“A simple phone call would have sufficed. I’m sure my number is in my file too.”
“It is but I was in the area. Besides you’ve been in my apartment twice now. Maybe I wanted to see what your’s looks like.”
“You know that sounds kind of stalker-ish right? What are you batting two-for-two now?”
He threw up his hands in mock defense. “The first time I was following something else, not you. I just happened to be there when it,” he paused glancing at Whitney, “set its sights on you. And count yourself lucky that I was. If not for me you would have bled out on the street.”
Whitney turned to me, shooting daggers in my direction. “What is he talking about? You didn’t tell me you got hurt?”
“I didn’t. I mean I did, but everything turned out okay. It was nothing. I promise.”
For all of her seemingly superficialness, Whitney was somewhat of a mother hen and worry wart when it came to me. She claimed I had a tendency to disregard my own wellbeing and that it was her job to see that she regarded it since I didn’t. She said that’s what friends were for.
Whitney looked at me in silent hurt at my not having told her I was injured and disbelief that it wasn’t as bad as I was telling her. But then she looked at Chase and in the presence of company she let it drop. I knew I would hear more about the matter later though.
“Okay well thanks for stopping by to let me know,” I told Chase awkwardly. Having him standing in my apartment, in the middle of my living room, was throwing me off kilter. “Where are we patrolling tonight?”
“Bennett said Atlantic Station.” His lips did that thing where they twitched at the corners again and I got the feeling that my discomfort amused him.
Jerk.
“Alright, I’ll meet you there at eight then.” I stood from the couch and walked towards the door, not too subtly hinting that it was time for him to leave.
He followed me but paused before he crossed the threshold. “I can also pick you up from here if you want?”
“No, I’m good. I’ll take the train and meet you there.”
Chase shrugged his shoulder. “Ok. Just offering.”
“Hey Chase!” Whitney called out before I could fully close the door behind him.
I had been so close to getting him out of our apartment before my roommate did or said something that I would regret.
He stopped and turned around and damn it even though I really did not want to I swung it back open because I would look like an idiot if I didn’t.
Whitney’s long, bare, and sinfully sexy legs carried her to the door. “You’re new in town right?”
I gritted my teeth against where she was headed with that question. I was surprised it had taken her as long to pounce as it had.
“Yeah, I am.”
“So I take it you don’t have plans for tomorrow night?”
Yes, yes you have plans,
I silently tell him from within my head.
“No, I don’t. I don’t really know too many people in the city.”
Whitney’s lips were full and pouty even when she was not smiling, but when she did they transformed into sultry and seductive.
Damn her and her to-die-for lips for smiling at him now!
“Awesome. I know it’s short notice and maybe a little presumptuous…”
Lalalalalala,
I childishly started singing in my head and for what reason I had no earthly clue.
“But Alex and I have a formal charity event to attend tomorrow night and while I have a date, Alex hasn’t had time to bother with getting one.”
Wait, what?!
That was not at all what I was expecting her to say and when did she get a date to my grandmother’s charity ball? Furthermore, when was she going to inform me that I’d be flying as a third wheel? Not that I cared but still, a heads up would have been nice. And even
furthermore,
what the hell did she mean I hadn’t had time to get a date? No, I didn’t have the time, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have. I didn’t date. I hadn’t since the twins. She knew that and the reasons behind it.
“Since you’re her new partner and all, you should be her plus one. It will give you two an opportunity to get to know each other better. You know, bond with each other like the partners on all the cop shows do.”
My cheeks burned and I knew I’d turned a bright, unattractive shade of crimson. “You don’t have to agree to that. My friend has obviously bumped her head. I am so sorry.” I realized I was beginning to ramble and snapped my mouth shut.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said to Whitney then looked at me. “What time does it begin?”
I opened my mouth to tell him again that he did not have to come. Perhaps even to insist that it was absurd for him to even do so. However, Whitney butted in before I could speak, knowing me and what I would say all too well.
