Page 34 of Last First Love
He makes a face and swats my hand away. "Quit it, you big jerk." He takes a deep breath and then cracks his neck by tilting his head to the side. "Okay. I'm going in."
I stand still and try not to squirm as he inspects the merchandise. But I swear I can feel him breathing on my bits and pieces and it's both distracting and kind of upsetting my entire balance too. Wait, is he laughing at me?
I kick him. Not too hard because I'm barefoot and everything, but it should be hard enough to get him to stop with the giggling. Instead, he kicks it up a notch and laughs even harder. "Don't laugh."
"But there's so much glitter. Did you vajazzle these or something? What on earth did you do?" He finally curls up into a little ball and rolls around on the floor, holding his ribs to shield himself from my wrathful kicks.
"Stop or I'll show Darcy all that crappy love poetry you wrote for her."
He pauses and looks up at me, then covers his eyes again. "I don't know who you're thinking of but I didn't write any poetry for my girl."
I smile at him dangerously. "I know that and you know that. But if she gets a bunch of really lewd limericks about her pet cat, she's going to think otherwise."
"You wouldn't."
"I will and you know it. Now seriously. Tell me how bad it is." I'm anxious and it shows by the way I keep shifting my weight around like a boxer getting ready for a match.
His eyes narrow. "It's not that bad. Not really. It looks mostly superficial, but I'll go ahead and help you get it bandaged up if you want." He sighs. "Also, I cannot believe I offered to touch your shriveled up little pea sized balls."
The warmth of outrage fills my body in a hot wave. "They're not pea sized. They're practically perfect in every way."
He peeks out from between his fingers. "Wait. Isn't that Mary Poppins?"
"Yes. My balls are the Mary Poppins of all balls. Now get off the floor and come help me with the bandage."
He scrunches up and then stands. "You wanna tell me what happened to your Mary Poppins?"
My lips curl inwards. "Nope," I answer, popping the p of the word.
"Does this involve someone I know?" He tries again as he rummages through the contents of my medicine cabinet. He looks up and meets my gaze. "Also, how many bottles of hand lotion does one man need?"
I glare at him. "We aren't all living our best lives with the beautiful woman of our dreams. Some of us are still in bachelor land, but thanks for all the non-existent sympathy." I sniff, deeply offended because it wasn't all that long ago that Abernathy was a tragic hand-humping shell of a man who was deep, deep in unrequited love. "Third drawer on the right. That's where all the first aid stuff is."
He finally locates some ointment and some gauze and waggles them at me triumphantly. "So, who's the woman who actually decided to light your dick on fire and what did you do to deserve it?"
I shake my head. "It's not like that." I sigh. "I did it to myself."
He rears back. "Like some sort of weird sex thing? Or like, a political statement?" He shakes his head. "No, neither of those seems quite right. You'd better tell me what happened so I can quit guessing."
I cross my arms, but he really is being a good friend to me right now so I figure I can tell him the truth without him making fun of me. Probably.
When I wind up the entire sad story, he shakes his head and puts one last bit of tape on the bandages he's been working on. "You're an idiot," he says.
"I know."
"No, I mean it. You're absolutely ridiculously bad at this. Like I don't think you could probably do worse even if you tried really hard to screw it up." His voice is flat and unfriendly, and frankly, I don't appreciate that tone from someone who's recently had his hands all over my balls.
But just as I'm about to tell him to take his opinion and shove it, he stands up and looks me right in the eyes. "Don't you dare hurt Lily. She's become very good friends with Darcy and if you hurt her feelings because you're an idiot, then I'll have to kick you out of the wedding. You need to quit trying toseal the dealwith her and treat her like a real human being."
He pokes me in the chest with his index finger. "She's not a notch on your bedpost. She is a nice girl who deserves to be treated the right way." Poke, poke, poke.
I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I don't disagree. Nobody is disagreeing with you about any of this."
"Then you owe her more than a quick one-off that is all about you, your penis, and what you want. You're not going to get anywhere with her by giving her your usual surface and flash. You owe her some realness and some honesty."
He shakes his head. "You're actually not a bad guy when you stop acting super fake. Doesn't she deserve to have a good man in her life, not some douche bro who wants nothing more than to nail her?"
I flinch. His words definitely hit the mark. "You're right. She deserves so much better than me."
