“Okay, Rin, you’re starting to freak me out, so why don’t you tell me what happened?” Emmy’s soothing voice comes from the other end of the line, and I plop down on the toilet, remembering how badly I needed to pee.
“So right after I hung up with you, guess who the fuck I literally ran into?”
She squeaks, “Who?”
“Apparently he’s one of your husband’s good friends. None other than Chef Curtis Rockwell. He was there filming his show, and he picked my hobo-lookin’ ass to go home with!” I scoff.
She’s quiet for a moment, and then she breathes out an “Ooohhh.”
“Yeah. Well, I agreed, because… well, why the fuck not. YOLO and all that shit. Anyway. I felt this weird like… zing when he touched me. And he just smelled so good, and he’s so… fucking… pretty. I mean, have you seen his eyes in real life? Wait, yes. You have. Apparently, you’ve met him tons of times. Shit, he’s even been in a few places where I’ve been at the same time with you, and I never met him before yesterday! It’s just crazy!” All of that comes out in one breath, and I realize I’m in a manic state of word vomiting, so I try to slow down.
“Anyway, we filmed his show, and we had this funny banter going on. And then like, we just… connected. Like, we love all the same shows and movies, and he listens when I talk as if I might be telling him the secrets of the world. He taught me how to cook the meal and then when the crew left, he made me go on a haunted tour with him,” I tell her.
“He made you?” she prompts.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, I didn’t put up much of a fight. But still. You know I don’t go on dates and shit.”
It suddenly gets quiet in the background on Emmy’s end, and I hear a door shut. “Sorry, I’m at the airport and just locked myself in the bathroom in the First Class lounge so I can hear you better, because this is all just… wild.”
“Right? Absolutely insane!” I agree.
“No, no, Rin. It’s wild, because I swear to God, every time we see Curtis, Dean always tells me when he walks away, ‘That guy would be so perfect for Rin.’ But I always blew him off, because I know how you feel about people trying to set you up, and also the reasons you never wanted to be in a relationship again. It’s just… it’s wild,” she repeats. “And hearing you talk about him now, I feel a little guilty for never introducing you sooner.”
I clean myself up, still naked on the toilet, and then flush, shuffling over to sit on the side of her tub. “Don’t you dare feel guilty about anything, Em. I could have met him at a different time and place and thought he was just a cocky asshole who thought he was God’s gift to the world. But being stuck with him during the show, seeing him behind the scenes, he’s really… not like that at all.” The last part is whispered, as I think about just how kind and caring and gentlemanly he really is.
“So what the hell are you freaking out about, Rin? You sound like you’re really happy,” she points out, and I shake my head.
“That’s just the thing! Being this happy is what’s fucking with my head. And… I told him everything. Like, everything-everything. And he walked me home after we went to Bourbon once our tour ended, after he got me to really open up to him, and we had the most mind-blowing sex I’ve ever had in my life. My. Life. Amelia.” I punctuate those last words, because she knows that’s a big deal. “I lost count of the orgasms. And he told me he could keep going, and I had to beg his ass to stop. Because I literally felt like I was about to start having an out-of-body experience. Like, full on seizures.”
She snorts at that. I’ve always told her in detail about my sex life, and it wasn’t until she met Dean that she got to spill her own deets, when she no longer had to live vicariously through me. “I don’t think you’ve ever told me a time when you had to beg a guy to stop giving you orgasms,” she points out.
I shake my head. “That’s because it’s never happened before. The only other time I’ve ever told someone to ‘please come’ was when he thought he was doing a great job, going at it for a full ten minutes before I finally felt sorry for the guy who hadn’t even made it inside me and was humping the space between the bed and my booty.” I roll my eyes.
She giggles at that, but then a feeling of panic starts a ringing in my ears and I can no longer hear her laughter. I swallow thickly, immediately looking down at the naked place at the apex of my thighs.