“It starts at seven. My date is meeting us here so you can do the same at six thirty. Alex’s grandmother is sending a car for us so we can all ride together.”
“It’s a date.” Sapphire eyes bore into mine, lit up with amusement and something else I couldn’t discern.
“I’ll see you then I guess. Well, actually, I’ll see you later tonight in a few hours. But I’ll see you then too.” I was rambling again and made myself stop talking.
‘What the hell?!” I yelled at my about-to-be-ex best friend as soon as the door was closed and I figured Chase was safely out of earshot.“I don’t even know him and you just invited him to be my date to a formal event! That’s ridiculous. He probably only accepted to be polite because you put him on the stop and now I have to deal with the embarrassment of him showing up and the embarrassment of patrolling with him!”
“Are you done?” Whitney asked me in an unconcerned tone.
I glared at her. “I hate you right now.” Really I didn’t. I never could no matter what she did and she knew that. But it was the only thing that I could say in that moment to adequately express my indignation and she knew that too.
“No, you don’t. You love me,” she responded with a chesire cat grin. “And you are going to love me even more after tomorrow night. If he was looking at you like he wanted to take a bite out of you while you’re in sweats and a hoodie, wait until he sees you tomorrow in the McQueen gown. He is going to take you home and
devour
you. Ooh, or maybe y’all won’t even make it. Maybe I should call your grandmother and have her send a second car so we can travel separately. There is nothing like a good lay in the backseat of a car.”
The thought of Chase and I doing what she described and the images that accompanied it made my body react in a way that it had not done in a very long time when thinking about the opposite sex. I mentally shook off the tingles that were racing down my spine and warming a different part of my body.
“You are a ridiculous individual, do you know that? First, he was not looking at me any type of way and second, tomorrow night will not end in us having sex. I don’t do casual sex and I don’t know him like that to have any other type of sex with him. Furthermore, I have no desire to get to know him like that. And if all of that isn’t enough think about him then look at me. I’m not even out of his league. I’m like a hundred light-years away from it.”
“Argh!” Whitney said exasperatedly. “Alex, you never give yourself the credit you deserve. You. Are. Smoking. Half the guys in our Criminal Justice class have asked me about my hot friend they don’t see around campus too much. And when I drag you to a frat party or to a bar, do you know how many heads turn when you walk into the room? Guys literally break their necks checking you out.”
I laughed at the absurdity of her claims. “I’m sure heads turn because I’m standing beside you. Miss-I’m-as-tall-as-a-supermodel-and-as-beautiful-as-one-too.”
“Bye, Felicia,” she laughed using the viral meme that was sweeping across the country. “I might be tall, but I definitely don’t have nice, full, perky boobs like you do or curves in all the right places,” she smiled teasingly at me.
I playfully elbowed her in the shoulder. “Shut up. You’re stupid.”
She plopped back down on the couch. “Shit, I wish. Then I wouldn’t be stressing or have my parents stressing me either over keeping a perfect 4.0 so I can graduate Summa Cum Laude. Anyway, seriously, you’re going to thank me after tomorrow night. That new partner of yours is
FUCKABLE
. Like with a capital F-U-C-K-A-B-L-E. Oh Jesus. Those muscles, and those dimples, and those eyes, and that
ass
. Girl, you’re lucky it’s clear that you have a thing for him or I’d have been asking him out tomorrow for myself and not for you. It’s cool though. I love you and you’re my bestie so I don’t mind making the sacrifice. But damn, Alex. I’m so jealous. You have to promise to let me know if his ass is as firm and as cute as I think it is naked and if he fucks as powerfully as he walks.”
I covered my face with my hands and erupted into giggles. “Oh my God, Whitney, you did not just say all of that! You are
nasty
.”
“Yup. I sure am. YOLO right?” She shrugged her shoulders unapologetically.
