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Blinking at the table in front of her, she realized there was indeed both a glass of water and a banana sitting in front of her. The water was cool, not cold, and it felt wonderful. She had only meant to take a sip, but she found herself gulping it down and by the time she lowered the glass it was half gone.
“Good girl.”
Maria looked up to find Rick watching her from his position at the stove, an approving look on his face. She wrinkled her nose at him, even though just hearing him say that made a strange little tingle of happiness go through her. This definitely wasn’t a sexual situation, so she shouldn’t like that, should she? Having him take care of her felt really nice, even though he wasn’t supposed to be bossy outside of the bedroom.
Deciding to ignore him for now, because she could really only concentrate on one thing at a time at the moment anyway, she peeled the banana and took a bite. Ugh. Bananas weren’t her favorite anyway, and right now her stomach was even less of a fan. But she chewed and swallowed the one bite while she watched Rick. Definitely a view worth watching. Even though he was shirtless, he didn’t seem to get a single spatter of food or grease on him. She was envious; she always wore an apron when she was cooking bacon.
He was very purposeful, no motion wasted, as he finished up the eggs and put the bacon on a paper towel to soak up some of the grease. There was a pretty large pile of it already.
“Why don’t you just microwave the bacon?” she asked. Even though it was kind of fun to watch him take each piece from the sizzling pan and add it to the pile, she realized he must have done at least three separate shifts of bacon to get the pile that large.
“I can control how crispy it gets more easily if it’s in the pan,” Rick replied, setting the last slice down just as the toast popped up out of the toaster. “I’m picky about my bacon.” He winked at her as she fell silent again, just enjoying watching him plate the eggs, bacon, and toast.
The plate he set in front of her had way too much food on it, but she didn’t say anything for now. She’d just eat what she could. Rick pulled butter and jelly out of the fridge for the toast and set it down between them, sliding into his own chair.
“So,” he said, picking up his fork and scooping up some eggs. “How was your night last night?”
The twinkle in his blue eyes made her want to stab him with her fork. Instead she just set the utensil down and picked up a piece of bacon. Much less dangerous.
“What I remember was fun.” She eyed him. “Hopefully not too embarrassing. What happened to Lexie and Angel?”
“Patrick and Adam picked them up. You don’t remember?”
“Bits and pieces.” Although now that he’d told her, she felt like she remembered a little more, as if he’d added some puzzle pieces to her memory and the picture was becoming clearer.
This time Rick’s smile was slow, amused, spreading across his face until the corners of his eye crinkled. “Well, you may or may not remember, but I promised we would talk this morning. You seemed pretty mad we didn’t talk yesterday. Which, I know was my fault. On Thursday, after the scene, I felt like you shut me out and were pushing me off. I thought the scene had gone really well and when you didn’t even want to talk to me afterwards... well I thought that pretty much said it all.”
“Oh I’m sorry...” Maria dropped the piece of bacon as guilt sparked. She’d been pretty mad yesterday that he’d made assumptions, but when he put it like that, she could see where he was coming from. If she’d been the one who’d immediately said ‘let’s get together again’ and he’d told her they should wait until the next day to talk about it, she probably would have felt pretty rejected and thought a lot of the same things. “I didn’t even think. I wasn’t even capable of thinking at that point... I was just so overwhelmed by everything and I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly and I just didn’t want to make any decisions or anything while I was all spacy in my head. I wish you’d said something. I wish I’d said something.”
“It was both our faults,” Rick said, reaching over to hold her hand. His fingers curled around hers, strong and comforting. Even more comforting was how easily he took his portion of the blame. There were a lot of people out there, of both genders, who were quick to assign blame without acknowledging their own part in a misunderstanding. Maria had been quick to see where she’d gone wrong, but she did feel better knowing Rick felt like there were things he could have done to prevent the misunderstanding too. His smile turned rueful. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions and you should have been just a bit more forthcoming about where you were at post-scene. After all that talk about communication, we both kind of fell apart on that one. I wish I’d just let you talk yesterday morning, I had a really shit day thinking you just wanted to be friends. Which I was down with, it just hurt, and I needed some space to recover.”
“I definitely don’t want to just be friends,” she said shyly, squeezing his hand. “I had a shitty day yesterday too, but the night before was... I don’t even have words.”
Rick’s eyes sparkled at her as he gave her hand another squeeze before pushing it back towards her. “I know what you mean. Now eat your breakfast. You need something in your stomach.”
“Bossy,” she murmured, but there was no heat in her voice. Truthfully, she kind of liked how bossy he was, because right now it was making her feel cared about. Taken care of.
In the past when she’d gotten drunk, she’d pretty much always had to take care of herself. Unless she was going through a break-up or some kind of personal trauma, and then of course her sisters were there for her, but in the mornings she had always been the one fighting through her hangover to make sure everyone else was fed, hydrated and recovering. That had always been her job as eldest. Having someone else taking care of her felt weird but also really nice.
She told Rick some of what she and the other girls had talked about, nothing private of course, and then he told her more about all of his friends, in between making sure that she was eating and finally supplying her with coffee. Afterwards, he let her go upstairs to change while he did the dishes, although he made her promise to come right back downstairs once she was done so they could talk some more.
They’d gotten the whole misunderstanding and apologies out of the way quickly enough, but apparently Rick wanted to talk about the scene and what she’d liked, didn’t like. He’d tried to start the conversation with her right then, but she’d asked for time to take a shower and change so she could feel more like herself before having to face that kind of conversation, and he’d relented.
“Oh noooo...” She groaned when she went to her bathroom and got a good look at herself. Going to bed in her make-up, even though she didn’t wear that much to work, had given her raccoon eyes. And her hair looked freaking awful, even if the bun was supposed to look messy. It was like a bush on top of her head, one that was in desperate need of a bird to nest in it.
First things first. Her bladder was uncomfortably full, and she needed to brush her teeth so she could return to some sense of normalcy. Then came the hot shower, which helped to wake her up even more, even soothing some of the aches in her body.
By the time she was back at Rick’s door, in fresh clothing (although still work clothes since she only had about an hour before she had to head over to the restaurant), with her curls tamed and her face scrubbed, she felt like a new person. Still an achy, slightly nauseous person, but a new person.
“Hey beautiful,” Rick said, drawing her in through the door and brushing a swift kiss over her lips. “Welcome back.” Even though she wanted to just press herself against him and get to the fun stuff, Maria made herself move past him into the apartment.
Standing awkwardly, not sure of where to go, she smiled as Rick took her by the arm and led her over to the couch. When he sat down, he pulled her down with him, practically on his lap. Maria tried to squirm away. “I thought we were going to talk.”
“No reason why we can’t cuddle while we talk.”
Sure there was; because she couldn’t think straight when she was pressed up against him and thinking about all the amazing things he’d done to her body and how hot and sexy he was. And she did need to think straight, because this was a relationship unlike any she’d ever been in—or ever known anyone else to be in—and she wanted to be able to use her head. Because right now, she wasn’t entirely sure whether her heart or her head was in charge. She had a feeling her libido was running the show with her heart sitting in as V.P. It would be so easy to be overwhelmed by hot sex and Rick’s caring, dominant nature. Maria was a little worried it would be too easy, and she didn’t want to lose herself.
Still, she could compromise. She slid her legs over his lap while she turned to face him, pulling her upper body away. At first he looked surprised, but then he grinned and rested his hands on her legs, rubbing her thigh through the thin material of her summer pants.
