Page 38 of Melt for You (Slow Burn 2)
I stand there with my mouth open, unable to speak because I’m so angry, and so disappointed in myself that I’m letting myself be affected by this ancient family shit once again.
In a steady, quiet voice, I say, “Mom, my dinner’s ready. Thanks for the call. I’ll talk to you next week.”
I hang up before she can reply and spend a few long seconds swallowing down the lump in my throat until I’m sure I can safely speak without crying. Then I take the meat loaf out of the oven, make the mashed potatoes and gravy, and head over to McGregor’s with everything on a platter.
When he opens the door, neither of us smiles.
I hold out the platter like a consolation prize to the losing team in a bake-off, even though it’s me who’s the loser. “This is yours.”
He looks at it, then back up at me. “I wasn’t gonna turn the music on.”
“You know what? It’s okay if you do. Who am I to tell you how to live your life?”
We stare at each other, the air electric with unspoken words. He makes no move to take the platter from my hands, so I set it on the carpet at his feet, then straighten and look him in the eye.
“Five o’clock,” I say firmly. “I’ll see you then.”
He slowly nods. When I go back across the hall and close my door, he’s still standing there, staring at me.
Anyone who’d like to know what hell is like should spend an early morning exercising in freezing temperatures with a professional athlete who has an endless supply of energy and no soul.
“Keep up!” Cam barks over his shoulder at me as I lag behind him on the sidewalk, breath steaming white from my nose and open mouth, sweat pouring into my eyes, my will to live quickly being extinguished.
“Must. Stop. Death. Imminent.” My wheezing and staggering frightens a flock of pigeons into screeching flight from their perch on the back of a bus bench.
Cam turns around and trots back to me. He hasn’t even broken a sweat, the heartless bastard. “Joellen,” he begins patiently. “We’re two blocks from the apartment.”
“Oh my God! I made it two whole blocks?” I wonder how the heck I’m getting back and decide I’ll take a cab. If we don’t have to call an ambulance first.
Cam runs a tidy circle around me as I stagger, just to be a prick. “How did this happen? You’ve got the cardiovascular system of a ninety-year-old!”
I holler, “I told you I was allergic to exercise!”
He trots the other way around me, backward. “I thought you were joking.”
I wave an arm at him wildly, hoping to smack him a good one, but miss because the man is the devil and he can’t be caught.
“Are you always this ornery in the mornin’?”
“Don’t you dare taunt me, devil man.” I gasp for air as my gelatinous legs continue their horrific quest to keep me upright and headed forward. I think I might be going blind. “What was in that green goop you forced me to drink before we left? Poison?”
Cam does ten jumping jacks before he answers. “Yep. It’s an old Scottish tradition. A draught of poison just after wakin’. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Oh goody.” Gasp. Wheeze. “Just what I need.” Wheeze. Cough. “Hair on my chest.”
Shadowboxing around me, dancing on his toes so flurries of snow sparkle around his flashing feet, Cam threatens, “If you’re about to follow that little speech with somethin’ derogatory about your looks, I’ll kick your arse six ways to Sunday, lassie.”
I make a sound that reminds me of the death rattle bad actors make right before they expire dramatically in the movies. Only mine is authentic. “That dang dog again! I’m really starting to hate that dog!”
Cam chuckles. He looks annoyingly good in his stupid sweats outfit, the picture of health and well-being, while I look like an old armchair someone threw out a window into an alley hoping it would be picked up with the trash but instead was colonized by rodents. Thank God the sun isn’t up yet, because the possibility an alarmed citizen would call animal control to come and collect me as soon as they caught sight of my hideous visage is high.
“I can’t believe you voluntarily do this every day. For free. Not at gunpoint.”
Cam lifts the waistband of his hoodie, exposing acres of rippling abdominal muscles. “All for a good cause.”
I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. “Do you hold yourself tightly in bed at night while whispering sweet nothings into your own ear?”
“Think of pretty boy. Visualize his face when you walk into the holiday party in a sexy dress, lookin’ all toned and bedazzlin’.”
