“I know, it’s delicious. But don’t go falling in love with me just yet. I have to come clean. Bettie tried to show me how to work that machine, and I screwed it up so many times that she finally shoved me out of the way and made it herself. She scares me,” Leo admits with a shudder.
I don’t hear a word he says because I’m too busy focusing on the whole “falling in love with me” comment, wondering why in the hell I’m not making a run for it and jumping out of the second-story window to safety. I don’t want to fall in love again. Love is dumb. Love makes you do stupid things like spend five years with a man who doesn’t understand your passion and then won’t take no for an answer when you try to end things. I don’t want to be in love again and it should be the funniest idea in the world that Leo would suggest such a thing, even if he is joking.
Why isn’t it funny? WHY ISN’T IT FUNNY, DAMMIT?! And why does my heart start beating faster when I think about how easy it would be to fall in love with him?
“That really is the best coffee I’ve ever had. I’ll get the hang of Baby Cecil, don’t you worry. We’ll get to know each other, build some trust, and he’ll be pouring out your Liquid Crack for me in no time,” Leo reassures, making my inside do that melty thing all over again because he understands Baby Cecil’s temperament and understands the importance of using him for decent coffee and he just plain understands me. Benjamin used to roll his eyes whenever Bettie and I referred to the coffee machines by their names, refusing to use them himself because it was “juvenile”.
“Speaking of Bettie, where is she? I usually hear her banging around and screaming about being up at an ungodly hour whenever she has to help me open Liquid Crack,” I tell him with another sip of coffee when I notice how incredibly quiet the house is.
“Beats me,” Leo says with a shrug. “Emma Jo opened the door and then dragged Bettie outside after she let me in saying they had something important to do. They looked like they were up to something, but I didn’t have time to chase after them and demand answers. I’m too busy doing that with you.”
I slowly lower the coffee cup from my mouth guiltily and lean over to place it on the nightstand, realizing the time has come to spill the beans. Well, the pie, if you want to get technical.
“Before I say anything, can you please remove the Taser from your utility belt and place it a safe enough distance away?” I ask him.
He laughs, but quickly stops when he sees the serious look on my face.
He sighs, looks up at the ceiling quietly for a few minutes, probably praying to God for more strength to deal with my crazy, then removes the Taser gun from his belt and slides it onto the nightstand next to my coffee.
“Good?” he asks.
“It’s still within reach, but you’d have to lean forward and that will give me at least a few seconds head start,” I shrug, staring over at the Taser like it’s going to jump up from the table on its own and attack me.
“Payton, look at me. What’s going on?”
Taking a deep breath, I force my eyes to his. He scoots closer to me on the edge of the bed, grabbing both of my hands from my lap and tugging me toward him.
“Talk to me. I know something is going on with you. No more avoiding me. Talk,” he orders in a soft voice, letting go of one of my hands to brush a few strands of hair out of my eyes and tuck them behind my ear.
“So, the pie plate you found in the woods by the dead raccoons yesterday really was Emma Jo’s, but you already know that since her stupid name was stamped on the bottom of it,” I explain with a roll of my eyes, remembering how ridiculous we behaved yesterday in the woods.
Taking another fortifying deep breath, I spit out everything else in one never ending sentence before I lose my nerve and try to distract him with sex again. Something tells me it might not work this time. Leo is in uniform and he means business.
“We baked a blueberry pie in it the night Jed was killed, but not just any blueberry pie. It might have had an entire bottle of Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner mixed in, and we had a lot of wine that night and left it on the kitchen windowsill to cool, and the next morning it was gone, and then Jed’s body was found in the backyard, and we freaked out thinking he took the pie and ate it and then died in the backyard, and then Buddy came over and said it smelled like someone had baked a blueberry pie, and we freaked out even more, and then the whole town started blaming me for the murder, and we heard some rumors about people in town getting into arguments with Jed, so we made a list of other possible murder suspects in case it turned out we didn’t really kill him with a poisoned pie, but I couldn’t get any of the suspects or anyone else in town to talk to me because they hate me, and then you found the dead raccoons and the pie plate, and we were so happy to find out we didn’t kill Jed with a poisoned pie that we drank way too much wine last night while going back over our murder suspect list,” I finish, taking in a gasping breath of air and letting it out with a whistle. “Whew, so, that’s that. Want me to make you some breakfast?”