“Oh, God,” I whisper, looking over to the toilet and remembering it had taken a lot of toilet paper to clean myself up with. And it wasn’t because of my own natural lubrication.
“What? What’s wrong?” Her tone grows serious again.
“Em. I just remembered… he… he didn’t use a condom.” My heart pounds wildly in my chest.
“What?” she yelps.
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck! Oh my God, what if I now have some horrible disease to go along with all my other shitty health issues? Oh fuck!” As if I wasn’t freaking out enough about the state of my heart, being all out in the open and vulnerable for the first time in five years.
“Okay, take a breath. Are you sure he didn’t use one and you just didn’t notice? He could’ve been discreet about it. They aren’t the most romantic things to deal with when you’re about to make love,” she suggests.
But I’m already shaking my head. “No. Oh, God. That’s what he was asking me there at the end. He said he’d fill me up and give me everything he’s got if I wanted him to. And at the time, it was so fucking hot. I thought he was talking about his cock, not his jizz! Oh, God!” I run over to the sink, turning the hot tap on high, waiting for the water to heat up as I grab a washcloth and fill it full of antibacterial hand soap.
“Well don’t panic yet, Rin. It’s going to be okay. Curtis is a really good guy. I’m sure he wouldn’t have even suggested that if he didn’t know for a fact that he was clean. He’s not that kind of man,” she assures, and I close my eyes, nodding slightly. I know that in my heart.
This is Curtis we’re talking about. Not just some random guy I met at a bar. No, this is the man who pulls me to the other side of him, so I don’t walk next to the road. This is the man who holds me on his lap and rocks me soothingly while I spill my deepest, darkest, most heartbreaking secrets. This is the man who is determined to teach me to meal prep, so I get enough to eat every day, and gets mad at the thought of me not taking good enough care of myself. He wouldn’t then turn around and do something that would hurt me.
But still, I stick the washcloth in the scalding water, lather it up, and scrub myself, knowing full well that antibacterial soap is hella bad for a va-jay-jay. But I’ll suffer through a yeast infection if it means I won’t catch something way worse.
When I’m all cleaned up, it’s like all the adrenaline from moments before leaves my body all at once, and I slide down onto the bathroom floor, the coldness of the antique tiles feeling good against my overheated skin. I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“You all right, bestie?” Emmy asks quietly from my cell.
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “I think so. I just don’t know what to do now,” I murmur, pulling my knees up to my chest and resting my cheek on the tops.
“What do you mean? It sounds like you really like him and want to give this a shot.”
“But in the grand scheme of things, I literally just met him. I haven’t even known him for a full twenty-four hours,” I reply, hearing her snort.
“Um… do you remember who you’re talking to? A lot can happen in one night, Erin.” And I lift my brows, remembering how she met Dean, getting trapped in the catacombs beneath our city overnight with the hottie adventure documentary host. “Fate doesn’t play around. I think when two people are meant to be together, it’s not like some slow buildup of pressure like a front coming in. It’s like a freaking lightning bolt that strikes… like that ‘zing’ you felt. I felt the same thing with Dean, but it was just masked a little behind my misguided hatred for him.”
I can’t help but chuckle at that. Sh
e really had hated his guts for years before she ever actually met the poor guy in person. “Yeah…” A beat, and then, “I don’t know how to do this, Em.” I bite my lip, my throat suddenly tight. “I’ve been stuck in my mindset of living the rest of my life without being in another serious relationship ever again for so long that I don’t even know where to begin.” I blow out a breath. “Plus, how could this ever work? I have my practice here in New Orleans, and he travels the world doing his chef thing.”
“Whatever is meant to be will be. I know you’ve already hit all the physical bases, but you still have time to take it slow emotionally. Y’all will figure it out organically. Take it one day at a time,” she replies, and I take a deep breath, closing my eyes and nodding before letting it out.
