perfect’ comments, can we talk about me for a minute and how I banged the shit out of Alex last night?” Scheva asks with a cheeky smile.

  “Oh my God! We’ve been here for an hour and you’re just now telling me this?” I screech loudly, which earns us another stink-eye glare from the old woman trying to finish her soup in peace.

  “Um, I was a little busy verbally kicking your sorry ass,” Scheva says. “Now that I’m finished, I can tell you that man is hung like a fucking horse. I’m pretty sure I saw God and I might be changing my opinion on settling down with one man instead of testing out as much merchandise as I can fit in my vagina in one week without it getting weird.”

  “But, you just met him! I can’t believe you already slept with him,” I mutter.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear what you just said. There was a hypocrite talking over you,” Scheva mocks, holding one hand up to her ear.

  “Very funny, you know what I mean.”

  “Are you coming to my barbeque?” she asks, confusing the hell out of me.

  “Uh, no?”

  “Then why you all up in my grill, yo?”

  I sigh at her with a frown. “Slow your roll, Thug Master G. You just met him last night. You don’t know anything about him.”

  “As opposed to yourself, who is picking fights with Sam about moving in together because you’d rather argue with him than tell him you want him to propose. After a month.”

  I roll my eyes and wave my hand in her direction. “Sam and I are a different story. We have a connection.”

  “Yes, a connection between your vagina and his dick. I can see now how it’s different,” she sneers.

  “Fine, you’re right. We slept together pretty quickly in the grand scheme of things, but we both knew there was something else there other than sex from the moment we met.”

  “What high schoo
l did he go to?” Scheva asks abruptly.

  “Uh, what?”

  “What’s his favorite color?”

  I stare at her, unblinking, while she continues.

  “Favorite food, favorite movie, number of women he’s slept with? Maybe the problem is that you’re freaking out a little bit because you two don’t really know each other.”

  I open my mouth to argue and she immediately cuts me off.

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with jumping into a relationship and moving headfirst into happily-ever-after. I know a lot of people who hooked up with someone and it turned into forever,” she tells me, lowering her voice. “But you’re not a lot of people. You’re Noel, and you’re crazy and you overthink things, usually making them out to be worse than what they actually are. I love you and I want you to be happy, but if you want to be happy with Sam, you need to get your shit together and be honest. With him and yourself.”

  She finishes her speech and I feel like I’ve just been kicked in the stomach. I know I love Sam. I know that what we have is something totally unique and special, but she’s right. I can’t keep assuming the worst without talking to him first. Not talking to him is what made him leave me on Christmas Day, forcing me to take my entire family to track him down and beg him to stay. It wasn’t my finest hour, and it included hooker make-up, pot munchies, Cheetos fingers, and several other things I can’t bear to repeat right now.

  Let’s just hope I can manage to get a few minutes alone with him without my family sticking their noses in and adding more coal to the engine of the crazy train.

  Chapter 6

  Hit It and Quit It

  Sam

  “You’re a pussy, that’s what your problem is,” Alex states, pointing his bologna sandwich at me.

  “I stood my ground, and now I feel like shit about yelling at her and I want to apologize. How is that being a pussy?”

  Reaching for my pocket, my hand stops mid-air when I remember Alex snatched my phone out of my hand as soon as I walked onto base this morning for work and made the mistake of frantically babbling to him what happened last night with Noel.

  “Give me my phone back so I can see if she’s called,” I tell him, holding my hand out above the table in the break room.

  Alex takes a big, messy bite of his sandwich and shakes his head at me. “No can do, shit for brains. I’m not giving your phone back until you promise you’re not going to do something stupid like get down on your hands and knees and beg for forgiveness. I refuse to be seen in public with you if you’re going to let your vagina hang out for the world to see.”

  “What the hell is so wrong with apologizing?” I question in annoyance, pushing my own sandwich away from me on the table, no longer having an appetite. “I was frustrated at the situation, and I overreacted. It’s not like Noel is going to live with her parents for the rest of our lives. It’s a temporary setback, and I shouldn’t have yelled at her like I did.”

  Alex laughs, tossing his half-eaten sandwich on top of his brown paper bag and wiping his mouth with a crumpled napkin. “Couples fight. Get over it and go get yourself some make-up sex without all the unnecessary pussified words like I’m sorry and It’s my fault.”

  “But it is my fault. I pushed too hard when I already knew how she felt, and I acted like an immature ass just because my dick failed me and I couldn’t get off.”

  Alex leans forward and rests his arms on the table, giving me a serious look.

  “Stop talking about what we are now referring to as ‘The Incident.’ Seriously, do you want to jinx your dick for the rest of your life? My dick doesn’t even want to KNOW your dick right now because he’s scared it’s going to rub off.”

  I give Alex a blank look and it only takes a few seconds for him to get a clue.

  “Yeah, that sounded much better in my head, but you know what the fuck I mean,” he mutters. “What you need to do is get back on that horse and bang the shit out of her. Make her forget about ‘The Incident,’ and show her you’re still in working order and everything will be fine.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but not everything is about sex,” I announce with a roll of my eyes.

