A Pint of Problems
CHAPTER ONE
There were too few perfect legs in the galaxy, too few by
far and the set standing in front of him attached to the red hair staring down
at him knew she was one of the chosen.
She worked at it.
“Take a picture,” she smirked.
“You burned all the pictures,” Jake rolled over on his back
and blinked the sleep out of his eyes.
He was on the porch again.
At least this time, his hand was on the door. He tilted his head to one side and groaned at
the crack of pain that tried to split his skull apart.
“Hair of the dog?” Gretchen asked.
He blinked open again and spied his truck. It was parked in the yard, rear wheels on the
gravel driveway. The driver’s side door
was open and the lights were still on, though he couldn’t tell if they were dim
because the battery was failing or it was the morning sun that made them look
so pale.
“Ah,” he answered.
“You got anything in the kitchen?”
“Ah,” he repeated.
“Of course you do,” she stepped over him and opened the
door.
The legs flashed over him, a swirl of skirt fabric that
twirled around him a dizzy whirl of flesh and color and hope for what was
hidden underneath.
Then they were gone and he hear the soles of her flats
clacking on the hardwood.
“When’s the last time you cleaned?” she called.
“Maid’s day off,” he smacked the sandpaper taste of his
tongue against his dry lips.
Last night hadn’t felt rough, not at the time at least.
Jake pushed himself up and leaned against the slat siding of
his house.
It was an exercise in patience to get his eyes working
right. He blinked one open and closed until the world beyond the drive started
to come into focus, then switched to the second eye to make it right too.
Gretchen returned and handed him a coffee cup full of
lukewarm liquid.
“I didn’t want for it to finish brewing,” she told him.
He took a sip of the bitter liquid and grimaced.
At least it made the sandpaper go away.
“What are you doing here?” he asked after a moment.
The coffee gurgled in his stomach and set off a cascade of
growls and roars.
He wondered if he ate last night.
Hell, he couldn’t remember eating yesterday.
“Food in the fridge?” she asked and went back in without
waiting for an answer.
Jake took a second sip of coffee and started the process.
He called it a process, a routine really, developed after
many nights like last night.
And there were many nights much like last night.
He flexed and twisted foot, ankle, knee on one leg and
switched to the next.
Then his hands, the free one first to check on fingers,
wrist, elbow and shoulder before he held the coffee cup in the opposite hand to
check that arm.
All was good.
He finished with a roll of his neck, slow to keep the dull
throb of his headache from pounding through his gritty eyeballs or cracking the
back of his head in half.
No blood anywhere and he hadn’t pissed himself when he
passed out on the porch.
There were grass stains on his palms and knees.
He assumed he crawled from the truck. Or maybe he bent over
to chuck up into the bushes next to the walkway.
Maybe both.
Gretchen did what she did in the kitchen.
He could hear the rattle of a pan on the iron rings of the
stove, the clink and clatter of dishes and cups.
The smell of bacon wafted through the screen and he wondered
when he bought bacon.
The smell tantalized him, and his stomach knotted with the
thought of what was to come.
Jake pushed himself up the wall and was only half-surprised
he could stand up somewhat straight.
“Almost ready,” Gretchen called out to him.
He hated how familiar it felt, how right.
She didn’t belong there, didn’t need to be in his kitchen
cooking him breakfast, just being there.
The domesticity of it pissed him off, the way she breezed in
just as easy as she left him before.
Jake took a deep breath and reached for the handle on the
screen.
“Coming,” he said and had to clear the frog in his throat.
Damn her, he cursed himself. And damn him too for letting
her make him feel this way.
Again.
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