Page 14 of Grouch-ish

“I’m only trying to help,” I remind him as my voice rises to match his.

“Again, why do you care?” His head pops up from examining his hand and I lift my eyes to answer him. Only any response gets caught in my throat once more.

While I want to tell him I don’t care about him, something deep inside me hints I should.

And I have no reasonable explanation for why.

+ + +

Cleaning up Brock’s pear-catastrophe took more than an hour. Afterward, I sent him to the shower, reminding him to reapply the aloe vera gel, before I started working on our dinner of leftovers. Dad’s freezer is stocked but the fridge is lacking. As he hadn’t planned on being here for two weeks and hadn’t expected me, the basics are present but fresh foods are absent.

As I’m removing the lid from a plastic container, my nail catches and bends backwards, ripping off a portion of the nail below the bed.

“Shit.” Shaking out my hand, I step toward the sink and turn on the cold water, placing my hand underneath the stream, similar to how Brock had done earlier. A slow trickle of red runs through the water.

“What happened?”

“Jesus in a manger,” I shriek, having been startled by Brock’s sudden appearance. Not only did I not hear him, but freshly showered Brock, standing too close to me Brock, is like an aphrodisiac Brock. He smells like winter mint and fresh snow, and looks too good in a camel-brown sweater that hugs his chest like the plastic wrapper on candy.

Which flavor is he?

Brock tenderly cups my hand beneath the cold water and examines where my nail has chipped like a broken claw.

“That’s gonna hurt,” he mutters.

“Well, aren’t you all compassion?” Especially after I spread aloe vera gel on his hand earlier.

He doesn’t reply but takes his time to add gentle pressure to my finger, watching until the water runs clean of blood. The pad of his thumb rubs up and down my finger, stroking a little longer than necessary.

“We make quite a pair, Paradise,” he says still inspecting my finger while massaging the digit.

“Pear,” I whisper.

“A pair, that’s what I said.”

“No, pear. P – E – A – R. That’s what my dad calls me. Pear, short for paradise but also like the fruit.”

His gaze blatantly drops to my chest before his eyes leap to meet mine. A crooked smile curls his lips. “A pair of pears.”

“Don’t be crass.” Besides my breasts are bigger than a set of pears.

He chortles without apologizing. “We, you and me, make a pair, Pear.”

“You’re such a dick.” Mocking my nickname when I thought I was offering a piece of myself to him sets my stomach churning. I don’t know why I shared the name with him. Only my dad calls me such a thing. “Forget it. Don’t use the name.”

“Come on, snowflake.” He chuckles. “Don’t freeze me out.”

Forget calling him a dick. He’s worse. “Yeah, calling the fat girl a snowflake is really original.”

Brock gasps, loud and strangled, while squeezing my hand more firmly. His voice drops low, almost menacing when he says, “What did you say?”

“I’m not repeating myself.” I’m actually rather body-positive and have decent self-esteem, but I haven’t always been like this. Reggie did a negative number on me when I was in a vulnerable state, and it took a long time to reach zero again.

“You better fucking not because I never want to hear you use fat in a sentence again, especially if you are referring to yourself. Which I know you were not just doing.” The tipping of his bushy brow accentuates his point. He’s not listening to this bullshit.

“The only thing I want to know about your size is how well those hips might fit in my hands. How that ass feels against my palms. And how that mouth might take my—”

“Got it.” I cut him off. He’s still crass, but am I turned on? Yes. Yes, I am. And that’s new.