You can imagine how the rest of my week went thereafter. I’d fucked it up. All those years of wasting time dating and rejecting creepsters or getting dumped—virally or not—had to have banked an iota of good relationship karma for me. But no. I was screwed again. If Carly still followed her horoscopes, maybe she could have pleaded my case with someone in the futuristic department.
In other words, no call from Jack. My biggest reason to whimper in worry—at home, by myself—was that he’d tried to call and had received the robotic recording that explained my number was no longer available. May as well had been a bot screaming monotone through a megaphone that I’d fake numbered him. Or I was defunct in paying my bills.
I couldn’t call Bev as she was on her honeymoon. I’d Googled him to find nothing but a handful of articles about good deeds he’d done on the job. That lucky little stroke of research clued me in to my last resort of contacting him: bombarding the general state trooper contact email with repeated emails. I’d bet the first thirty would clue his supervisor into my desire to reach him, or I was rerouted into spam as a wacko. With as hot as Jack was, and as much as I’d personally witnessed women flocking to him, like Bev had said, there probably wasn’t a shortage of people seeking out Jack’s personal contact info. But I was legit! I was his woman. Or I had been at Bev’s wedding.
One week while Jack was experiencing the real Shire and the majesty of New Zealand that didn’t pertain to the movies. It passed too slowly. As did the weekend when he’d returned.
There were two options I could expect. A state trooper—not Jack—to come to lock me up for harassment of an officer, or for Jack to see I’d tried to explain my mistake of being unreachable, on the count he’d wanted to call me. Of course, there was door number three as well, the dark, ugly one that said he’d never wanted to see or speak to me again in the first place. That was the door I resolutely dismissed. As much as I could with cupcakes and work.
Being back at work that following Monday helped with my Jack-less mood. I wasn’t giving credit to the pukey pale yellow walls—the CEO swore research scientifically proved that the hue increased serotonin in test subjects, and by dang, you had to be freaking happy in a toy store.
My staff aided me in putting him on the back burner. Traci had some silly stories from her sister’s twenty-first birthday bash, and the other sales girl—dammit, Cuddle Master. Sorry. Again. You know, fuck it. It’s a stupid name corporate made up to boost morale and it was beyond stupid to ever acknowledge it—she started the day wondering if she should plan a vacation on a cruise or an all-exclusive to Fiji. They’d gotten me to forget about Jack, a little, and not one customer brought up my breakup. If anyone dared to speak of that evil, a week after the fact, I could smile and titter with a high-pitched laugh and explain I’d already moved onto someone way better for me…maybe.
Why couldn’t he just call? Text? Send a vibe now that he was back in the States and I’d gone stalker on his work line and gave him my new number?
Come lunchtime, I really did finally refrain from remembering all the illicit details of Jack making love with me and bullet listing all the hypothetical reasons I might be a dumbass to fall for his smooth words. I was plenty distracted and thoroughly frustrated with inventory not adding up—no, there was no Pythagorean formula involved, and math wasn’t my worst subject even if it was my nemesis. Add in crappy phone service with the regional fabric supplier who refused to comprehend my questions and all that I could focus on was strangling a teddy bear and walking next door for a cupcake. Bottling in anger was managing it, if anyone asked me.
What really had me riled up and not thinking about the sexy smartass who promised to get a hold of me and failed for almost one hundred seventy-eight hours now, not that I was counting, was a hectic hour of seemingly every damn kid in the mall wanting a Cuddly Creation and only two employees being present in the store. Me and another new trainee. It had to be right before closing time. Of course.
After the fifth unicorn and third pterodactyl in twenty-five minutes, I bit in my growl at a little boy insisting I didn’t choose the biggest Clifford available for selection. Well, champ, I can pack in as much organic cotton as I damn well can and you’ll have the most obese red dog to exist in the kingdom of plushies. His parents stood behind him, both on their phones while their offspring nit-picked and questioned each and every maneuver I performed to make his damn toy.
