Deep End
Ten
“How do you have a girlfriend I do not know about?” Max flops himself down next to Kris at the table unceremoniously. He never was one for subtlety. Kris shrugs.
“We just met this summer, a couple months ago.” He takes a long drink of water while Max considers this to keep from blurting out the truth. He trusts Max with a lot of things, but not with a secret like this. After a moment Max just nods and reaches for a breadstick.
“She’s pretty hot.” He says approvingly through a mouthful of bread.
“Where’d you meet?” Sid asks and Kris can hear the glee in his voice, the anticipation.
Grinding his teeth, he bites off a large chunk of his roll and chews before he answers to avoid snarling.
“On a Saturday morning at that restaurant I go to for waffles.” He says haughtily to the whole table for the way they chirp him about it, but a little more directly at Sid, for expecting him not to have a back story. He is met with approving nods. He can see there are some people with more questions in their eyes, but then food starts to arrive and they fall silent.
----
Across town, Skylar eats more breadsticks than she has ever eaten in her life. Conversation has quickly veered toward relationships and she figures if her mouth is full every time a question is posed to the table, she can avoid answering. She begins to eat and drink strategically, stuffing her mouth when voices lilt into questions and pausing to listen in the middle of rants. It seems to be going pretty well and she makes sure to throw in a comment or two here and there when conversation looks to be in neutral territory. All in all she’s pretty pleased with herself, but she has noticed that from several seats down the table, Bridget is watching her intensely. After a while, she gets the feeling it is only a matter of time before she gets caught in a moment of weakness. Then it comes.
“That forehead kiss in the lobby was absolutely adorable.” Bridget says loudly in a moment of silence, staring Skylar down, “I’ve never seen Kris do that before.” Skylar swallows hard.
“He’s a really sweet guy.” She says because it’s true.
“When did you start dating?” Bridget sips her water as she asks, looking unruffled and supremely casual, but Skylar feels like she should be in a musty interrogation room under a single bare light bulb. She shrugs and takes a slow bite of salad.
“A couple months ago.” She says casually.
“Still pretty new...” Bridget says thoughtfully.
“I guess so.”
“It’s just, Kris and I dated for almost four months before he brought me to a team thing, I guess I’m just a little surprised.” Bridget bites her lip, takes a long drink of her long island ice tea. But she doesn’t look surprised at all, Skylar thinks, she actually looks upset.
“Well, you know, I guess when you meet in the off-season things move a little faster because you can spend more time together than if we had met during the season.” She doesn’t know why she says it, offers Bridget some out for why Kris would introduce his new (fake) girlfriend to his friends much faster than he had introduced Bridget. After all, Bridget hasn’t exactly been overly friendly, she hasn’t really been friendly at all. But she’s across the table rolling a cherry tomato around her plate with her fork and staring at it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world and you can practically feel the sad air rolling off of her. She had real feelings for Kris, Skylar knows for sure now, and they haven’t gone away.
Despite what her own impression of Bridget may be, Kris had been with her once, had fallen for her. She had been invited to the wedding, even after they had separated, so she had obviously been good friends with Vero, with the team and their families. Something about Bridget, something that Skylar has yet to be privy to, was good and kind enough to attract the attention and friendship of all of these people. So Skylar can’t leave her across the table, playing with that stupid tomato. Bridget looks up and the worried creases in her forehead disappear.
“We did have to work pretty hard to get together.” She says, “But he always made time for me.” The smirk on her face is most definitely sent directly at Skylar.
Something about her is good, Skylar reminds herself, stabbing a carrot so hard it ricochets across her plate, something about her.
“Things must be going well for you guys, though.” Bridget suddenly seems to change her tune, possibly because Vero has stopped eating her soup and is giving her a hard stare, “I mean, you guys seem really in sync from what I’ve seen the past few days.”
Skylar knows it’s a forced confession, but still, she hears sincerity in it too. Something is good, she thinks again and smiles.
----
“Alright, spill it.” Sid settles himself onto a bar stool next to Kris, nursing a beer. They’ve moved the party to a bar down the street from the restaurant and most of the rest of the guys are occupying themselves with pool, darts and girls. Before they arrived, they made Flower put on a t-shirt with Vero’s face print-screened across the front, along with the word ‘Taken’. He’s currently leaning over the pool table lining up a shot while Max makes short work of securing himself a warm body to sleep beside.
