Page 95 of Story of My Life
22
FINE DINING FUCKAROUND
CAMPBELL
IntrepidReporterGuy:
New resident author causes traffic jam with her two-wheeled antics on Main Street.
I’m not living with a raccoon,”Hazel bellowed over her shoulder when she yanked the front door open. She was holding a wad of toilet paper to her left eye.
“Who are you yelling at?” I asked.
“A raccoon,obviously,” she said.
“What happened to your eye?”
“Nothing,” she said stubbornly.
I pried the toilet paper from her. “Poke yourself with the mascara wand?” I guessed.
“Eyeliner pencil. How’d you know?”
“The three of us shared a bathroom with Laura growing up. I’m aware of the dangers of cosmetics,” I explained, dabbing at the corner of her reddened eye. “Ready to go?”
Her head bobbed. “Uh. Yep. Yeah. Definitely.”
“You’re not wearing shoes,” I pointed out.
“Right. Because they’re in my hand,” she said.
“Might want your phone too. And a purse.”
“Oh, shut up. How do I look? For research purposes,” Hazel added hastily as she shoved her feet into a pair of skyscraper sandals.
She must have swapped her glasses for contacts. I liked the glasses, but the whole smoky-eye thing worked too. The dress—or was that a pair of shorts?—was short and sleeveless with a deep, plunging V that displayed her breasts.
Thank God we hadn’t decided to do this on a workday, when one or both of my brothers would have been here to slobber over her.
“You look fine,” I said.
“Crap. I can change,” she said. “I’ll just need another twenty minutes. Thirty tops.”
She made a move for the stairs, but I caught her wrist and dragged her to the door. “I’m hungry.”
“Thisis how you start a first date?” she squeaked as I pulled the front door closed behind me and checked the lock.
“It is when I’m hungry.”
“But if I don’t know what looks good, how am I going to make my heroine look good?”
“Maybe your damn hero said, ‘Fine,’ because your damn heroine looks so good she made him forget his entire vocabulary.” I couldn’t believe I’d let her rope me into this. Thank God no one in my family knew about this or I’d never live it down.
“Ooh. That’s good. Hang on,” she said, digging into a tiny purse and pulling out an equally tiny notebook. She uncapped a pen with her teeth and scribbled on the page. “‘Forget his entire vocabulary.’”
I didn’t bother disguising my eye roll. “Are you gonna be doing this all night?”
“Only if you’re good at dating. If you suck, I’m gonna have to ask out Gage or Levi.”