Smiling so hard to keep from exploding in profanity and choice complaints, I glanced up and happened to catch sight of the mainway of the mall outside my store.
Jack. He stood there with his hands framing his eyes against the lavender front windows, peering in and searching for me. Hell, I hoped he was looking for me and not a stuffed animal. And if he was, I sure as shit wasn’t going to make it for him. I was done for the day.
Shock at seeing him, finally, short-circuited my brain and I focused on drinking in the vision of him in his uniform. Meaning I was not paying any attention to my hands holding the dog I was stuffing nor my foot pressing down on the pedal to throttle the speed of the stuffing machine.
In the next blur of a moment, Clifford shot up through the air like a half-filled blimpie with an advertisement banner of stuffing roping behind it.
“Clifford!” the boy screamed. “His entrails are everywhere!”
I blinked my attention away from Jack and did a double-take at the kid. Entrails? What the fuck were these guys letting him read? Grey’s Anatomy? Edgar Allen Poe?
Cotton flurried down from my mistake and I jerked my foot from keeping the stuffing to continue to torpedo out. It was everywhere. On the boy’s hoodie, his parents’ shoulders. In my hair, probably, as I huffed a breath to shoo a portion from catching in my eyelashes. Which meant it had to be all over the bun in my hair. Now it’d really resemble a robin’s home. All it was missing were sticks and the eggs.
Pandemonium immediately followed. It was a Monday, why wouldn’t it have?
The parents complained to me instead of calming their tearful and screaming son. My new trainee was cracking up and failing to accurately finish the cat she had been making, which got that little girl crying in a temper tantrum too. Other kids chased the airborne cotton, and it took three seconds for a toddler to run and slip. No, this one didn’t manage to slump onto his butt, he banged the corner of his forehead on the check-out counter and blood flowed like a river.
Many gauzes, comped gift cards, and explanations to mall security later, I took a deep breath. Thank God Jack was there to tell the parents how to compress the bleeding and calm the kid down with reassurances his brain wasn’t leaking out. Probably not as gruesome as traffic pileup injuries he usually encountered, but my weak stomach and stressed nerves were grateful for his expertise in first aid.
Finally alone in the store as my trainee’s girlfriend had already picked her up at the end of her shift, I heaved out my exhale like an ancient hippo.
“Entrails?” I asked myself again.
Knuckles rapping on the check-out countertop startled me and I stood straight, bringing my forehead up from resting it on my crossed arms next to the register.
Jack leaned over the countertop, across from me as though he was a customer. If that was laughter hinting behind his almost smile, I couldn’t promise I would refrain from violence. “Please don’t tell me you’re here for a teddy bear.”
Nineteen
Jack
I’d rather see her in a teddy, maybe.
“What else would I be here for?” I asked.
“Me?”
I studied her as she wrung her hands together and winced as the second hand ticked around the clock on the wall over her head. In the empty store with her, that ticking was damned loud and too easy to mark me as I hesitated to answer.
For a whole week, I’d wondered if and when I’d see her again. Yeah, that night after I’d left her at the Barton Lodge was a shift from hell. I’d been busy with one accident after the other. One of those nights where peo
ple forgot that roads get wet in the rain. I hadn’t had time to even text her, and when I got home, at two a.m., I knew she’d be asleep. I hadn’t given either of us much time to sleep when we’d shared my room, and we’d kept up the activity the day before we parted ways.
When we’d said goodbye, I’d really assumed it was a temporary separation. No sooner than I’d said goodbye, I’d missed her. I’d planned dates, thought ahead what my schedule looked like. It was going to be busy, catching up after my vacation and pulling the extra shifts to cover Bev’s absence. But I’d already estimated when we might be able to meet up around our work schedules. When she’d be most able to chat with me. I’d even researched time zone changes so I could still keep in touch with her while on my trip.
Imagine the sucker-punch I was hit with when I called her as soon as I got to the airport at seven a.m. I had a little time to spare as I waited to board my flight and learned she’d fake numbered me.