After one of the girls refused to stop drunkenly running her fingers through his hair, Kris retreated to the bar to buy a round and then sent it over with a waitress, preferring to settle on a stool. He’s not surprised Sid has come to join him. Firstly, Sid is always careful when it comes to women and Kris could tell from the minute the group of girls decided to join them that Sid would not be interested in any of them. Too many exposed bra straps, too much bottled blonde, too few brain cells. Secondly, he knows Sid is still dealing with the yo-yoing of his post concussion symptoms, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he’s keeping to himself even more than usual.
“Spill what?” he feigns ignorance. Sid gives him his patented ‘Don’t mess with your Captain with a capital C’ face and clinks his bottle against Kris’, looking over his shoulder to see where the other guys are before opening his mouth.
“You kissed your fake date, who is apparently now your fake girlfriend. And you got all-” He waves a hand, trying to think of an appropriate word, “googly eyed about it.” He finishes with a flourish of his beer bottle.
“I did not get googly eyed.” Kris says defensively, “And Bridget is the one who told everyone she was my girlfriend, not me.” He knows he sounds like a petulant two-year old, but he’s having trouble coming up with a reasonable argument because every time someone refers to Skylar as his girlfriend, his brain goes a little haywire.
“You did.” Sid says in his no nonsense voice, “Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, you don’t even know this girl.”
“I do know her.” It comes out a little more harshly than he intended. He’s not sure why it bothers him so much, but his knuckles are white around his beer. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t like what Sid is implying about the kind of person Skylar is, or maybe it’s because he wants to believe that he does know her, that it’s not illogical to feel like this after only a few days. Sid is holding up his hands in surrender.
“I’m just trying to say, you don’t think it’s a little weird?” His voice is gentler now, but still prying. Kris looks around, checking to see if the rest of the guys are still occupied and then he finds himself telling Sid the whole story, right from the beginning.
“So, see, it started out like not that big of a deal, I told a little white lie to Bridget, Skylar told a little white lie to help me out, then it sort of...exploded, imploded, I don’t know.” When he finishes, Sid looks slightly more on board, but there’s still hesitation in his features.
“You’re not afraid it’s only going to get worse if you keep lying?”
Kris considers the question. Aside from the very first time the lie escalated, things have actually gone pretty smoothly.
“No.” He says confidently, “Look, we have spent every hour of the past few days together, in either a room or in a car. I know her better than you think. It will be fine.”
“And she doesn’t want anything in return for coming all the way to Montana to be your fake date?” he sounds incredulous.
“The only thing she has ever asked for is veto power on what we watch in the hotel room.” Kris laughs, taking a swig of his drink as Sid chuckles along with him.
“Besides,” Kris says with a gulp, “Maybe by the time the wedding rolls around, the date won’t be fake anymore.” It is the first time he has admitted anything close to feelings for Skylar out loud.
----
By the time the sun has set and the real party has begun, Skylar has discovered she is the only one of the women not old enough to have a drink. This simple fact means she is designated the title of de-facto drunk wrangler. At the moment, that involves trying to convince a drunken Vero that these particular Chippendale dancers are not the type who get naked and they most certainly do not need her help up on stage.
Of course, once she manages to drag a protesting Vero back to her seat, she has to have the same argument three more times over with a few of the other girls who have also apparently taken up Vero’s cause. By the time she gets everyone settled down and back into their seats, she has actually worked up a sweat.
“So,” A giggling Vero drags her chair over to sit beside Skylar and leans over conspiratorially, “is Kris as good in bed as Marc is? You know, the Frenchman thing? Because I know Marc is great and Max makes no qualms about telling everyone that he’s great and Pascal has a litter, so you know he’s great, but Kris is just so shy!” She slaps Skylar’s arm and laughs, her eyes glassy.
“Oh, he’s great.” The voice pipes up, unasked. Vero doesn’t hear it all and Skylar barely hears it from behind her, but she doesn’t have to turn to know who speaks. So she doesn’t, she just grinds her teeth and stares resolutely at Vero’s left eyebrow.
