Page 33 of The Heartbreak List

Me: You’re welcome?

Theo: You’re still up?

Me: Can’t sleep. Gray caught the red eye to Baltimore, and dinner was a disaster. The only thing we seem to have in our pantry are stale crackers. They’re chewy and powdery and so totally wrong.

Theo: Hmmm. Been there. Brings back memories.

Me: What?

Theo: When I moved to the city, I didn’t have a job or a place to live for a while. I was making all the wrong friends. Sleeping on strangers’ couches. Stale crackers hit different when you’re homeless.

Wow. That’s the most he’s opened up about himself. And it’s far more serious than I expected from him, even though I got the feeling that he carries a lot more on his shoulders than he lets on when we met up with Harlan.

Me: I’m sorry you went through that.

He messages me back almost immediately. Long enough that he couldn’t have typed the message prior to my last one, but quick enough that it’s obvious he doesn’t plan on saying any more about that subject.

Theo: How about I buy you pancakes? To thank you for the luck.

Me: You still didn’t tell me why you needed it.

Theo: Meet me here.

He drops me a pin to a diner close to the bar.

Me: It’s almost two.

Theo: It’s on your bucket list.

I lift myself up off the pantry floor and toss the stale crackers in the trash. It’s not like I’m going to curl up and go to sleep anyway. I’m wide awake and can practically taste a stack of buckwheat and buttermilk pancakes smothered in syrup and butter. The aroma of bacon is so real that I wonder if someone close by is frying the streaky meat into crispy strips as I grab a coat to put on over my pajamas and drag on my boots.

Me: I’m on my way.

Theo: You better bring your appetite.

Chapter Eleven

Theo

Indy’sslenderfingersarewrapped around her coffee mug while we wait for our pancakes to be delivered to the table. Her legs are bare from the hem of her coat down to the top of her tan boots, and her hair is tossed up in a messy ponytail. Strands of it have fallen out and frame her face.

It’s wrong that she’s so cute all bundled up in a jacket that hides whatever she’s wearing under it, but whatever, it’s not like I’m going to hit on her. She’s the only woman in a long time I’ve considered a friend. One I don’t want to fuck up by fucking her.

Who knew I still had it in me to be a good guy?

I take a flask out of my pocket and unscrew the cap. My cup is half-empty, and I top it up with the Jameson.

Can I call myself a good guy when I messaged her from the bathroom of the Underground after my fight while some chick sucked my dick like it was a chocolate-banana flavored lollipop?

The blow job wasn’t that great. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t even feel wrong in an oh so right way. It was bland and boring, and I could get better stimulation from my own hand. Probably will later, after I leave here. Probably imagining Indy being impaled on a flexible blue-tongue-cock-shaped-dildo.

I almost put out my hand for her to smack it, but then I’d have to explain what I was thinking to get that slap. Yeah, I haven’t been able to get that out of my head. But I’m a guy and we love weird shit so it makes sense that I would still be thinking about it.

Really, it has nothing to do with Indy and everything to do with my own dirty mind. “You wrote down sex shop.”

“What?” She blinks at me.

“On your original list. You wrote it down. In case you wanted to add it to your new one.”

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