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“Don’t push your luck,” I say.
She sticks out the tip of her pink tongue at me, and I grin at her, loving it. She’s so fucking cute.
Mr. Skitters watches us with mistrust but takes a couple more steps into the living room. And then a couple more. And then he leaps up onto my recliner, turns in a circle, and lies his furry ginger ass down on my sleeping spot for the night.
“Ha!” Marci grins. “Thatissome Disney princess shit. I should start wearing flowing dresses and singing songs.”
“Hmm.” She’s good without any of that.
“What?”
“Just that you seem remarkably happy with the fact that the cat sentenced us to sharing a bed tonight.”
Marci’s full lips part, and she tucks those fiery red locks behind her ear. She tugs on her earlobe.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Unless you want to be the one to disturb the cat, wife.”
Is it wrong that I’m happy this has happened? Not because I’ll finally have a cat, but because I’ll finally have Marci Walsh in my bed?
I shouldn’t be happy because we’ve agreed that we won’t do anything about it. Sharing a bed with Marci without touching her will be torture.
“Huh.”
She eats a bite of food and mulls it over. She licks her lips and takes a sip of water. I fixate on the way she moves, her fingers grasping the glass, those French-manicured nails, short but neat. So sexy.
“I’m fine with it, Taylor, because I have self-control. Can you say the same?”
“We’ll see how much control you have,” I reply.
She arches an eyebrow at me and takes another bite of food, then pulls a face.
“Ugh. I can’t even be pissed at you when the food is this good.”
“You mentioned you wanted to be a chef,” I say. “Life got in the way, right? But what’s stopping you from taking more control?”
Marci rests her fork on the side of her dish. “Money,” she says. “Mainly money and time. I can’t exactly go study to be a chef, and even if I could, I can’t leave anyone else in charge of the diner because I can’t afford it. And Grant…”
“What about him?”
“He’s been the chef forever. He doesn’t trust my menu suggestions,” Marci says.
I grit my teeth. “I’ll talk to him.”
“What? No,” she says. “I can handle my own shit, Taylor. Besides, it’s not the right time.”
“It’s never the right time. The only difference between the right and wrong time is you.”
“Ooh, deep, Taylor. Did you read that in one of those teenage self-help books?”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“Maybe.”
Marci laughs again, and it occurs to me that I want to hear more of that noise. Her joy. I’ve never wanted that before. Sure, I want people to be happy in a general sense, but I’ve never been addicted to a sound.
“The problems I have aren’t going to disappear overnight. I have to focus on fixing what’s broken first.”