“I have always wondered, I am a French woman after all, French men are all I know – well, Marc is all I know, I have always wanted to know if it really is a French thing. Does he have a nice tongue? Marc is not afraid to spend a lot of time you know,” she leans in closer to whisper, “down there,” she giggles uncontrollably, “and he does this thing with his tongue that is just like-” She sticks her legs straight out in front of her and points her toes, squealing, “It’s like he-”
“Okay!” Skylar blushes hotly and interrupts loudly, “You know what? I think we’re all tired and it’s time to head back to the hotel, how about that?”
Thankfully, the show is wrapping up just as Skylar makes her suggestion, so the girls have little objection, especially when Skylar decides to use their affliction for the dancers to her advantage and asks the scantily clad gentlemen to help her herd the group out the front door.
Once they get to the door, it takes her fifteen minutes to pry one of Vero’s friends from home off a rather buff dancer who had reached for her when she stumbled. Finally, she has all the women in the party out the door and heading down the sidewalk back to the hotel.
“Kris is so great!” A girl – Skylar wracks her brain to remember her name – Lucy, she thinks, the daughter of a Pens training staff member, who had grown close to Vero – throws an arm over her shoulders and squeals into her ear. “Seriously, you are so lucky! He looks at you with the ‘die happy’ eyes!”
“Die happy eyes?” Skylar asks, wrapping her arm around Lucy’s waist to hold her upright.
“You know, like now that he has you he can die happy!” She presses her cheek up against Skylar’s, “Do you have the ‘die happy’ eyes too?” Skylar bites her lip, considers the question.
“Maybe.”
----
They leave the bar at last call and decide to walk the two blocks back to the hotel in the hopes that some fresh air might sober a few of the guys up at least enough for them to put the key card into the lock.
Halfway down the second block, Kris has to take a flying leap to grab onto Jordan before he falls into a sewer grate. He is wobbling uncontrollably after he finishes off a story about his latest conquest by demonstrating his technique with a couple of rather crude hip thrusts.
He is dragging Jordan back up to his feet when he hears a rumble through the group and then the screaming of a frustrated female.
“Hey! Cars! You have to look for cars!” He looks up from under Jordan’s arm to see Skylar racing out into the middle of the road to herd a group of stumbling women out of the street.
“But we done found our men!” Lindsay proclaims in a giggle, taking a running leap into Tyler’s arms. Skylar herds the rest of the group up onto the sidewalk and shakes her head, giving up her attempt at control as they stumble over each other, each heading for a man.
Kris ducks out from under Jordan’s arm, replaced by a tall redhead whose name he doesn’t remember. He dodges drunken couples and zigzags down the sidewalk towards Skylar, who is smiling and rolling her eyes at him. Before he can get to her, someone stumbles into his path with a woman firmly wrapped around his midsection and attached at the lips. It’s Bridget and Adam.
He steps around them with little thought, but notices that Skylar’s eyes are no longer focussed on him. She’s watching Bridget, her eyebrows pulled down low, worrying her lower lip. He glances over his shoulder to note that Bridget is still wrapped around Adam and even though it’s dark, he can see her watching Skylar out of the corner of her eye. Kris doesn’t know what happened tonight, but something has gone on between them, something that has upset Skylar. It upsets him.
He thinks about his uneasiness earlier this afternoon, the way Skylar had unquestioningly stepped up and done something to set him at ease, had bravely stepped up and pushed the line. He steps right in front of her and she finally pulls her eyes back to his, letting go of her lower lip to smile at him. Before the corners of her mouth even pull all the way up, he has his lips on hers, his hands on the back of her neck, tugging her lower lip between his teeth. He slides an arm around her lower back to hold her to him, feels her hands slide up into his hair. It’s hot and open-mouthed and when he pulls back he’s panting and her eyes are glassy. Sliding an arm from the back of her neck around her shoulders, he spins them around to follow the rest of the group down the street. Once again, Sid is giving him another knowing look, but he doesn’t care because holy shit he just kissed Skylar - again.
Bridget slides impossibly close to Adam, her hand in his back pocket, looking like she’s ready to spit fire. He feels more than sees Skylar shake herself out of her shock.
“Thank you.” She says out of the corner of her mouth. “I shouldn’t have let her get to me tonight, but she just...ugh.” She trails off in a growl. He gives her shoulders a squeeze.
“Hey, it’s okay. After all the times you have bailed me out, I owe you one. And you stopped the bride to be from getting hit by a car.” She laughs and his heart swells. “Besides,” he continues, since he’s on a roll, “it was kind of fun.” He stops breathing then, waiting for her response. She slides an arm around his waist and squeezes.
