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Then from behind me, Red calls, “If you ever want a running buddy… I like it hard and fast.”
I look over my shoulder in time to see her friend gasp.
Red winks. “Running. And you know… other things too.”
Bold.
But not even close to as bold as some of the propositions I’ve gotten.
Last year I’d have been jogging circles around them by now. Backward. I’d have their digits and a plan to meet up. Hell, I might even have said screw the run and ordered a Lyft to get the three of us somewhere private.
Now?
I sure as shit could use the distraction.
I turn back, and Red’s face lights up as she slows to a stop.
4
Lara
I regret all my life choices.
Or at least the ones from the last two hours, because damn.
I just wanted to do something nice for Ben. With that persistent strain in the air, the guy has to be regretting his choice to let me move in. So soft pretzels with cheese sauce. He always loved when my mom made them, and I figured I’d give her recipe a go.
What I didn’t take into account was that I haven’t actually made these in eight years. And even then, I probably spent more time sitting on the stool at the counter than actually helping. Add to that, the appliances in this kitchen are gleaming and have the look of being mostly unused.
They are in a different league than the appliances of my youth. A more powerful league… with the kind of dough-flinging reach I suspect we’ll be finding evidence of for weeks.
But my most immediate problem isn’t that drying glob splattered against the window in the next room. It isn’t the sink full of soaking mixing bowls, measuring cups, and pans. It’s not even the Lara-sized outline of flour coating the cabinets opposite the standing mixer.
No, it’s that while I was trying to rinse some pretzel dough out of my hair, I somehow got a section caught around the faucet… and I’ve been trapped, bent over the sink, trying to escape it for five minutes already. And I really, really don’t want Ben coming home to this train wreck in action.
Another futile attempt at blindly extracting myself from the faucet, and it’s time to consider those kitchen shears on the counter behind me. I can’t reach with my hands… but maybe my foot?
I stretch out my leg like some amateur contortionist, toes feeling around when?—
“Whoa, Lara, what the— Are you okay?”
My eyes snap to where Ben’s rubbing his jaw in the doorway as he takes in his kitchen and me. I pull my leg back and swear a silent oath never to leave my bedroom in pajamas again. Because yeah, that too.
“Heya, Boomer,” I greet, all casual, like my right boob isn’t submerged in a sink full of soapy dishwater and my back isn’t about to go into spasm from being stuck like this. “Made you breakfast.”
“Breakfast… and a show?”
Hmm. “You’re hilarious.”
Still, I’ve got to give it to the guy, he doesn’t miss a beat. He mutters a quiet, “Elle,” and moves to my side, the careful pressure at my scalp telling me he’s working on the knot.
“How was the workout?” I ask, hoping he’ll ignore the uneven tone.
He grunts, leaning closer, his torso brushing the bare skin of my arm and causing an inadvertent gasp to sneak past my lips. Because I can feel the stacks of his abs with my elbow.
“Sorry,” he mutters, trying to keep a sliver of space between us while bending over the sink with me.
“It’s okay.” I wait for him to ask just what in holy hell happened here, but he doesn’t. Two tugs and a bit of swearing later, I’m free.
