Page 101 of Love, Luck & Clusterf*ck

I jumped, letting out a little squeal. Great. Now he’d just caught me smelling him.

“Hi,” I said. He was standing on the stairs, his shorts and T-shirt back on. “You should be sleeping. You have to get up for work in a few hours.”

“So do you.”

He took a few steps down, looking less hobbly. “How’s your ankle?”

“Better.”

“That’s good.” I smiled, but it was off. I hated feeling self-conscious with him. I didn’t want to turn him on, but I didn’t want to turn him off either.

He came down the rest of the stairs and over to the couch, sitting beside me. He really needed to go back to bed. No sense in both of us waiting for the laundry to finish. This wasn’t an occasion that needed to be shared.

“I want to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “Okay.”

“It was my freshman year of college. Me and a bunch of guys went out on Friday night to this little place near campus for an all-you-can-eat fish fry. We stuffed ourselves with perch, threw down a shitload of pitchers, then hit the bars. The last place we stopped, I recognized a girl from one of my classes, so I went over to talk. The next thing I knew, we were back at her place.”

Um, not sure I’m liking this story so far.

“We were going at it on her bed and then… I threw up. All over her.”

I whipped my head around. “What?”

“All the fish, all the beer. I puked up everything. It landed on her chest, her face, her hair, her bed. Can you imagine what that smelled like? It was a fucking disaster.”

“Oh my God.” I covered my mouth, but I could not stop the laughter from spilling out. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh, but….”

He smiled. “Nah, don’t worry about it. It is pretty funny now. But not so much then.”

“Wow, I can imagine.” I angled my body to face him. “Actually, no, I can’t. This girl was in your class? What happened after?”

“We never looked at each other again, and thankfully I never had another class with her. And as far as I know, she never told anyone what happened. I think she was just as horrified as I was and didn’t want to advertise the fact that she had to wash someone else’s vomit off her body.”

“That’s….” I shook my head, still giggling. “I can’t even. Were you that drunk?”

“I was drunk, but not that drunk. I think I had a bad piece of fish or something. It spewed out so fast I didn’t even have time to move.”

“Wow.”

“So I take it you’ve never had that happen to you?”

“Uh, no. The closest I came was having a guy cry all over me. Never had to deal with puke.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t one of my finest moments.”

“Hey, accidents happen, right? It’s a part of life.”

His grin was wide. “So true.”All right, buddy. I see what you’re doing here.“It’s not a big deal, Perry.”

I knew he was no longer talking about himself. “I know. I probably overreacted again, but I assumed you’d feel just as disgustedas Dre. He would’ve totally freaked out.”

“I’m not Dre.”I know. “And if he’s too much of a pussy to handle something like that, what’s he going to do when he has kids?”

“He doesn’t want any.”

He was quiet for a bit, and then he said, “So, what was the deal with the crying guy? You must’ve rejected him.”

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