Page 39 of Absinthe Dreams
“Yeah, I’m sorry. Fid you say something and I missed it?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “You just looked like you were thinking awfully hard over there. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t scare you. Did I?”
I smiled and shook my head. “No,” I lied. “Not at all.”
He searched my face and said solemnly, “Good, because you don’t have anything to fear outta me. Nothing at all, not ever. You get me?”
I swallowed and nodded dumbly.
“Yeah, no, I understand. Just a bad joke.”
He nodded slowly and said, “Exactly that.”
We finishedDeath on the Nile,but I just didn’t have it in me for a triple feature. I said as much, asking, “Would it be alright if we savedA Haunting in Venicefor tomorrow night’s dinner feature?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “You look a little tired.”
“Yeah, I’m going to do these dishes and put up the leftovers, then I think I’m going to call it.” I went to pick up my plate from the coffee table, and his hand shot out. He captured my wrist in a light grasp.
“No way. You cooked. I’ll put up the leftovers and clean up. If I’m going to be here for an extended time, you can’t treat me like a guest. I’d feel awful,” he said.
“Alright,” I said softly, and I let the plate go.
He relinquished the hold on my wrist, and I stood up. He gathered the plates and stood with me.
“Get some rest,” he murmured.
I nodded and called out, “Charlie! Time for bed, baby.”
It was on Charlie if he wanted to come in with me, but he simply raised his head from the wing-back chair and looked at me with feline indifference.
“Fine, be that way,” I said and went to lie down.
I could have sworn Chainsaw said on the tail end of his chuckle, “You don’t know what you’re missing, bud.”
It made me smile, and butterflies took off in my stomach.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chainsaw…
Fuck.
I’d scared the shit out of her with my poorly timed joke, and I hadn’t meant to.
C’est la fuckin’ vie, dipshit,I thought to myself as I carried the dishes to the sink and she slipped inside her bedroom door. She closed it most of the way, just leaving it open enough for the cat to come and go as he pleased.
Never have I ever been so jealous of a fur ball.
Lucky bastard,I thought.
I rinsed the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, and put the lid onto the glassware casserole dish that she’d left out, sliding it into her still, mostly empty fridge.
She kept most of her shit in the freezer, which made sense with how she tended to cook.
I went back to the living room after the kitchen was cleaned up and stretched out on the couch. I made sure my phones were plugged up and charging, and after a bit, switched off the television and the lamp at the end of the couch over my head.
It wasn’t often I went to bed this early, but shit – I was tired, and given the opportunity, I was going to take the rest. A frontwas moving in off the Gulf, and while it wasn’t anything like a hurricane, or hell, even a tropical storm – it was supposed to generate some severe thunderstorms. That was usually enough to knock out power in some of the more rural places and along the coast.
