“Whatcha want?” Zay asks, pausing in front of the glass ice cream case and planting his wicked sexy hands on his hips. Looking at him now, it's like the sex is a dream, like it never even happened. But then my hip bone tingles and I remember the hot brush of his fingers, the warm press of his body, the sudden knowledge that I was sharing my space with somebody else, that he was inside of me.
I shiver.
“Something with coffee in it. I have a feeling this is gonna be a long night.”
Zay grins and salutes me, stepping up to the counter to order while I wait with the baby.
She stares up at me with dark brown eyes, her head fuzzy with hair, her skin the color of a good mocha. She blows a raspberry at me and I smile, reaching down to squeeze the pink and white sock on her foot.
“Hard to believe my lumberjack dickhead of a brother made this, huh?” Zay asks, pausing next to me to point at the baby with an ice cream cone. He hands mine over to me and I notice he's taken the liberty of ordering a waffle cone with chocolate and sprinkles on it for me. I kind of love him for that. “I give my sister-in-law all the credit. Mercedes never misses a raid, and she annihilates on first person shooters. You should see her in action; it's impressive.”
Zay pushes the stroller over to a pair of seats near the front so we can look out the window while we eat. I notice he watches me lick my ice cream before starting in on his. And then when he does, he makes such a sensual face that I laugh.
“Trying too hard?” he asks as he looks at me with half-lidded eyes and then runs his tongue along his lower lip. “You don't seem to like that. Should I scale back a little?”
“I'm not sleeping with you,” I say and he smirks at me. The expression on his face sort of makes me want to slap him.
“Not sleeping with you again. Don't forget the again part. I'm a part of your life narrative now, Smarty-Pants.”
“Why do you keep calling me that? If anyone's the smarty-pants in the family, it'd be my sister Ingrid. She was always outdoing me on everything.” Zay scoffs and his face gets dark for a split second.
“Doesn't look like she's outdoing you now, leaving her twenty-two year old sister to watch her kids. What a bitch.” The overprotective part of me wants to tell Zay not to talk about my sister like that, but the other part of me is happy to have someone on my side for once. I know my parents are disappointed in Ingrid, but I don't feel like they care enough. What she did, leaving like that, losing her house, starting the drugs, it's practically unforgivable and yet my parents talk about her like she's on an extended vacation.
“Fuck her,” I say and Zay raises his eyebrows. I take a nice, long lick of my ice cream and close my eyes against the sweet cream taste, the bitter notes of coffee pinging around on the back of my tongue. In the background, soft jazz music plays. It's not my usual thing, but it's pretty, relaxing. I could use a little bit of relaxing right now. I'm only on day two of my new job and I'm already wondering how I'm going to get everything done. How I'm going to do this without Zay. Because it's been one day and I can't figure out how to juggle it, who I'm going to get to watch the kids, clean the house, take care of the dog. I wish for a second there that he really was a nanny so I could hire him permanently. “I can't believe you're a body piercer. Do you actually make money off of that?”
“On the Strip? Are you kidding me? There's a constant stream of new customers fresh off of gambling.” Zay takes an erotic lick of sherbet, swirling his tongue around the rim of his cone and making my heart palpate. I hate how much I wish that was me under his hot mouth instead. “But, I sort of suck at managing my money. I still have the same crap car I packed all my shit into and moved to Vegas with, no savings or retirement money set aside. I do have a pretty kick ass condo though.”
I pause and set my cone into the little metal stand on the table, cleverly designed for this exact purpose, and reach down to unbutton my shirt. Zay watches me, his pupils clearly dilating in those sea glass green eyes of his. I shrug it off onto the back of my chair, leaving me in nothing but a tight white tank. I act like I don't notice him checking me out, gaze landing on the pale curves of my breasts, the tantalizing bit of white lace from my bra that's peeking out above the neckline.
“You flew up here as a favor to your brother then, like you said? Or was that a lie, too?” I try to smile a little when I say it although I'm still pretty pissed off. I really hate being lied to, even if it's just a joke. The man that I dated for three years, he was the ultimate liar, hiding behind a cloak of superiority and religion. I'll never date a man like that again.