Friday
I didn’t even sleep last night. I just tossed and turned and thought about what Paul said to me yesterday. He basically asked me if I have feelings for him. I have lots of feelings for him. Some are easier to define than others.
Sometimes he drives me up the wall, particularly when he sulks. Other times, he makes me laugh until my stomach hurts. And the way that he loves his family… That makes me ache inside. All those Reed boys together—they embody everything that I would want if I had been lucky enough to have a family. I watch Paul with his daughter and I almost melt into a puddle on the floor, because I know there’s nothing that Hayley could ever do to make him not love her. She could dance naked in the street. She could fall in with the wrong crowd. She could discover drugs and alcohol. Okay, so he would wring her neck for that, but he would still love her. She could even get pregnant at fifteen, and he would still love her. He would stand by her no matter what. That’s something I never had.
I walk into the shop and wince when the bell over the door chimes. Paul comes out from the back of the shop wiping his hands on a towel and stops short. He looks everywhere but at me. “Morning,” he murmurs.
“Good morning,” I say back. I drop my bag behind the counter and smooth my skirt with my hands. Paul’s gaze drops to my legs, and then he looks away. I’m glad he’s the only one here, because we really need to talk.
He turns to go back to the rear of the shop, and I call his name. “Paul.” He stops, and I see his shoulders tense.
He answers without looking back at me. “What?” He heaves a sigh.
I walk toward him and lay my hand on his back. He tenses more, his muscles bunching up beneath my fingertips. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Please don’t be angry at me.”
“I’m not angry,” he bites out.
I force out a laugh, but there’s no merriment in the sound. “You are so angry.”
He turns around and looks down at me. “I’m jealous,” he says. “And, yeah, that makes me angry.”
“You don’t have anything to be jealous about,” I tell him.
“Keep your boyfriends out of here and I won’t be.”
“They’re not my boyfriends.”
He growls. “I don’t even want to know what they are.” He holds up a hand to stop me when I open my mouth. “Shut it,” he says. “Don’t even bring them up. I don’t want to discuss it.”
I bite my lip to keep from talking and play with my lip piercing with my tongue. His gaze drops to it and stays there. I force my tongue back in my mouth.
I toy with the hem of my dress. “Did you really break things off with Kelly?” I ask quietly. My voice is little more than a whisper, but I know he hears me because he swears under his breath.
“Yes,” he grits out. “I did.”
“So, are you going to go back now?” My cheeks are so hot I probably look like a clown.
“Go back where?”
“To Kelly.”
“No, that’s over. It should have been over a long time ago. It was just easy to let it keep going.”
“Oh. Was she okay with that?”
I follow him into the back room and he makes himself busy putting ink supplies away in the cabinet. “She’s getting married, so yeah, she was fine with it.”
“She’s engaged?” What the f*ck?
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
“Yes.”
“Are you heartbroken?”
“No.”
“Are you going to answer with more than one word?”
“When you ask me something that’s even remotely your business, I might.” He glares at me over his shoulder.
“How much longer are you going to be a dickwad?”
“For as long as it takes for you to leave me alone about Kelly.” He smiles at me. “Quit being so nosy.” His fake smile falls away, and he glowers some more. “You don’t even like Kelly.”
“I like Kelly,” I protest.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m not stupid, Friday. You clam up every time she comes in here.”
I sit down across from him in a rolling chair. My skirt slides up my thighs and his eyes land there, but I don’t care. I’m wearing fishnet stockings. He runs a hand through his blond hair and jerks on it when he gets to the tips. Then he closes his eyes and takes a breath.
“I don’t dislike her,” I say.
“Mmm hmm,” he hums.
“Did you tell her about the kiss?”
“Yes.”
“In detail?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know how to talk about that.”
“What do you mean?” I am so confused.
“Do we really have to rehash this?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Until we’re done with it.”
“I’m done with it now.”
“F*ck you.”
He chuckles. Finally. “F*ck you,” he tosses back. “Look,” he says, “I didn’t mean to ruin everything. Let’s just go back to how it was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I kissed you.”
“If I remember correctly, I kissed you.”
He grins. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I was mistaken.” I shrug my shoulders.
“Friday,” he growls, but at least he’s laughing now.
“What?”
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“Probably not.”
He goes back to unloading the box and putting the ink away.
“So, what did you tell Kelly?” I ask quietly.
