Page 44 of Into These Eyes
“Take a seat,” he says, indicating the breakfast bar while he makes his way into the kitchen and opens the fridge. “Feeling any better?”
I nod as he slides a plate of orange wedges over to me. They’re not cut into quarters, but eighths. My mouth instantly waters.
He tells me to take it slow as I pick up a wedge and suck the sweet juice into my mouth. I try to, but each slice seems to taste better than the one that came before. After popping a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, he leans on the kitchen side of the breakfast bar and takes an orange slice for himself.
I watch as he licks the juice from his lips and smiles.
“Good?” he asks.
My eyes snap to his, jolting me out of thoughts of how delicious that mouth of his would taste. “Yeah, really good. Thank you.”
His grin widens as he takes the second to last wedge and returns to the toaster. The moment it pops, he slathers on butter, then scrapings of Vegemite, before he brings it over and takes a piece for himself. “Eat up. Plenty of vitamin B there for you.”
Before I even take my second bite, he heads over to the fridge and pulls out some bacon and a carton of eggs. As I watch him grab a frying pan and utensils, I realise he’s made himself familiar with my kitchen while I’ve been asleep. As long as he hasn’t done the same thing with my nightstand, I’m surprisingly fine with it.
“How do you know all this?” I ask. “When’s the last time you had a hangover?”
“I’m sure you know the answer to that,” he replies as he places bacon in the frying pan. “And I know all this from the internet.”
“Oh.” I pop the last bite of toast in my mouth and work up my courage as I chew. “What happened last night?”
He meets my eyes, and I see a hint of worry there. Great. I definitely humiliated myself. I suppose, if I’m going to help him clear his name, I’d better know how.
“Where would you like me to start?” he asks, flipping the bacon.
“From the moment you saw me.”
As he starts frying the eggs, he tells me everything from the phone call in the middle of the night to getting me comfortable in bed. He makes it all sound so civilised and normal, even when he reveals he stayed because he was worried I might choke on my own vomit. But I know he’s giving me the highly abridged version, and I need all the details.
When he serves up a plate of bacon and eggs for each of us, I choose my words carefully. “When I changed, there was … an item of clothing missing. What happened there?”
He keeps his gaze firmly on his plate, but the knife and fork in his hands are motionless, and when I glance at his face, he’s blushing.
Oh shit.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he says.
“Which makes it sound like it is.”
He lets out a sigh, lowers his utensils and meets my eyes. “You could barely stand and were busting for the toilet. So I … helped. And thankfully you were wearing a dress, so I didn’t see anything.”
As awkward and humiliating as it is for me right now, I can only imagine what it must have been like for him.
“Sorry,” I mumble before staring at my own plate.
“Well, no reason to be.”
We eat in silence until I’ve devoured every last morsel on my plate.
Then, as he takes the dirty dishes over to the dishwasher, he asks, “How about some coffee? I couldn’t quite figure out how to use that contraption.”
“Good idea.” Missing my morning coffee is probably half the reason I can’t quite shake this headache. Slipping off the barstool, I make my way around the breakfast bar and get the coffee machine going. When it starts to fill the first mug, I turn to watch him stack the dishwasher. And notice a smudge on his neck.
On autopilot, having done a similar thing a million times when Anika was younger, I reach toward him. He freezes in the middle of closing the dishwasher door, and I hesitate.
“You’ve got something …” I touch my thumb to his skin and rub, trying to clean away the dark smudge. When my attempt fails, I stare. It’s not a smudge at all. It’s a bruise. Or more accurately, a hickey.
“I … I’m sorry, I thought it was …” I let my words trail away when I realise what that bruise on his neck means. It hadn’t been there yesterday, when I left his caravan.
