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Because the man I was two weeks ago would be worried about the projects I’ve left behind. Taylor Brooks has a new release on Tuesday, and the reviews should be coming in for us to use in marketing. But… I just don’t care. I am not that man. I am a man that uses a Mr. Coffee today. “Fuck it,” I whisper.
“Fuck what?” Addison says from down the hall.
I turn to her and can’t help but smile. She’s wearing a long t-shirt with some kind of band logo on it. It hangs to just above her knees and looks like a bag with how oversized it is.
But for some reason, she looks more beautiful than any woman I’ve ever seen. In the dim light of a shabby apartment, she seems to glow. Maybe it has something to do with how much we’ve connected over the past week.
Or maybe she’s just fucking beautiful.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking about work stuff.”
She chuckles as she walks down the hallway. “Did you have nightmares about editing romance? Scared of the steamy scenes?”
“Actually, yes. They were terrifying. Completely vanilla and far too short for my liking.”
She blinks as she gets to the table. I’m not totally sure why I said that, but as she raises an eyebrow at me and smirks a little, I’m glad I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Who would have thought that Phillip Loughton, first of his name and Prince of Publishing, has a bit of kink hidden under that cold exterior?”
Maybe seducing Addison will be easier than I expected… “
“I made a pot of coffee,” I say, changing the subject. I may want to turn this into something more than being roommates, but I’m not nearly awake enough for this banter. It’s not a simple thing to flirt without going too far. Addison’s couch was far nicer than the tables in that storage room, and I’d prefer that she didn’t kick me out.
Addison just grins and walks into the kitchen. My eyes immediately go to her ass, which is the only real discernible shape under the sleep shirt. Round and perky, I’d love to pull that shirt up and…
Stop that, damn you. There’s flirting, and there’s being an idiot.
I force my eyes away from her ass to see what she’s doing. She stands on her tiptoes to pull two mugs out of the cabinet, her calves tightening, and she glances over at me. “How do you take your coffee?” she asks before rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Black.” God, it’s hard not to stare as she reaches forward to grab a ceramic jar with a weird purple pineapple on top.
“Disgusting,” she says. “But then again, you think chicken and gravy is better than Michelin star chef’s food, so your taste buds are obviously in question.”
She puts two spoonfuls of sugar into one mug and frowns as she picks up the coffeepot. When she pours the coffee, it… doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.
Huge chunks of what can only be described as black mud slide out of the pot and into the mug, splashing coffee all over the place, including on Addison. “What the hell?” she exclaims, righting the coffeepot and putting it back. She picks up the mug and looks inside it.
“How many scoops of coffee did you put in there?” she asks with a very confused look on her face.
“Scoops? I just filled that compartment up. Like when you make espresso. I guess that’s not how you do it?”
She chuckles. “No. Definitely not,” she says as she pulls the compartment out. Then her eyes get even wider, and she lets out a laugh. “You didn’t even put a filter in, Phillip. No wonder it’s mud.”
“A filter?”
“Come here. Yesterday, I taught you how to shop at a thrift store. Now I’m going to teach you to make coffee because an adult cannot adult without coffee. It’s a law.”
I stand up, and part of me is tempted to be frustrated. Addison is just laughing about it, though. It’s in direct opposition to the way my father taught me. There was never anything funny when I made a mistake, even the first time that I did something. It was always anger and frustration.
Addison dumps the coffee pot into the sink, and it’s just full of coffee grounds. Completely undrinkable. “Alright. I’m just going to walk you through it, step-by-step. First, you rinse the pot. Then you fill it up.”
I watch as she goes through each of the steps, all of them very different from what I’d done. I memorize them. My childhood may not have held a lot of laughter, but I did learn how to learn. It’s been a very, very long time since I had to be told something twice.
She pushes the brew button and grins at me. “Thank you for trying. I’m kind of particular about my morning coffee, though, so you might just want to let me make it.”
I nod to her, but I know that tomorrow I’ll be making another pot of coffee, and it’ll be exactly how she did it today. She rinses the mug out, and I grab the roll of paper towels to clean up the mess.
“What’s your plan for the day?” I ask when we sit back down at the table.
