“If you’re going through all that trouble, please spray the edges gold and black, too.” She folds her hands in her lap, angelic. “Do also include extra kisses in the hardback-exclusive bonus scene that you’re certainly going to write for me, because—and I’m not saying you can’t count, but—you have never given me eight pages of kisses. There were but a mere thirteen paragraphs in this precious tome.”
I skip to the kiss scene and count thirteen whole paragraphs, then I arch a brow at December. “Why do you know that?”
“I keep track, so I can determine whether or not my begging works. Overall, kissing percentages have steadily been growing, yet they remain oh so pitiful, and this slow burn was an outlier that quite nearly begat the death of me.” She plants her fingertips together, innocence incarnate. “I believe in our ability to do better.”
Uh-huh. AndIbelieve she’s a siren, steadily luring me toward the brink of closed-door smut. Granee would be oh so proud. I, however, am determined not to fall prey to such fickle things. “I have just decided. The regal prince story is a five-hundred-page slow burn with a single last chapter peck that I won’t even show. They’ll lean in, and then I will typefin.”
Melting back against the carpet, December declares, “Dawn. By dawn, my spirit leaves this vessel and seeks greener pastures in the great beyond.”
Well then, it’s a good thing Walmart has coffins, isn’t it?
I should order one for my dearest friend.
I wonder… Would a coffin make a comfortable bed? Considering I have no suitable guest accommodations here, purchasing such a thing may prove an excellent investment. Turning to my computer, I look up coffins on Walmart’s website and locate a slew of burial boxes labeled ascaskets. They are a couple thousand dollars,butthe price does happen to include shipping.
Wow.
That means they’re basically free!
“Twenty-seven and a half inches wide,” I murmur. I wonder if that would be large enough for Dominic’s shoulders. Maybe I should stop by my brother’s place in the morning and measure them. I only asked for one shift at Bear’s this week, and myjob with Mont Business is infinitely flexible, so that means I’ve plenty of time to be a menace.
“August.” My sweet friend’s voice drifts, surely not laced in judgment.
“December,” I coo.
“Why are you looking at coffins?”
Ah, so that was judgment in the tone of how she said my name. Tsk, tsk. Ever benevolent, I delineate my thought process for her: “Someone needed a place to stay today, but I had no guest bed, and therefore I was robbed of a charitable opportunity.”
A low, pondering sound escapes my friend as she perches herself on the floor beside my desk. “If you get one to use as a guest bed, I can also get one for my room, and then we can have sleepovers with fewer fights.”
“Spoken like you aren’t the problem,” I note.
The girl sleeps like a koala. Sharing her bed is a fight for my life.
Proceeding to pretend she isn’t the problem, she smiles wide. “These are really pretty. I fully support you purchasing one on my behalf, to test before I get my own. Probablythatone.” She points at the prettiest one there is—all shiny dark brown wood, lacy pink accents, and ivory padding.
“Excellent.” I add it to my cart, check out, and hope my prince story really is five hundred pages long, because I’ll need about that much time between this book and the next to save up for the cover after this—highly necessary—expense.
Turning to my office full of cramped bookshelves, I peer over my agape friend’s head and begin rearranging the furniture in my brain. “It makes the most sense to have my guest bed in here, doesn’t it?” That means quite a bit of relocating.
“You just…actually…bought a coffin…”
“No, I didn’t.Technically, it was labeled as a casket.” I should look up the definitions and determine the differences, considering I’m about to own one. “And you fully supported it.” I, for one, am very content in my purchase. “Would you like to help me move furniture to make room for my new guest bed?”
“Your new guest bed,” she hedges. “The casket?”
I meet her eyes. “Why, yes. What other guest bed might you perceive is soon to be in transit?”
With a subdued sigh, my lovely friend rises, smoothes the pleats of her skirt, and turns toward my overflowing bookshelves. “Oh boy,” she drones, “manual labor.”
“Must make you long for the coal mines,” I croon.
Tossing her head, she crosses her arms. “I shan’t assist unless you make the regal prince in my new story tall, dark, and grumpy.”
“Dark…as in…personality?”
“Dark as inbrunette.”
