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After her five-year tour, one would think she never got anxious about all of the pre-dicking, during dicking, and getting-out-of-there-before-he-woke-up dicking. The expectation would be that she didn’t get caught up in the is-my-ass-too-big, don’t-make-that-face-when-he’s-looking, suck-in-your-gut-when-you’re-on-top nervousness anymore. Some would presume that her tough-chick attitude went bone deep instead of barely going below the skin.
Well, there’s a reason they said, “Assuming makes an ass out of you and me,” because here she was thirty years old and still trying to figure it all out.
The truth she’d go to her grave with was that all of this was just awkward as fuck and she felt it all the way down to the soles of her size-eight shoes. (Yeah, she did have ginormous feet for someone who only got to a smidge over five two with the help of a high ponytail.) Just being on Cal’s doorstep was making her toes twitch and her stomach do that flippy-floppy thing.
It didn’t make it any easier that he was just staring at her.
Or was he glaring?
It was kinda hard to tell and somehow for some reason kinda hot, and oh my God did she have a whole lot to talk about with her therapist during tomorrow’s appointment. At least it couldn’t get worse, right? Especially not if she just turned around right now and—
Her stomach growled.
Scratch that. Her stomach yowled—loudly—like a back-alley tomcat with a bullhorn.
The corner of Cal’s mouth twitched.
Her stomach let out another loud complaint. Cal looked down and seemingly tried to disguise a chuckle with a fake cough. She probably wouldn’t have heard his rusty amusement if her stomach’s next rumble had been half a second sooner.
She was already breaking her biggest post-getting-left-at-the-altar rule by hopping to get laid in this building.
Why? Because it was the same one she lived in, and it was definitely going to be hard to stick to her fuck-them-and-never-see-them-again rule if she had a one-night stand with a guy who lived one floor above her.
The universe—with all the subtlety of a neon beer sign—was obviously trying to remind her of that with this stomach growl thing, and for once she was going to listen.
“Well, yeah, okay then,” she said as she pressed her hand to her rumbling belly and took a few steps back. “I’m just gonna go and take care of that.”
He shook his head. “No need.”
Her stomach erupted again, and she was seriously beginning to wonder if she had a medical condition. At this rate, she could be the case of the week on some TV medical melodrama.
But doctor, we can’t screw in the supply closet right now. A patient just came in with extreme abdominal growls. She needs surgery STAT.
“I owe you dinner, and I always pay my debts,” Cal said as if that was that.
Yeah. No.
Like Omar from The Wire, Astrid had a code: no breaking bread with a man whose dick she’d either seen or really, really wanted to.
Holding her hand to her abdomen as if she could physically stop her stomach from doing that loud gurgling growl thing again, she let out an awkward laugh. “I don’t want to put you out—”
“It’s just spaghetti made with sauce from a can,” he said, his serious gaze never wavering. “The garlic bread is going to be toasted Wonder Bread with melted butter and garlic salt.”
Right on cue, her stomach did its thing. This time though the rest of Astrid was a hundred percent behind it. “That was my go-to dish growing up when I had to make dinner when my dad worked late.”
“It’s my specialty.” Cal took a step back, opening his door wide so she could easily walk inside. “So are you coming in?”
It really wasn’t nice of him to throw her own question from earlier back at her.
She shouldn’t. Walking inside was pretty much giving her panties the night off—which yes would be amazing but it definitely would break her no-food-with-fucking rule.
This is a bad idea, Astrid. Be smart.
That’s exactly what she was telling herself when she walked inside anyway.
So much for listening to the universe’s good advice.
Chapter Six
