My fingers itched to tickle her, but we’d been down that road once already, and it left me with the bluest balls this side of Smurf Village. Besides, she was on top, and if she started squirming, we would end up playing Strip Chess.
Instead, I plucked the white king out of her cleavage, brushed aside the pawn and bishop that had landed on my chest, and looked up at her laughing face.
I could stare at that view for days. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were merry, and she wasn’t looking at me with that mix of sorrow and longing that I’d been catching in her unguarded moments these last few days.
Were her parents pressuring her to move? Jensen was a caring and amazing person, and I just couldn’t see the people who’d instilled that in her doing a one-eighty in their old age, guilting her into giving up her independence. I wished, not for the first time, to speak with them and discover why she wanted to flee.
Because I had a sneaking suspicion that this was an exodus and not a career move. Was Las Vegas that scary? Hell, was I?
I’d already talked myself out of reaching out to her folks; I could have, since Jen had called me from her parents’ landline last weekend and, until yesterday, I had the number buried on my incoming calls list. I lost track of how many times my thumb hovered over the icon to return the call. I was so tempted to ask them for insight. But demanding answers from anyone other than Jensen still would not solve the fundamental issue–I wasn’t a good enough reason for her to stay.
So I’d wiped out my entire calls received list.
This was one struggle I needed to win or lose on my own.
Jen was still straddling my waist, and though her eyes remained laughing, her giggles had died down to a few drunken hiccups. I slid my hands up her arms, coaxing her down to my chest. As I enclosed her in my arms and she nestled her head under my chin with a sigh, I was struck again by how perfectly she fit, like that space was built just for her to snuggle into. And, drunk as I was, I still knew no one had ever matched me like she did.
Saturday stretched out before our hung-over asses, filled with nothing to do and not much motivation to do it. I had a little prep work to finish before the JT Blackwood interview on Monday, the morning sun was already melting the sidewalks, and Jen, for the first time ever, looked like total hell.
“Bacon and Pepsi,” she grumbled as she shuffled into the kitchen in her bathrobe.
“Huh?” I looked up from contemplating my lukewarm mug of java and dragged a hand through my damp hair with a wince. God, even my scalp hurt. I had managed to snag the shower first, and steamed myself with every last ounce of hot water, but it hadn’t seemed to help.
She was draped over the open refrigerator door by that point. “We need greasy. I know it sounds funny, but grease and sugar always gets me fixed right back up.” Her hair was sticking up every-which-way as she blearily scanned the contents of the meat drawer. “Are we out of bacon?”
Hearing her say we soothed my head in ways the shower hadn’t. “I gave it all to the dogs the other morning. Sorry.”
Jen snorted and said, “I see you left out the part where they ate the bacon off my bed while I was still sleeping in it.” She tossed out an exaggerated sigh and went on, “We have to go out, then.”
She was talking in serious shorthand today, and my brain still hadn’t recovered enough to translate.
But whatever. I was showered, and if the lady needed bacon, I would drive to Von’s in the Las Vegas supernova sunshine and risk lifelong blindness to get her some. Maybe if I wore sunglasses over my sunglasses…
Watching her spin away from the fridge made me dizzy. “Gimme fifteen minutes to shower and get dressed. Caesar’s okay with you?”
I struggled with the mud between my ears to recall if any supermarket was named after a casino. I guess bewilderment broadcast over my features, because Jen said, “The breakfast buffet, you dork,” as she moved past me and out of the kitchen.
The shower had done more for Jen than it had for me. She flounced through the casino door as I held it open, and kept right on going. I caught up in a few long strides, muttering under my breath, “Pigs won’t be extinct by the time we get there, Jen.”
On the other hand, by the time we walked through the entire effing casino to reach the back-corner buffet, there was every possibility that I’d be heaving all over the pretty patterned carpet.
I’d been okay with the driving, since the sun had been in the rearview–and it hadn’t been flashing, like every damn machine was doing on the miles-long casino floor. Add in Jen’s quick pace and the god-awful racket of a gazillion video slots and the stability of my stomach was in dire jeopardy.