“Yeah, it kind of was.”
“We just met this summer, a couple months ago.” He takes a long drink of water while Max considers this to keep from blurting out the truth. He trusts Max with a lot of things, but not with a secret like this. After a moment Max just nods and reaches for a breadstick.
“She’s pretty hot.” He says approvingly through a mouthful of bread.
“Where’d you meet?” Sid asks and Kris can hear the glee in his voice, the anticipation.
Grinding his teeth, he bites off a large chunk of his roll and chews before he answers to avoid snarling.
“On a Saturday morning at that restaurant I go to for waffles.” He says haughtily to the whole table for the way they chirp him about it, but a little more directly at Sid, for expecting him not to have a back story. He is met with approving nods. He can see there are some people with more questions in their eyes, but then food starts to arrive and they fall silent.
----
Across town, Skylar eats more breadsticks than she has ever eaten in her life. Conversation has quickly veered toward relationships and she figures if her mouth is full every time a question is posed to the table, she can avoid answering. She begins to eat and drink strategically, stuffing her mouth when voices lilt into questions and pausing to listen in the middle of rants. It seems to be going pretty well and she makes sure to throw in a comment or two here and there when conversation looks to be in neutral territory. All in all she’s pretty pleased with herself, but she has noticed that from several seats down the table, Bridget is watching her intensely. After a while, she gets the feeling it is only a matter of time before she gets caught in a moment of weakness. Then it comes.
“That forehead kiss in the lobby was absolutely adorable.” Bridget says loudly in a moment of silence, staring Skylar down, “I’ve never seen Kris do that before.” Skylar swallows hard.
“He’s a really sweet guy.” She says because it’s true.
“When did you start dating?” Bridget sips her water as she asks, looking unruffled and supremely casual, but Skylar feels like she should be in a musty interrogation room under a single bare light bulb. She shrugs and takes a slow bite of salad.
“A couple months ago.” She says casually.
“Still pretty new...” Bridget says thoughtfully.
“I guess so.”
“It’s just, Kris and I dated for almost four months before he brought me to a team thing, I guess I’m just a little surprised.” Bridget bites her lip, takes a long drink of her long island ice tea. But she doesn’t look surprised at all, Skylar thinks, she actually looks upset.
“Well, you know, I guess when you meet in the off-season things move a little faster because you can spend more time together than if we had met during the season.” She doesn’t know why she says it, offers Bridget some out for why Kris would introduce his new (fake) girlfriend to his friends much faster than he had introduced Bridget. After all, Bridget hasn’t exactly been overly friendly, she hasn’t really been friendly at all. But she’s across the table rolling a cherry tomato around her plate with her fork and staring at it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world and you can practically feel the sad air rolling off of her. She had real feelings for Kris, Skylar knows for sure now, and they haven’t gone away.
Despite what her own impression of Bridget may be, Kris had been with her once, had fallen for her. She had been invited to the wedding, even after they had separated, so she had obviously been good friends with Vero, with the team and their families. Something about Bridget, something that Skylar has yet to be privy to, was good and kind enough to attract the attention and friendship of all of these people. So Skylar can’t leave her across the table, playing with that stupid tomato. Bridget looks up and the worried creases in her forehead disappear.
“We did have to work pretty hard to get together.” She says, “But he always made time for me.” The smirk on her face is most definitely sent directly at Skylar.
Something about her is good, Skylar reminds herself, stabbing a carrot so hard it ricochets across her plate, something about her.
“Things must be going well for you guys, though.” Bridget suddenly seems to change her tune, possibly because Vero has stopped eating her soup and is giving her a hard stare, “I mean, you guys seem really in sync from what I’ve seen the past few days.”
Skylar knows it’s a forced confession, but still, she hears sincerity in it too. Something is good, she thinks again and smiles.
----
“Alright, spill it.” Sid settles himself onto a bar stool next to Kris, nursing a beer. They’ve moved the party to a bar down the street from the restaurant and most of the rest of the guys are occupying themselves with pool, darts and girls. Before they arrived, they made Flower put on a t-shirt with Vero’s face print-screened across the front, along with the word ‘Taken’. He’s currently leaning over the pool table lining up a shot while Max makes short work of securing himself a warm body to sleep beside.
