“I don’t have to marry you now, do I?” I set two cups of tea down on the kitchen table.
“Marry me? Why would you have to marry me?”
“Fuck if I know.” I pushed the hair off my face and sat down. I’d been meaning to get a haircut for the better part of a month, but never seemed to get around to it. Bridget sat across from me. “I thought maybe it was an American tradition or something. The last three women I saw naked twice seemed to think we were getting married.”
“Awww…poor baby. What a terrible problem to have. The women who put out for you think you’re such a Godsend that they want more of you.”
I smirked. “I never thought of it that way. I thought they were just a bit loony. But you’re right. It’s probably because I’m so blessed…you know…in the lower anatomy, that they want to anchor their loose chain.”
Bridget’s skin turned pink. I liked screwing with her. It was going to be fun living here. “I’m just messing with you, luv, relax. I like watching your cheeks change color when you’re embarrassed.” I winked. “Both cheeks.”
She shook her head. “I think we need to set some ground rules.”
I sipped my tea. “Alright. I like rules. Without them, breaking them isn’t nearly as much fun.”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay, then. Lay ‘em on me. What are the flat rules, Ms. V.?”
“Well, first off, you can’t talk like that.”
“Like this? I’m working on losing the accent, but I don’t think I’ll master calling the trash gah-bidge or going to the ba ba for a trim anytime soon.”
Bridget laughed. “I didn’t mean you had to lose the accent, I meant you can’t use bad words.”
My brow furrowed. “What bad words did I say?”
“You said ‘fuck if I know,’ and you also talked about your lower anatomy and seeing my ass. Those are all no-nos.”
“No-nos?” I arched a brow. She was really damn cute.
“Sorry. I have an eight year old and worked in the pediatric ward for years before moving to the ER. Force of habit.”
I’d forgotten that Calliope had said she had a kid. She didn’t look old enough for one. “How old are you?”
“That’s not a proper thing to ask a woman, you know.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “If I remember correctly, you asked me how old I was within thirty seconds of walking into the examining room a few months back.”
“You have a very good memory, don’t you?”
“Yep. It’s been three months, and I could have identified your arse out of a lineup.”
She blushed again. I could tell she was flustered. “Back to the rules. You can’t say ‘arse’, either. No curse words, or you’ll have to put money in the swear jar.”
“The what?”
She pointed her eyes to the kitchen counter. Sure enough, there were two mason jars in the corner. Each had a piece of masking tape across it with what looked like a child’s handwriting. The one labeled Mom was filled half way with coins. The one labeled Brendan had one lone, shiny copper penny. Bridget sighed. “It was my son, Brendan’s, idea. He’d left his bike out at the curb again even though I’d told him to bring it in for the hundredth time. It was stolen, and I refused to buy him a new bike for no reason. I’d figured he’d get one for his birthday or Christmas, and by then maybe he’d learn his lesson. But he’s a resourceful boy. A day or two later, I was unloading the dishwasher and didn’t realize a glass had broken until after I’d sliced my finger open. I yelled, “shit,” and after the bleeding stopped, Brendan came up with the swear jar idea. He’d recently taken a liking to the word damn, and I’d been on him about it. If my jar is filled to the top first, I have to buy him a new bike. If his jar is filled to the top first, he has to get a haircut.”
“You don’t like his hair?”
“He’s going through this phase where he wants to grow it long. I think one of the girls at school told him she liked it that way, and now he won’t even agree to get a trim.”
I wiggled my brows and ran my fingers through my longish hair. “That’s how it all starts. He’ll have a selection of gel in no time.”
Bridget shook her head at me and sipped her tea. “Great.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you still haven’t answered my question.”
“What question?”
“How old are you?”
“I thought we decided a gentleman didn’t ask a woman’s age.”
“Well, there’s your first problem. You shouldn’t have assumed I was a gentleman.”
She laughed. “I’m thirty-three.”
“You don’t look a day over thirty-two-and-a-half.”
“Gee, thanks.”
I caught the time on my watch. I was enjoying my chat with Bridget, but I was going to be late to work if I didn’t get myself out of here in the next five minutes. Finishing off the rest of my tea, I stood and placed my mug in the sink. “I have to get to the hospital. What are the rest of the rules?”
“Oh. Let’s see…” she tapped her pointer finger to her lip a few times. “Off the top of my head: Clean up your own mess in the kitchen. Don’t leave dishes in the sink—either wash them or load them into the dishwasher, and even though you have your own bathroom, if you use the one off the kitchen while you’re in here, put the seat down when you’re done.”
“Got it. Is that it?”
“Yes. For now. Although I reserve the right to add more at a later date.”
I contained my smile. “Of course you do.”
“Are you working a twenty-four-hour shift?”
I nodded. “Four twenty-fours this week.”
“I don’t know how you guys do it.”
“You get used to lack of sleep.”
“I suppose. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other from now on. I’m working a twelve-hour shift tomorrow, too.”