“You could have just said you didn’t want to see me again,” I said and stuck my hands in my pockets. “A fake number is kind of reaching low, isn’t it?”
Across from her now, I played another round of wondering how wrong I could have been about her. How I could have misread the intensity of her attraction and connection with me. She’d been so hard to convince to give me a chance as something more than just a naked man who’d lost a bet and posed for a grumpy art instructor and his students. I’d made lengths to sweep aside all the rumors that Bev had fed into her brain that I was some untrustworthy gigolo sampling my way through life with an assortment of women.
And she turned out to be the one who discarded me. With a fake fucking number?
As she peered up at me now, her eyes seemed larger and carried a tone of hope and a plea to love her. Maybe that was just the vibe a person took when surrounded by all the Ty stuffed animals in the rack against the wall behind her. All of their cow-size eyeballs on too small faces giving a team effort to the woman with a searching gaze as I waited for her to reply.
The way she’d suggested I’d come here for her. I sure as fuck didn’t want a toy—a creature stuffed with cotton or a person to fool around with. I’d come here to understand how I’d gone so wrong with her that she’d go to such a damn extreme of shaking me off her tail. I waited years to let anyone matter in my heart and in my bed, and this was my reward? Getting scorched on my first attempt?
But the way she’d said, “Me?” was more with the hint of an oh please oh please choose me excited-sad eyes of a puppy waiting for an owner to consider at a shelter instead of a curled lip sneer of loathing her bad luck for being spotted and delegated to the suckiest chore on earth.
“It would be low, if that was what happened.” She lifted a shoulder. “And trust me, I’ve worn those shoes of rejection. But that’s not what this is. I can explain.”
Here was the funny thing. Instead of being so turned off by the chance of her playing me, I was still ready for more. If she’d had a fake number or pulled some other equally shitty stunt on me, I had a goddamn right to know why. I was entitled to a reason, wasn’t I? Or was clarity no longer a part of being snubbed?
“I’m listening.” And boy, was I curious how her tale would compare to all the scenarios that ran through my head all week.
My words must have calmed some spike of anxiety she’d held because her eyes brightened and a smile took form on her lips. Me giving her a chance to explain was a good thing? Then maybe I could count on a plausible excuse to this incommunicado episode.
“Can we go somewhere else?” she asked and winced at our setting.
So many eyes on us, even if they weren’t alive. Fuck. If one of these toys were motion-sensor and started to sing “I’m Sorry,” it would have freaked even me out.
“Sure.” And I gave her time and space to lock up the store, waiting outside until she slid the final deadlock home. Watching her every move, I lost a little more focus on how I needed to hear why she’d given me reason to doubt her. Us. I’d forgotten how silky soft her hair was in that messy twist, just imploring me to free it all and grip it in my hand. Her slightly shortened height that meant she measured up to me in just the right locked fit so I could kiss her in sync to the thrusts I drove into her. How wicked her eyes would sparkle when I’d whisper filthy words in her ear—
That blush, how I’d missed that rosiness she had no mask for. When she’d turned to join me in the mainway of the mall, that was how she’d caught me staring.
So I started walking and she followed at my side. Knowing what I did about Lexi, I anticipated a creative story to soothe away my suspicions about how much I might matter in her life. I wasn’t bored once she started explaining, that was for sure. In the context of what had recently happened to her with her personal info shared in a viral manner, and since I’d checked myself to see how many trolls and strangers had picked up on her sexy, saucy #youredumped photo, I could buy her explanation. We’d meandered through the still closing mall as other shops quit for the day, and we’d ended up sitting on the edge of a cement wall enclosing an indoor wishing well with cupids and cherubs frolicking in the water splashing streams to complete the fountain.