That was one of the things I loved most about her. She did what she wanted, she said what she wanted, and made no apologies for doing either. If you didn’t like her or if you judged her then it was fuck you. Who the fuck are you anyway?
“But I bet after tomorrow you’ll become the pot calling the kettle black,”
she added in a singsong voice.
“That’s a bet you will lose.”
She eyed me for a second then a smile crept across her face. “Care to put your money where your mouth is?”
My smile mirrored hers. “Is that a challenge?”
She leapt to her feet, then rapidly shuffled them back and forth across the floor. She was trying to mimic a shuffle, ball, change tap combination but she looked more like a cracked out roadrunner. At the end of her performance, she extended one arm out to me and yelled, “Chall-enge!” in a deep, nasally masculine voice.
I doubled over in laughter at her imitation of the scene from a decades old episode of
The Cosby Show.
“
If you don’t end up sleeping with Mr. Grade-A Fuckable, I will run out every morning before you leave for class and bring you back a venti caramel macchiato and a bacon and cheese gouda sandwich for a month. And if you do, then I want my laundry washed, folded and neatly put away for a month.”
“Oh, that is too good to pass up. It’s a bet. Waking up to coffee and breakfast every morning, here I come.”
“Not so fast, Alex. I haven’t finished with the terms of the bet yet. I don’t just mean tomorrow night. Because I know you, and you can be as stubborn as a mule, or your grandmother. I mean if you don’t sleep with him anytime during the next… I don’t know let’s say four weeks.”
“Psst. Easy peasy. It’s still a bet,” I said confidently. Then I thought about the muscles, and the dimples and the eyes, and yeah Whitney was right, the ass, and I suddenly wasn’t so confident anymore.
Psst.
I reiterated to myself shrugging off the images and the shivers they induced.
Easy peasy.
I turned the corner onto 17
th
street to see Chase casually posted against the wall of a brick building. I spotted him before he saw me. I took advantage of the moment, stealing an opportunity to look my fill. He must have either showered or taken a nap before coming because his dark brown hair had a slightly tousled, slightly just getting out of bed look that you could only achieve when you’ve either really just gotten out of bed or when you showered then hurriedly ran a towel over damp hair.
Either way, it looked good on him. Loose, curls hung in his eyes affording him a sexy, yet boyishly handsome appeal. His head turned and he spotted me among the crowd of people that milled around me. Unlike us, they were actually in Atlanta Station to enjoy Atlanta’s outdoor shopping mall on a warm spring night, wandering between the shops, maybe catching a bite to eat or movie in between.
His left booted foot was kicked back against the wall. To the casual passerby he would seem like your average, carefree twenty something year old. Perhaps waiting on his friends to arrive to kick off a night of food and drinks in Atlantic Station then barhopping around midtown. However, our lives never were and never would be that of the average twenty something year old. We were born with a greater burden and weight of knowledge on our shoulders than they would ever bear.
I sighed. Sometimes I envy the masses for their ignorance. Not knowing that archangels and daemons and brethren ever existed would make life so much easier. So much simpler.
“Hey.” Chase’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. My eyes had been trained on him the entire time, but somewhere along the way they’d stopped focusing on him, turning introspective instead.
“Hey. When I’m patrolling down here I usually walk 17
th
street from I-85 to Ikea then double back using 18
th
street. Is that cool with you?”
“It’s your world. I’m just the squirrel.”
I looked at him. Trying very, very hard to keep my cool. I lost the battle, but turned my involuntary laugh into a pseudo-snort to cover it up. “You sound like a bad 90s rap song complete with cheesy pick-up lines.”
“Cheesy or not, they work.”
“I bet they do. You could probably walk up to a girl and tell her she smells like roadkill and she’d still fall all over you. I know your type and you probably have a list of girlfriends, or fuck-buddies, or whatever label you give them a mile long.”
His answering smug half-smile all but confirmed my words.
“And just what is
my type
?”
I waved my hand in a gesture that swept the length of his body. “Tall, hot, arrogant and charming.”