After one of the girls refused to stop drunkenly running her fingers through his hair, Kris retreated to the bar to buy a round and then sent it over with a waitress, preferring to settle on a stool. He’s not surprised Sid has come to join him. Firstly, Sid is always careful when it comes to women and Kris could tell from the minute the group of girls decided to join them that Sid would not be interested in any of them. Too many exposed bra straps, too much bottled blonde, too few brain cells. Secondly, he knows Sid is still dealing with the yo-yoing of his post concussion symptoms, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he’s keeping to himself even more than usual.
“Spill what?” he feigns ignorance. Sid gives him his patented ‘Don’t mess with your Captain with a capital C’ face and clinks his bottle against Kris’, looking over his shoulder to see where the other guys are before opening his mouth.
“You kissed your fake date, who is apparently now your fake girlfriend. And you got all-” He waves a hand, trying to think of an appropriate word, “googly eyed about it.” He finishes with a flourish of his beer bottle.
“I did not get googly eyed.” Kris says defensively, “And Bridget is the one who told everyone she was my girlfriend, not me.” He knows he sounds like a petulant two-year old, but he’s having trouble coming up with a reasonable argument because every time someone refers to Skylar as his girlfriend, his brain goes a little haywire.
“You did.” Sid says in his no nonsense voice, “Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, you don’t even know this girl.”
“I do know her.” It comes out a little more harshly than he intended. He’s not sure why it bothers him so much, but his knuckles are white around his beer. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t like what Sid is implying about the kind of person Skylar is, or maybe it’s because he wants to believe that he does know her, that it’s not illogical to feel like this after only a few days. Sid is holding up his hands in surrender.
“I’m just trying to say, you don’t think it’s a little weird?” His voice is gentler now, but still prying. Kris looks around, checking to see if the rest of the guys are still occupied and then he finds himself telling Sid the whole story, right from the beginning.
“So, see, it started out like not that big of a deal, I told a little white lie to Bridget, Skylar told a little white lie to help me out, then it sort of...exploded, imploded, I don’t know.” When he finishes, Sid looks slightly more on board, but there’s still hesitation in his features.
“You’re not afraid it’s only going to get worse if you keep lying?”
Kris considers the question. Aside from the very first time the lie escalated, things have actually gone pretty smoothly.
“No.” He says confidently, “Look, we have spent every hour of the past few days together, in either a room or in a car. I know her better than you think. It will be fine.”
“And she doesn’t want anything in return for coming all the way to Montana to be your fake date?” he sounds incredulous.
“The only thing she has ever asked for is veto power on what we watch in the hotel room.” Kris laughs, taking a swig of his drink as Sid chuckles along with him.
“Besides,” Kris says with a gulp, “Maybe by the time the wedding rolls around, the date won’t be fake anymore.” It is the first time he has admitted anything close to feelings for Skylar out loud.
----
By the time the sun has set and the real party has begun, Skylar has discovered she is the only one of the women not old enough to have a drink. This simple fact means she is designated the title of de-facto drunk wrangler. At the moment, that involves trying to convince a drunken Vero that these particular Chippendale dancers are not the type who get naked and they most certainly do not need her help up on stage.
Of course, once she manages to drag a protesting Vero back to her seat, she has to have the same argument three more times over with a few of the other girls who have also apparently taken up Vero’s cause. By the time she gets everyone settled down and back into their seats, she has actually worked up a sweat.
“So,” A giggling Vero drags her chair over to sit beside Skylar and leans over conspiratorially, “is Kris as good in bed as Marc is? You know, the Frenchman thing? Because I know Marc is great and Max makes no qualms about telling everyone that he’s great and Pascal has a litter, so you know he’s great, but Kris is just so shy!” She slaps Skylar’s arm and laughs, her eyes glassy.
“Oh, he’s great.” The voice pipes up, unasked. Vero doesn’t hear it all and Skylar barely hears it from behind her, but she doesn’t have to turn to know who speaks. So she doesn’t, she just grinds her teeth and stares resolutely at Vero’s left eyebrow.
“I have always wondered, I am a French woman after all, French men are all I know – well, Marc is all I know, I have always wanted to know if it really is a French thing. Does he have a nice tongue? Marc is not afraid to spend a lot of time you know,” she leans in closer to whisper, “down there,” she giggles uncontrollably, “and he does this thing with his tongue that is just like-” She sticks her legs straight out in front of her and points her toes, squealing, “It’s like he-”
“Okay!” Skylar blushes hotly and interrupts loudly, “You know what? I think we’re all tired and it’s time to head back to the hotel, how about that?”