At the rushed and determined speed of her narration of how the number she’d given me was axed, and how my inputted number was lost, I had my answer. I hadn’t been wrong about her. Still, the energy that had pumped me up didn’t diminish one bit. I’d sought her out by coming here—with the drive that I wouldn’t give up on her if she’d been overwhelmed with my interest in her. I’d backtrack and go slower. Space. Whatever she wanted, as long as she understood where I stood with her.
“You didn’t get any of my emails?” she asked after she explained with another start of a blush that she’d gone to the trooper’s contact link.
“Nope. I haven’t even gone to my desk yet.” Because my very first day back to work I’d been stuck at a regional training an hour away. But I could imagine the confusion and irritation some customer service secretary was going to have when those messages were replied to, if they ever were. Hell. Maybe there wasn’t even a secretary who was responsible for the general public’s inquiries. They just sat there, for all I knew.
“Here,” she said and inched her butt even closer to me, her phone in her hand now. “I’ll show you.”
“Lexi, I believe you.”
She huffed. “As you should, but really. I want to show you. I’ve never stalked anyone before and I at least want creds.”
“But I believe you.” And now that this idiotic misunderstanding was cleared away, I had no reason to wait any longer to show her how much I’d missed her despite my anger and pain of being snubbed.
She let me pull her snugger to me and wiggled closer as I draped my arm around her shoulders, but she shot her phone toward my face once she’d logged into her sent emails. Sighing, and more than a little curious if I was going to have to explain her summons to my department, I skimmed the first couple of emails.
“You didn’t have to explain we first met when I’d posed nude!”
Her hair tickled my cheek as she leaned in more to read the words with me. “Oh. Right. I probably should just keep that memory to myself.”
“Well, between the two of us.”
She started bobbing her head like getting jiggy to something playing on the mall Muzak, only it was off.
“I’d still like nudity to be our thing,” I said.
“Mmm hmmm.”
“But maybe our secret thing?”
She’d stopped dancing in her seat and beamed at me. “Absolutely. So we’re good? I really am sorry. You have no idea how worried I’ve been all week freaking that you might have thought I was ghosting you somehow.”
I traced the curve of her chin with one finger and leaned in close. Deep down, I hadn’t lost complete faith in what we’d unlocked at that wedding. “We’re good.” I pressed a soft kiss to her lips and whispered, “But I think we can be even better.”
She inhaled shakily as she stared
at my mouth and traced my collar. “Oh, me too.”
“Like what you see?”
“In this sexy uniform?” She nodded while she chewed at her lip. “Oh, yeah. But I’ve always liked what I saw with you.”
And I showed her likewise as I reached for another kiss.
Epilogue
Lexi
“Wait a sec, I know who you are.”
I raised my head from squinting at the numbers on the check-out computer’s screen. Me? I was the manager of Cuddly Creation and I was not letting her use a coupon that expired last year. A few days? Okay. A month, eh, sure. A year? Clean out your purse, gal.
A smile slipped onto my lips as I kept my face as friendly as possible. Whatever it took to get this pushy customer out of my store. Bev had just gotten back from her honeymoon a couple days ago and she was due to meet me at the mall for lunch. Pre-wedding Bev used to be a fun friend and I was kind of hoping she still might show a little now that the ceremony of the century was over. It seemed I’d never get a chance to see if my cousin was human again, not unless I finished dealing with the grandmother who’d insisted the superior of the store handle her demands. Lucky me.
I handed her the receipt and bag before I tapped the plastic attached to my shirt. “Well, my name is right here…”
“No. No.” She stuck her hand in her purse and pulled it out with her phone. “You’re that girl.”
Still? People were still finding remnants of that damn viral breakup post? Even though they had deleted it after the trolls?
As she slowly scrolled on her screen, she made an hmm mmm sound that had me wondering if she was eyeing a chocolate dessert recipe. “You’re that girl who replaced the carrot guy.”
Say what?
“Huh?”
“You’re the girl who—”
Someone cut in front of her in line. Bev huffed dramatically, shoving into the gap between the customer and the counter. “Excuse me. I need to talk to the Cuddle Master here.”
Across From You Page 16
