Liar.
“Look out, Winnie,” I heard my most annoying friend say directly in my ear. “Pinocchio’s nose is only seconds away from poking you right in the pussy.”
I fought the urge to curse Thatch out, laugh, and, hell, maybe even cry. I was normally stoic, so much so that I’d earned a public reputation for it, but it seemed like I couldn’t control my reactions anymore. So breaking down in tears might not have been that far off.
“You need me to look at something?” I asked Winnie.
Thatch pretended to cough in my ear before murmuring, “Her pussy.”
She shook her head and then nodded, seemingly undecided, and the glimpse of uncertainty had my eyebrows pulling together of their own accord. In my relatively short time around Winnie Winslow, she didn’t do uncertainty. She was one hundred percent confident in all of her decisions and remarks, and I’d come to expect that from her.
I opened my mouth to speak again, when she straightened, her long legs getting longer, and any curve befalling her spine disappeared.
“Only if you want to. I was just looking over the MRI results from Mitchell’s hamstring injury.”
It’d been a couple of weeks since Mitchell’s initial reinjury, and we were expecting him to play this weekend. I couldn’t really afford to not have him play. She didn’t say anything had changed, but maybe looking at the MRI myself wasn’t a bad idea.
“Okay. I’d love to see the MRI. Just give me a second to finish up this phone call, and I’ll be in.”
She nodded and swung her body back into her office with the help of her hand clenched around the doorjamb. My gaze followed her as she strutted to her desk and rifled through the papers, pulling something out from the bottom of the stack. She started to tuck her shirt back into her skirt, and I jerked my eyes away when she looked up self-consciously in my direction.
“Well, well, well. Late nights with Ms. Winslow. Someone’s a naughty boy.”
Something didn’t add up with Winnie—the whole interaction reeked of not-quite-right—but thanks to Thatch in my ear, I couldn’t seem to figure out what.
My attention back on Thatch, I spoke into the phone in an angry whisper. “I didn’t even know she was still here, asshole. Jesus.”
His laughter rang out through the phone loudly enough that I had to pull it slightly away from my ear.
“Me thinketh my fair Whitney doth protesteth too mucho.”
I shook my head and rubbed at my temple, keeping the folder clenched tightly with the pinch of my elbow. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Come on. The sooner the two of you bang, the sooner we can all go on a tropical vacation together. It’ll be like that movie, Couple’s Retreat.”
“Don’t like seventy-five percent of the couples in that movie break up?”
“Okay, so it won’t be like Couple’s Retreat. It’ll be like a totally better, porno version of it. No one breaks up in porn.”
“Of course, no one breaks up in porn,” I told him, following him down the rabbit hole of conversation without even realizing it. Thatch was the master of dragging you into insanity without your knowledge. I think it was the matter-of-fact way he talked about absurdities. “It’s an explicitly no-boundaries situation.”
“It’s an accidental anal situation.”
“Exactly. In real life, women break up with you for accidental anal.”
His voice turned grave. “Is that why there’s so much tension with Winnie? I thought it was because you hadn’t fucked, but it’s because you gave her accidental anal, isn’t it?”
“Jesus Christ! No.” My whisper turned harsh as I took a couple of steps away from Winnie’s office and checked to make sure she couldn’t hear me.
“It’s not accidental anal. There’s no anal.”
“Oh. So that’s the problem. I’ve gotta tell you, Wes. Even I haven’t gotten anal. And if I can’t get anal from Cassie, you’re never getting anal from Winnie.”
“I don’t want anal from Winnie!”
Thatch laughed, and I closed my eyes in frustration. “So just the pussy, then?”
“I’m done talking to you.”
“Wait!” he called before I could hang up. “I called for a reason.”
“I’m not going to get ice cream for Cassie.”
“That’s not—”
“I know nothing about pregnancy panties.”
He barked laughter. “Well, you know more than me. I wasn’t aware there were pregnancy panties—”
“I don’t have access to any fried pickles, and I absolutely will not bring you Chinese food.”