Thankfully, the show is wrapping up just as Skylar makes her suggestion, so the girls have little objection, especially when Skylar decides to use their affliction for the dancers to her advantage and asks the scantily clad gentlemen to help her herd the group out the front door.
Once they get to the door, it takes her fifteen minutes to pry one of Vero’s friends from home off a rather buff dancer who had reached for her when she stumbled. Finally, she has all the women in the party out the door and heading down the sidewalk back to the hotel.
“Kris is so great!” A girl – Skylar wracks her brain to remember her name – Lucy, she thinks, the daughter of a Pens training staff member, who had grown close to Vero – throws an arm over her shoulders and squeals into her ear. “Seriously, you are so lucky! He looks at you with the ‘die happy’ eyes!”
“Die happy eyes?” Skylar asks, wrapping her arm around Lucy’s waist to hold her upright.
“You know, like now that he has you he can die happy!” She presses her cheek up against Skylar’s, “Do you have the ‘die happy’ eyes too?” Skylar bites her lip, considers the question.
“Maybe.”
----
They leave the bar at last call and decide to walk the two blocks back to the hotel in the hopes that some fresh air might sober a few of the guys up at least enough for them to put the key card into the lock.
Halfway down the second block, Kris has to take a flying leap to grab onto Jordan before he falls into a sewer grate. He is wobbling uncontrollably after he finishes off a story about his latest conquest by demonstrating his technique with a couple of rather crude hip thrusts.
He is dragging Jordan back up to his feet when he hears a rumble through the group and then the screaming of a frustrated female.
“Hey! Cars! You have to look for cars!” He looks up from under Jordan’s arm to see Skylar racing out into the middle of the road to herd a group of stumbling women out of the street.
“But we done found our men!” Lindsay proclaims in a giggle, taking a running leap into Tyler’s arms. Skylar herds the rest of the group up onto the sidewalk and shakes her head, giving up her attempt at control as they stumble over each other, each heading for a man.
Kris ducks out from under Jordan’s arm, replaced by a tall redhead whose name he doesn’t remember. He dodges drunken couples and zigzags down the sidewalk towards Skylar, who is smiling and rolling her eyes at him. Before he can get to her, someone stumbles into his path with a woman firmly wrapped around his midsection and attached at the lips. It’s Bridget and Adam.
He steps around them with little thought, but notices that Skylar’s eyes are no longer focussed on him. She’s watching Bridget, her eyebrows pulled down low, worrying her lower lip. He glances over his shoulder to note that Bridget is still wrapped around Adam and even though it’s dark, he can see her watching Skylar out of the corner of her eye. Kris doesn’t know what happened tonight, but something has gone on between them, something that has upset Skylar. It upsets him.
He thinks about his uneasiness earlier this afternoon, the way Skylar had unquestioningly stepped up and done something to set him at ease, had bravely stepped up and pushed the line. He steps right in front of her and she finally pulls her eyes back to his, letting go of her lower lip to smile at him. Before the corners of her mouth even pull all the way up, he has his lips on hers, his hands on the back of her neck, tugging her lower lip between his teeth. He slides an arm around her lower back to hold her to him, feels her hands slide up into his hair. It’s hot and open-mouthed and when he pulls back he’s panting and her eyes are glassy. Sliding an arm from the back of her neck around her shoulders, he spins them around to follow the rest of the group down the street. Once again, Sid is giving him another knowing look, but he doesn’t care because holy shit he just kissed Skylar - again.
Bridget slides impossibly close to Adam, her hand in his back pocket, looking like she’s ready to spit fire. He feels more than sees Skylar shake herself out of her shock.
“Thank you.” She says out of the corner of her mouth. “I shouldn’t have let her get to me tonight, but she just...ugh.” She trails off in a growl. He gives her shoulders a squeeze.
“Hey, it’s okay. After all the times you have bailed me out, I owe you one. And you stopped the bride to be from getting hit by a car.” She laughs and his heart swells. “Besides,” he continues, since he’s on a roll, “it was kind of fun.” He stops breathing then, waiting for her response. She slides an arm around his waist and squeezes.
“Yeah, it kind of was.”