“You’re a lucky woman. And I’m not referring to the twelve-hour shift.”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Goodbye, Simon.”
“You have a good night. And try not to pass out anymore.” I was halfway out the door when a thought dawned on me. Turning back, I asked, “Is it body temperature or external temperature that makes you pass out?”
“Both, I guess. It’s usually the external temperature that makes my body temperature rise and then it hits me all at once.”
“So do you ever pass out while shagging?”
“Excuse me?”
I honestly thought she didn’t understand the term. “Shagging…you know…fucking.”
“I know what the term means. And even though it’s none of your business, no, I’ve never passed out while having sex.”
I dug into my pocket and pulled out a single. Holding it up, I walked over to the counter where the swear jars were and deposited the dollar into one.
“What’s that for?”
“Consider it a credit. You’re so fucking adorable the way your skin pinks up when I say fucking, I’m definitely going to say it again.”
Why didn’t I visit my BFF more often? During my lunch break the next day, I took a walk over to Calliope’s yoga studio, which was only a few blocks from the new hospital I worked in for my final rotation. I’d picked up a smoothie before heading over and sat in the back of the class watching a room full of women in tight yoga pants bend over. She smiled and motioned that she’d be a few more minutes, but I was pretty damn content where I was. I got to sit and give my dogs a rest and take in the view.
I mentally graded the rows of arses while I sucked on my strawberry banana smoothie with a double shot of energy boost enhancer. It was like the Olympics, only a fuck of a lot better than synchronized swimming. I liked a full derriere. From the right, I started my grading in the back row. There was a skinny seven with a nice shape, followed by a buxom eight in a pair of pink trainers, and a five who definitely needed to eat a little more pizza. When I got to the fourth rear end, I gave myself a brain freeze sucking on the straw while staring—now that’s a nice plump ten. Damn. I was in the wrong line of work.
Calliope finished up her class, hit some stupid gong, and walked to me wiping her forehead. “You’re such a pig, you know that?”
“What? I came to visit my BFF.”
“You looked like you were judging an ass contest the way you were staring.”
I smirked. “Number four, purple Nike leggings. She won. I’m going to give her the gold medal when she comes out from the locker room.”
Calliope elbowed me in the ribs. “Help me clean up while we talk. I have another class in fifteen minutes and need to collect all the balance blocks.”
I picked up a total of three of the silly styrofoam blocks and used those to juggle while she cleaned up the rest.
“So, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Tell me about this woman, Bridget, I’m living with.”
She held up her hands. “Oh no. You can’t do that to Bridget.”
“Do what?”
“Remember what happened with Suzie McInerney, when we were fifteen? I don’t have a lot of friends here in the states yet. Bridget’s a good friend. You can’t screw her over.”
Suzie McInerney. Now that was a name I hadn’t heard in a long, long time. She’d been our mutual friend before the incident. Suzie was a year older and had the most fantastic set of tits I’d ever seen. One night when we were all hanging out in my parents’ basement, Calliope fell asleep early. Suzie let me feel her up. It was my first time copping a boob.
The following week, the same thing happened. Only it was Hazel Larson who let me feel hers while Calliope was snoring. Hers weren’t half as nice as Suzie’s, but Hazel let me feel them under the shirt, unlike Suzie. So, when Hazel told me that if I was her boyfriend, she might consider letting me touch her in other places, I didn’t think twice about asking her out. But apparently I should have. Because Suzie assumed I was already her boyfriend just because she let me play with her boobs over her shirt for twenty seconds. Needless to say, when Suzie found out I was going out with Hazel, she never spoke to me or Calliope again. They’d blamed Calliope since I was the BFF she’d always have hanging around whenever she hung out with her girlfriends. Women. I still didn’t understand them.
“I’m not planning on copping a feel. Bridget’s cute and all, but she’s got a kid—you know me and kids.” I wasn’t planning on having my own, so dating someone with a rugrat was definitely not on my agenda, either.
She looked at me suspect. “That’s true…I guess. What did you want to know about Bridget, anyway?”
“I don’t know. For starters, what happened to her husband?”
Sadness crossed over Calliope’s face. “She hadn’t started coming to yoga yet, so we weren’t friends when it happened. But she told me about it. Sounded horrible. She was down in Florida with her son visiting her mother when she got a call that he’d been in a terrible car accident. He died before she even landed back in Providence.” Calliope shook her head. “He was only thirty. They were college sweethearts.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Awful.”
I scratched my chin. “I wonder if that was the trip she got the knickers on.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Other than that. There’s not much to tell. She’s devoted to her son, Brendan. He’s a sweet, little kid who’s really good at baseball. Works at the hospital, and picks up as much overtime as she can, but money’s tight living on only one salary. Her husband didn’t have much life insurance.”
When her next class started to trickle in, it was time for me to get back to the hospital anyway. I leaned down and kissed my friend’s cheek. “I’ll be back next week—same time, same ass. I mean class.”