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I follow Ruthie to the sink, and she squirts soap into my hands. Her fingers glance off mine, and an electric heat floods me. It’s the way she’s still grinning, I decide, like that dog pissing on me is the highlight of her day, or maybe even her month. It occurs to me that my rule might be harder to follow tonight because Danny’s not here. Because it’s just the two of us, Ruthie and me, for the first time in…well, maybe for the first time ever.
“It’s not funny,” I tell her. I may have told her I didn’t wear this suit to impress her, but I haven’t been wearing it all day. After I got back from Freeman & Daniels, I went to the gym for a couple of hours and then ran some errands for my mother. The suit was for Ruthie—because I figured if you’re going to show up and ask a woman to marry you, even if it’s fake, you’d better look good doing it.
It was for Ruthie, and now it’s covered in piss.
Maybe that’s appropriate, actually.
“You have a very restrictive sense of humor,” she says. “I feel sorry for you. Also, do you want something to change into?”
I lift my eyebrows as I scrub my hands. “You want to put me in a pair of bootie shorts too?”
Her gaze drifts down to her legs. I expect her to scowl at me, and I’m not disappointed. “You a puritan, suddenly? Or does your attitude only apply to women you don’t want to sleep with?”
I’m about to say who says I don’t want to sleep with you?, because the rhythm of our banter seems to demand it, but something stops me. Maybe the truth that I do want to sleep with her. That anyone attracted to women would. Instead, I settle for, “I didn’t say I don’t like them.”
This surprises her. I see it in the almost quizzical look in her eyes. Ah, Ruthie has convinced herself I’m incapable of anything approaching kindness toward her. Fantastic.
“I wasn’t thinking bootie shorts,” she says, handing me a dishtowel with a gingerbread man on it—clearly a relic of the holidays. “I have an old pair of Rand’s sweatpants that I used to wear when I was pregnant with Izzy.”
“No,” I say, almost before she finishes. “No, thanks.”
Her eyebrows lift. “You’d prefer for people to think you pissed yourself?”
“Than to wear something that belonged to him? Yes.” I’ve worked with some terrible people, defended worse ones, but there are few of them I dislike as much as Rand Callaghan. Of course, Ruthie doesn’t know everything about my history with him, and I’m not going to tell her. I’m also not going to wear the fucking pants.
She shakes her head slightly as if I’m being unreasonable. Then swipes at her nose. I’ve noticed her do that a couple of times tonight. Is she sick?
“Sometimes clothes are just clothes.”
“Can’t do it,” I insist, even though I smell like the bathroom at a truck stop.
Sighing, she says, “I have some pajamas I forgot to give Danny for Christmas. You can wear those.”
“You got him pajamas?” I ask, unable to keep the hint of amusement out of my voice.
She rolls her eyes and motions for me to follow her. “Have you tried to shop for him?”
She has a point. Danny’s a guy who doesn’t want very much, something that’s hard for me to understand. I’ve always wanted more than I have. Always. It’s what keeps me on top of my game.
I follow her down the hallway, trying to ignore the perfect round globes of her ass in those shorts. Then I pause, because she’s leading me toward what is obviously her bedroom. Maybe it’s foolish to start drawing arbitrary lines, but I don’t think I can go in there with her right now. My mind isn’t quite right, and being around a bed, particularly her bed, isn’t going to help me wrestle it back into control.
She glances back at me, her eyes teasing, and I feel a strange thrumming inside of me. “You being a puritan again, not wanting to go into an unmarried woman’s bedroom?”
“Get the pajamas, please, and then we’ll talk.” Because I haven’t forgotten what she said before the dog pissed on me. I want in on that sweet insurance.
But there are small lies and big ones…
Ruthie goes inside and emerges a couple of seconds later with some blue checkered plaid pajamas that would have made Danny a perfectly boring gift.
“Remind me never to do a white elephant exchange with you,” I say, earning myself another scowl.
“Go put them on before I change my mind.”
So I do, my mind still working.
Sweet insurance. Sweet, sweet insurance.
I emerge, my soiled suit slung over my arm, feeling like a class-A douchebag in a pair of matching PJs. “I should be in a Christmas ad for Sears,” I complain as I walk into the kitchen. She’s sitting at the table again, taking a bite of cake, and there’s the slightest bit of frosting on her top lip.
