“She ask who it was from?”
“Yup.”
“You tell her anything?”
“Nope.”
“Good lad.” I slip the kid fifty dollars and he stuffs the bills into the back pocket of his jeans. “Same time tomorrow. We’ll meet at the mailbox down the street, yeah?”
“Cool. See ya.”
With that, the kid takes off on his BMX, one hundred dollars richer to spend on candy or video games or whatever the hell twelve-year-olds buy these days. He’s going to make out like a little demon if he sticks to our arrangement.
Give her the bag. Stick to the script. Fifty for the delivery, fifty when it’s done.
I pull out my burner phone, bringing up my most recent text exchange with Sloane.
I wish you’d stayed, my last message said. And she didn’t reply.
That was over a week ago. It’s been almost three weeks since she was standing in 3 In Coach with a look of absolute mortification in her eyes, as though she’d dumped her heart out on the floor just to have it stomped on. It fucking burned through me in a way I never expected. I thought I might convince her to stay and talk, but the timing could not have been worse with our friends coming in for Lachlan’s birthday lunch. In typical Sloane fashion, her first instinct was to take off, a feather in a North wind.
I can’t let her pull away any further, or she’ll slip through my fingers and I’ll never get her back.
I’m peering around the tree trunk toward the house when the phone vibrates in my hand.
Orzo…?
I lean against the bark and grin down at my phone.
???
Did you deliver orzo pasta to my house??
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
But…since it’s there, you might as well get it out.
And if there’s parmesan in the bag, you should probably start grating that.
Oh and mince some garlic too, if there is any.
Are there mushrooms? Maybe wash those.
Asparagus goes well as a side. Is there asparagus?
The phone rings and I force myself to wait for a moment before accepting the call.
“Can I help you, Blackbird?”
“What are you doing?” Her voice is wary, but I still detect the faint trace of amusement beneath her trepidation.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You delivered food to my house?” There’s a pause. I imagine she’s probably checking the windows, looking for any sign of me. “I have food, Rowan.”
“Good for you. I think that qualifies you as a fully-fledged adult.”
I can almost hear Sloane’s eyes rolling, can nearly feel the heat of the blush creeping into her cheeks, if I could touch that dusting of freckles that speckles her skin.
Her long, steady exhale is the only sound between us. Sloane’s voice is melancholy and quiet when she asks, “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done the other day. I’m cooking with you,” I say. “We’re going to make it together. Put the phone on speaker and start grating the parmesan.”
Another pause weighs the thread between us until it feels like it’ll snap.
My voice is low, the amusement burned away when I say, “I wish you would have stayed, Blackbird. I would have taken you back into the kitchen. We could have made something together.”
“You were busy. I was…intruding.”
“I would have made time for you. You’re…” I swallow before I can say more than I should. “You’re my friend. Maybe someday my best friend.”
The silence stretches on so long that I pull the phone from my ear to check if the call disconnected. When Sloane’s voice comes through the line, it’s little more than a whisper but still cuts louder than a scream.
“You hardly know me,” she says.
“Really? Because I bet I know the darkest parts of you better than anyone. Just like you know the darkest parts of me. And despite that, you still want to hang out with me. Most of the time, anyway.” I smile when Sloane’s breath of a soft laugh travels through the line. “So, I think that makes you my friend, whether you like it or not.”
There’s a long beat of silence, and then the sound of a drawer opening, cutlery rustling in its confines.
“I’m supposed to grate this whole block of cheese? It’s the size of a small baby.”
I know I must look ridiculous, grinning like a fucking lunatic next to a tree, but I don’t give a shit. “How much do you like cheese?”
“A lot.”
“Grate enough to make a baby head.”
“Are you serious?”
“You said you like cheese. Get to work, Blackbird.”
An unsure ‘okaaaay’ filters through the line, though I’m sure she’s talking to herself and not me. The metronomic sound of the hard parmesan against the metal teeth of the grater sets a gentle percussion to my thoughts as I try to imagine what her kitchen might look like, Sloane standing at the counter with her raven hair tied back in a messy bun and some cool-as-shit old T-shirt tied at her waist. I could be in there with her, coming up behind her, trapping her against the counter, my cock pressed up to that fucking round ass that I just want to bite, and then—
“After I’ve grated an infant’s head worth of cheese, what should I do next?” Sloane asks as the sound of the grater continues in the background. For a second I wonder if I might have moaned out loud.
I clear my throat, suddenly blanking on the ingredients I put in the bag for her. “Uhh, wash the asparagus and trim the end off the stalks.”
“Okay.”
The grater continues with a steady beat. I run my hand through my hair and resolve to pull my shit together. “So, you said you were in Boston for work. A meeting?”
“Umm…yeah.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“Investigator Meeting.”
“That sounds…terrifying.”
Sloane huffs a laugh. “Yes and no. They’re not investigators like police investigators. It’s what we call study doctors who run our trials at their clinics. An Investigator Meeting is where we train them and their staff on the study. The meetings are only a bit scary if you have to present. Being on stage in front of a bunch of doctors can be a bit intimidating. There could be fifty people in the audience, there could be three hundred. I’ve done lots of them but sometimes I still get nervous when the tech guys put the mic on me.”
“A mic? Like the whole Madonna, Britney Spears-type thing?”
Sloane giggles. “Sometimes.”
So much for resolving to pull my shit together.
The thought of Professional Sloane in a fucking curve-hugging pencil skirt and a Madonna mic, standing on stage as she bosses around a bunch of doctors with her raspy lounge singer voice is the fantasy I never knew I needed.
I’m a fucking goner.
“Cool, cool…” I say, shifting my stance as my cock practically begs me to march up to her door and fuck her on the kitchen counter. “Can I come watch?”
Sloane laughs. “No…?”
“Please?”
“No, you weirdo. You cannot come watch.”
“Why not? It sounds both hot and educational.”
Her husky laugh warms my chest. “Because it’s all confidential, for one. And for two, you’d distract me.”
My heart lights up with fireworks. “With my pretty face?”
“Pfft. No.” That ‘no’ is totally a ‘yes’. I can virtually see the burn of her blush through the phone line. I wish I could FaceTime her, but Sloane would know where I am, standing across the street like a smitten fucking fool, too nervous to scare her off to actually go to her door but too desperate to be near her to really care. “I have a baby’s head’s worth of cheese. I’m doing the asparagus now,” she says, her voice soft.
“When you’re done that, put some salted water on to boil.”