  “I don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth…”

  Checking the clock on the wall, I ignore his stupidity and push back from the table when I see we only have a few minutes left of lunch break.

  “Noel and I have something special, and I don’t want to fuck it up,” I tell him, grabbing my garbage from the table and tossing it into the trash can by the door as Alex follows behind me. “I think I just need to back off on the whole living with me thing. Take a step back and give her breathing room. I don’t want things between us to end the way it did with her last boyfriend.”

  Just thinking about that fuck-face, Logan, makes my skin crawl. Which is ironic, really, considering I hate the guy because he proposed to Noel when he knew damn well she didn’t want to get married—to him or anyone—and it made her doubt herself as a person and wonder if she’d ever be good enough for anyone. And here I am, doing the exact same thing by constantly begging her to move in with me and move our relationship forward at warp speed, when maybe she just isn’t ready. Maybe it’s just too much all at once. I’ve never had a family and being with Noel’s, as crazy as they are, makes me want one of my own. I’ve been so obsessed with making that happen, I’m not taking her feelings into account.

  “I don’t even know how to deal with you when you’re being all lovey-dovey and talking about commitment. It’s making me uncomfortable,” Alex complains, still following behind me as I push through the break-room door and head toward the direction of our cubicles.

  Our daily jobs with the Marines don’t sound very exciting considering we sit at side-by-side desks all day working on government military code, but it keeps us extremely busy until it’s time to go home, and we’re good at it.

  “One of these days you’re going to meet someone and everything will change. Like Scheva. You two seemed to hit it off last night?”

  Alex flops down at his computer chair and puts his hands behind his head.

  “More like we hit it and we both agreed to quit it,” he gloats with a big grin.

  “Jesus Christ, you slept with her? Already?”

  He glares at me and makes a tsk’ing sound. “Did you see the tits on that chick? Like I would ever turn down an opportunity to touch those puppies. Noel has good friends, and I do believe her magical vagina that has you so whipped rubbed off on Scheva.”

  Wait for it.

  “Ha! Now that faux pas is one I can get on board with. Do you think they ever rub vaginas? Do some scissoring? I wonder if they’d let us watch…” he muses.

  “Get your head out of the fucking gutter. You cannot hit-it-and-quit-it with one of Noel’s friends. Does it sound like I need any more issues to deal with right now?”

  The muffled ringing of a cell phone cuts into my scolding and my eyes dart to Alex’s bottom desk drawer.

  “That’s my phone. Give me my phone.”

  When he doesn’t move, I dive toward the drawer and he scrambles out of his chair, both of us racing to get to the ringing phone before the other. Punches are thrown, bodies are shoved, and curses are shouted until one of our CO’s comes over and tells us to shut the fuck up and get back to work. By the time he gets done yelling at us, the phone has stopped ringing. I shove Alex one last time and quickly pull open the drawer, hoping I didn’t just miss a call from Noel. I don’t want her to think I’m ignoring her or still pissed off at her, and not answering her call would do just that.

  “Oh, shit,” I mutter, staring down at my phone and the missed call notification.

  “Did Honey Boo Boo break up with you?” Alex laughs, sitting back down at his desk chair. “Was it Scheva, calling on her behalf? If it was, tell her I wouldn’t mind another round with her Pussy of Pleasure. But don’t make me sound desperate, because I’m not. Just, you know, if she’s got nothing else going
on and I’ve got nothing else going on, we should totally hook up our body parts and get sweaty again.”

  Ignoring him, I stare in fear at my phone.

  “Noel’s dad just called. That was Noel’s dad. Why is Noel’s dad calling me?” I mumble.

  “Going by the time I spent with the guy last night, he’s probably calling to let you know he put a hit out on you. Giving you a head start so you can run,” Alex chuckles.

  “I need to call him back. Right? I should call him back. Or maybe ignore it? I could tell him I never saw that he called and maybe he’ll forget whatever ass-chewing he’s planning on giving me,” I whisper.

  Like a pussy.

  Fuck. Alex is right. I am a giant pussy.

  “I’m just…I need to…if the CO comes back, tell him I went to the bathroom. I need to call Reggie back in private,” I tell Alex distractedly as I head back toward the break room, my eyes never leaving the screen of my phone that reads, “You have one missed call from Don’t Piss Me Off.” I made the mistake of letting Reggie program his own number in my phone and that’s the name he assigned to himself.

  “I got your back, bro!” Alex shouts after me. “I’ll just let him know you have a raging case of diarrhea!”

  Ignoring all the strange looks from the other Marines in the office, I move faster out of the office area and take a deep breath before hitting redial for Don’t Piss Me Off.

  * * *

  Standing on the curb, freezing my ass off a few houses down from Noel’s parent’s, I blow hot air into my cupped hands to bring some feeling back into my fingers as I wait for Reggie to meet me.

  The phone call I dreaded returning lasted all of two seconds and consisted of Reggie barking through the line that I needed to meet him in from of the Miller’s house right when I got off work. He hung up on me before I could even respond. I have no idea what the deal is with all the cloak-and-dagger bullshit, but I’m going to assume he wouldn’t kill me so close to his own home.