Page 37 of The Biker and the Professor
So, with an obedient nod, I shut up and drink my “goddamn hot cocoa.”
Chapter 13
Toni
He’s already leftfor work when I wake up the next morning, a mild headache pounding at my temples. He works six days a week, sometimes half-day on Sundays. But I’d hoped he’d wake me up this morning so we could talk before he left.
Sometime around noon, Cookie texts me.
Cookie:Want some ham and cheese pinwheels? Come get them before they’re out.
Me:You had me at cheese.
“Are you having a party or something?” I ask when I run over to her house to collect my share of fresh-out-of-the-oven pinwheels. Her kitchen island is laden with pastries, party-sized sandwiches, mini hamburgers, and a two-tier chocolate cake.
“Actually,” she begins with a mischievous grin, a lit blunt dangling from the corner of her mouth. “That’s why I lured you over here, so you’d offer to help me wrap all these and load them in the Jeep. “
“Seriously?” I roll my eyes. “You couldn’t have just, I don’t know,askedlike a normal person?”
She gives me a look. “Maybe if Iwasa normal person, yeah.” She picks up a rectangular pirate dish that’s stuffed with ham and cheese pinwheels. “Here’s your booty.”
Walking over, I take one out and sink my teeth in, biting off a huge chunk. “Mhhm. So, so, good.”
“I know.”
“You’re too damn good at this,” I tell her. “Why don’t you just open a pastry shop? I don’t understand.”
“Because the moment you turn your passion into a job, the passion dissipates and you’re stuck with the job,” she replies. “What will I do for fun then? I’d be miserable because I’d have taken theonething that relaxes me and turned it into a job.”
“Flawed logic, but I get you,” I mumble as I finish up my pinwheel. “Whose birthday is it?”
One of her ovens beep—she has a built-in double oven—and she opens it with mitten-covered hands, taking out a large tray of cross-buns. “My brother. Judge. Grunt’s not taking you?”
Ripping off a sheet of paper towel, I wipe the ham and cheese residue from my hands. “He hasn’t even told me. Where is it being held?”
She pokes one of the cross-buns with a knife. “At the compound, where else?”
That gives me pause. “The compound is cleared?”
“Ever since. Like, two weeks ago.” She looks up from her poking. “You didn’t know?”
Nope. I had absolutely no idea. As usual, I’m the last to know anything.
At my answering silence, Cookie giggles. “Well, hell. Grunt’s tryna make you his old lady. There’s no other reason why he’d choose to ride almost forty minutes to work every morning when he’s got the option of just walking across the street.”
Considering his reaction to my love confession last night and his avoidance this morning, I highly doubt it. I think he’s just gotten caught up in the “playing house” thing we’ve had going for the past six weeks. Because I sure have.
It’s been a rush, a high, downright fantastic. It’s been easy comfort and contentment. An extended fling, with an unplanned live-in situation thrown in.
But now hearts and emotions are involved, and it can’t continue.
“You’re ready for that?” Cookie’s voice breaks through my reverie, and I blink her into focus to find her watching me intently. “You’re ready to be his old lady?”
That would be a resounding NO. I’m not even ready to be his Steady, or whatever. Neither do I care much for their lifestyle. I might accept and acknowledge it, but I don’t want toliveit. That life is just not for me, especially with someone who’s barely a new adult.
I don’t tell Cookie any of that, though. Instead, I say, “Where do you keep your cling wrap?”
~