“I told her that I couldn’t f*ck her anymore.”
“That’s all it was? F*cking.”
He looks up at my mouth and stares at it until I start to squirm in my seat.
“What?” I ask.
“It tears me up inside when you use dirty words. You should do it more often.” He grins at me.
“Like you could stop me.” I snort. Everyone knows I have a colorful vocabulary. My mother called it a potty mouth. When I’m around Paul’s daughter or Matt’s kids, I have to work really hard not to use bad language.
He rolls his eyes.
“So…” I say really slowly, rolling out the O.
He quirks an eyebrow. “So?”
“So, about f*cking Kelly.”
He tosses a bottle of ink a little too hard. “I don’t want to talk about f*cking Kelly.”
“Was it f*cking Kelly or was it making love to Kelly?” I wince because I know that sounds stupid. “That’s a dumb question,” I murmur.
“No.” He shakes his head. “That’s actually a good question. It was scratching an itch. It was easy. You get used to one person because you know what she likes and how to get there. And she knows what you like and how to get you there.” He shrugs. “It was easy.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Nope.”
“How do you know?”
Suddenly, he grabs the edge of my chair, falls to his knees, and rolls me into him. With one gentle hand on each of my knees, he parts my thighs and wiggles until we’re chest to chest. My breath stalls. He’s an inch from my face when he speaks, and his breath becomes mine. “Because you’re all I can think about. I wake up with you on my mind and go to sleep with you in my dreams. I wouldn’t be having these intense thoughts about you if I were in love with anybody else. I’m not that kind of guy.” He kisses the end of my nose. “I know you already know this about me. I’m a stand-up man, Friday, and I’m loyal.”
“I want to tell you I feel the same,” I say. I close my eyes, and he startles me when he places a kiss on each of my eyelids in turn.
“What’s stopping you?”
“That guy I was with yesterday,” I say. I put a hand on his chest to push him back, but I don’t want him to go anywhere.
He leans back on his heels, but he leaves his hands on my knees. I close my legs, because without him there, I just feel…empty.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then why was he kissing you?”
“So, I could make you jealous,” I blurt out. I cover my face with my hand because I’m mortified to admit that.
“Well, f*ck. It worked.”
Why doesn’t that make me feel good? “I thought you kissed me and then crawled back into bed with Kelly,” I admit.
“I can see how you’d think that.”
“But that’s done?”
“Done.” He dusts his hands together. “You want to have dinner with me tonight?” he asks. He brings my fingertips to his lips and regards me over the top of my hand. He lingers there long enough for his warm breath to tickle up my arm and shoot desire straight to my girlie parts.
“Um, well,” I say.
“What now?” he asks.
“Cody and Garrett,” I start. I don’t even know how to tell him this part.
“The guy from yesterday and the guy from last week?”
“Yeah.”
“Who are they to you?”
“Well,” I say. I close my eyes and steel my heart for the next part. “One of them might have gotten me pregnant.” I open my mouth to tell him about the surrogacy. But he interrupts before a sound can move past my lips.
“F*ck!” he swears as he gently shoves me back from him. My chair rolls backward until it softly bumps the wall. He jumps to his feet.
“I didn’t know you had feelings for me at the time!” I yell.
The bell over the door to the shop tinkles, and Paul yells, “Out!” at the top of his lungs. I see Sam back out the door, with Logan behind him. Sam is explaining to Logan why they’re leaving when they just got here. At least as well as he can. He probably has no idea.
“I won’t even know if it’s positive for nine more days!” I yell.
“You let me pour my f*cking heart out when you were f*cking those two guys?”
My gut twists. “You think that highly of me, huh?” I ask.
“What else am I supposed to think?” he yells. Paul never yells. He has this quiet way of leading.
“Nothing!” I yell back. “You’re supposed to think nothing!”
I get up and smooth my dress. Paul just glares at me. Then he looks at my stomach. I lay a protective hand over it.
“I didn’t know you had those kinds of feelings for me,” I say.
“I liked it better when I thought you were a lesbian,” he says.
“Yeah,” I toss back. “Me too.” I jerk a thumb toward the door. “You had better go let your brothers in.” All of them are pressed against the front window with their hands wrapped around their eyes so they can see in, even Matt, who must’ve showed up while we were yelling.
“You go let them in,” he says. And he stomps toward the back of the shop.