“I mean. He’s pretty much a keeper. We started getting naked, and he caught me in my goddamn surgery panties.” I lift my arm to place my palm on my forehead.
She lets out a bark of laughter. “What? Oh no!” She cackles some more, sounding like she can’t breathe, and I smile at the sound. “How many times have I told you it’s time to get rid of those ugly things? It’s been half a year since your surgery. You need to burn them. If they’re so comfortable, go out and find some actual boyshort panties!”
“I’ve told you they don’t make boyshort panties that stretchy! And up until about half an hour ago, no one had ever seen the bitches,” I grumble.
“They’re full of bad juju anyway. Get. Rid. Of. Them,” she urges, and I huff.
“Fine!” I agree. After a moment of quietness between us, I ask for her reassurance one last time, “So you really don’t think I have anything to worry about, about the whole no-condom thing? That scares the shit out of me. I can’t believe I let that happen. I’ve never once done it without one before. Even when I got pregnant with shithead, we used a fucking condom; it just broke. But we were already engaged by then, so we didn’t worry too much about it.”
And then I let out a shriek of surprise, my knees drawing up to protect myself, when Curtis’s deep voice echoes throughout Emmy’s bathroom. “No, you have nothing to worry about, sugar.”
“Uh-oooh,” my best friend says through the phone. “I’m gonna let y’all handle this. Love you, Rin. Call me tomorrow. Bye!” And then the whore hangs up, leaving me alone with the towering giant staring down at me where I’m sprawled naked on the tile floor.
“Came to check on you, since you’ve been gone a while,” he tells me, and a warm feeling spreads through my chest as I lower my feet back to the floor.
I narrow my eyes though when I ask, “Were you eavesdropping?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I wasn’t. Just heard that last little bit and felt I needed to make it perfectly clear that you do not have anything to worry about. I’ve never done it without a condom either. That was the first time ever. And yet I still get checked out regularly, since I have to travel to other countries so often and get various vaccinations. But if you’re worried about getting pregnant—”
I cut him off, my voice colder than I mean for it to be. “I’m not. I told you, it’d be a fucking miracle if that happened. I was just concerned about STDs.”
His face softens, and before I know what’s happening, he bends over and scoops me up. His hot flesh feels like it sizzles against my now cool skin from where I’ve been lying on the cold tiles. I allow myself to enjoy the feel of him carrying me bridal style back to my room, relaxing my head in the crook of his neck and breathing in his intoxicatingly male scent.
There’s no more talking, both of us seeming to finally reach the end of our energy reserves as he lies us down, maneuvering my body the way he wants it until my back is flush with his front, his muscled arm draped around my waist as he holds me to him.
I relax, letting my body go limp and heavy as I succumb to my exhaustion, and the last thought in my head before I finally lose consciousness is to question, Before I cut him off, what was he going to say if I was worried about getting pregnant?
Chapter 18
Curtis
WHEN I AWAKEN the next… afternoon, I see, when I check my phone where I put it on her nightstand while waiting for her to come back from the bathroom last night, I’m alone. I roll over onto my back, gaining my bearings before looking around her room. She’s nowhere in sight, but my surroundings are just so… her.
The rest of the house might be full of Egyptian memorabilia, but this space is completely Erin. It’s tranquil, soothing, bright, and clean. It’s all stark-whites and soft grays with black hardware on all the rustic furniture. The sun shines brightly through the white sheers over the windows, and it reminds me about what she said last night, how she never sleeps in, because it messes up her routine. Even as tired as we were early this morning, and how she even said she planned to, I smile at the fact that she couldn’t allow herself to stay in bed this late. So she must be downstairs or in some other part of the house, doing whatever she normally does on a Saturday.
I sit up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, and find my jeans, pulling them on but leaving them undone as I go in search of the beauty, hoping I can encourage her to come back to bed so we can have a repeat of what we did when we returned to her house last night. Maybe we could spend the rest of the day curled up, after we’re both sated, and veg out, watching TV and ordering take-out. There are all sorts of foods here I’m bound and determined to try.
