Page 31 of Over & Out

“Double them for whom?” she asked.

“All of them.”

“Hopper! That’s more than half your income…unless you do another Laser film.”

Mabel’s been pushing hard for me to keep those movies up. They’re bread and butter income, she says. Good for my “difficult” reputation, since kids love them.

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “The money part. Not Laser.” It’s not that I don’t like kids. It’s just complicated.

When the engine sounded outside a few minutes after I hung up, my heart jumped like a teenager seeing their crush. Chris is not my crush, obviously. I don’t have those. She’s like a smart-ass ray of sunshine. Who has sexy hair and smells good.

I whip open my door.

Chris cries out in surprise. She was just about to take a swing. Instead, her arms fly up, her hand releasing the giant drumstick. We watch, me with curiosity, her with horror, as it flies through the air, spinning top over bottom, narrowly missing Cindi’s sourdough starter. It lands with a plop in a giant vase of flowers on the kitchen island. As if in slow motion, the vase teeters over, thudding onto the marble countertop. It’s too heavy to break, but a lake of water creeps across the counter in the direction of Chris’s tablet.

Shit. Chris runs, but she’s so short I beat her and the water just walking there. I casually swipe up the device, holding it out lazily as she skids to a stop in front of me.

“Don’t tell me I don’t do anything nice for you,” I say, aware I started this.

“Nice?” Chris snatches the tablet from me.

I look her over properly for the first time. One of my new favorite things to do every morning is try to guess what she’ll be wearing. I played a single dad in a movie once, and my eight-year-old costar used to make me play Barbie with her between takes. She’d dress them up in these wildly mismatched outfits that somehow always look good: a frilly pink skirt, tiny green jacket, a purple purse shaped like a block. Or a blue ball gown with green sneakers. It finally clicked that Chris dresses like this too, though I didn’t really notice until she started wearing colors a couple of days ago. Only a little, but they’re there. This morning, she’s wearing the girlie version of a Canadian tuxedo—a jean skirt and a denim jacket. But she’s put on a green lace top under the jacket and these black tights with moon patterns all over them. Yesterday she was wearing this little blue business dress with a huge pink belt.

I fucking love it.

I want to keep staring, but today’s shirt dips kind of low in the front, and I have to avert my eyes at the way the tablet Chris crushes against her chest pushes everything up. Unfortunately this sends a shock of awareness right down to my crotch. I don’t know why, since there are boobs in my face all the fucking time in my business.

Luckily, Chris is glaring at me, so my eyes quickly land on her face. Unluckily, she looks fucking adorable when she glares. She squints so hard it looks like she’s trying to read the text on the side of an aspirin bottle. It’salmost as adorable as that little flicker of joy that flashes in those eyes every time she tells me off.

I fold my arms, all nonchalant. “I told you the gong was unnecessary. Guess the universe agreed with me.”

“That wasn’t the universe, you weirdly chipper galoot. That was your alarm clock.”

“Alarm clock? Galoot? Not doing that grandpa reputation any favors, bangles.”

She flushes. “How’s your back?”

I did pull my back a little yesterday with that damn trainer Aziz sicced on me, and she knows it. “Fine, thank you for asking.”

She smirks.

I’m only six years older than her, but I let her have this one for the sole reason that I very much enjoy the shade of pink that’s flooded her cheeks. It’s the same shade she went yesterday when I caught her looking at me over her latte mug. After I raised a brow over my weights, the color went deeper. It had me wondering if her skin does that in other circumstances too. Or would that turn her cherry? I may or may not have looked up a color chart when I couldn’t sleep last night. And now I’m picturing myself making every attempt to get her to turn cherry-tomato red as I?—

I grab a kitchen towel and slap it on the puddle to get that deeply inappropriate image out of my head. But I don’t even get to cleaning it up before Cindi appears out of nowhere, yanking it away from me.

I jump, startled. “Jesus!”

“Get away from this kitchen, young man,” she snaps.

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Out!”

Cindi rights the vase, rearranging the flowers.

“I’m sorry, Cindi,” Chris says. “Can I help?”

“Not your fault, love.” Cindi glares pointedly at me. I grab the gong stick off the counter before she gets violent.

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