I grab my phone before I head in search of her, seeing a reminder in my notifications. My original flight home for the weekend is supposed to depart in five hours. As soon as I find Erin, I’ll call my assistant and ask her to rebook it for either tomorrow or Monday. If it were up to me, I’d stay long after that, take vacation time and spend weeks here getting to really know my woman, but I have obligations in California in a couple days, and it’s not in me to break any prior commitments when people are counting on me with too short of notice for them to find a replacement.
I check the bathroom two doors down, but the lights are out with no one inside. I go to the bedroom I assume is Emmy’s, peeking into the en suite there with my fingers crossed, hoping to find Erin bathing in the sexy claw-footed tub I saw last night, but no luck. It’s empty as well.
I gallop down the stairs, ignoring the niggling feeling I have at the back of my mind telling me her presence is missing as I head into the kitchen. Nothing. Not even the lights are on. Frowning, I hurry back past the staircase and glance into the living room, stopping and holding my breath in order to listen.
Silence.
There isn’t another soul in the house.
Maybe she went to get us some breakfast, I tell myself, as I go back into the kitchen, pulling out one of the stools to sit and wait for her. Surely any minute she’ll come strolling back inside with a bag full of french pastries and a tray of coffee. Oh, or maybe even some Cajun boudin breakfast tacos. My mouth waters at the thought, and I force myself to relax, pulling up my Instagram feed.
My brows lift at the notifications. I have hundreds of tags, and my heart sinks into my gut when I see the candid shots of me out and about throughout the night, on the tour, on Bourbon Street, in the bars Erin took me to, and even a photo of us kissing beneath a gallery on our way back here early this morning.
I blow out a breath, trying to calm my racing pulse. “Okay, that’s fine. Everything is fine. It may be all over the place, but no one knows who she is, so they’re not going to bother h— Oh… fuck,” I growl, seeing the comment under TMZ’s post.
OMG! That’s Dr. Bazzara! She’s my therapist. Go on wit yo bad self, @ebNOLAshrink!
And I hold my breath as I click to see the seventy-eight replies beneath the comment.
There are comments ranging from Lucky girl! to What’s so special about her? The latter making me want to reach through the phone and pop them in their blasphemous mouth before explaining every single wonderful trait Erin possesses.
I click on her handle that was tagged and suddenly find myself smiling, scrolling through
the countless photos, mostly of her and Emmy together. I pause, staring at one of her best friend in a wedding dress as Erin uses a tissue to dab under Emmy’s eye.
Can’t let tears ruin this awesome makeup job, not even happy ones! #mybestfriendswedding, the caption states, and my heart thuds in my chest knowing we were in the same place at the same time all those years ago. I was down in the kitchen preparing everything for the reception dinner, but we were right there, breathing the same air.
Unlike now.
“Where have you gone, sugar?” I murmur, glancing at the time and seeing I’ve been scrolling through her feed for nearly forty-five minutes now. Surely it wouldn’t have taken this long for her to just go grab us some food.
And then my gut sinks once again. I had been momentarily distracted, getting to look through all the pictures and reading the captions to gather her inner thoughts of what was happening in each shot. Now I remember what led me there in the first place.
What if she saw all the tags already? She seems to post something daily, so it’s not a hard assumption to make that she checks her notifications throughout the day. Had she woken up to them, her Instagram having blown up over the hours we slept, curled up in her big bed? Had it scared her enough to make her run off, hoping I wouldn’t be here when she got back?
Well she’s got another think coming, because there’s no way I’m leaving until I get to assure her she has nothing to worry about. I won’t let anything bad come about from photos of us being all over social media. I’ll protect her from anything that could possibly happen. I just hope her skin is thick enough to withstand the snide comments from keyboard warriors who know nothing about the amazing person she is.
DISHING UP LOVE Page 16
