He held my eyes, squeezed my arm, smiled at me then let me go, carefully took his phone from my hand and walked toward the back and his office.
I turned and watched him go.
Then I turned back to see both Roberta and LaTanya staring at me.
That was when I bit my lip.
And when I bit my lip, LaTanya looked down at my mouth then up into my eyes then ordered, “Right, the juicy stuff first and that’s what’s goin’ on with you and Mitch. Then we’ll get to the Roller Derby Rejects. Now, sock it to me.”
Roller Derby Rejects.
That was funny.
And what was funnier, but not in a humorous way, was that both Roberta and LaTanya were not looking at me like I was a Roller Derby Reject or worse, stunned, shocked and disgusted at learning from whose loins I’d sprung. They were looking curious (very) and, well, like Roberta and LaTanya.
Not only that, Mr. Pierson didn’t either. He just told me he and Mitch had it sorted in a way it sounded like he was honored to be in on Operation Take out the Trash.
And so I took in another steadying breath, looked at two women who meant the world to me and my mouth made another decision before my mind caught up.
“Mitch is into me, I’m into him and I think I was switched at birth,” I announced, Roberta and LaTanya both stared at me for several seconds then they both burst out laughing.
And when they were done, I shared.
That’s right, I shared.
Some of it I had to share between dealing with customers but I shared it.
All of it.
And when I was done, they no longer looked curious but they still just looked like Roberta and LaTanya.
Two women who meant the world to me.
Chapter Sixteen
My Mara Likes Candles
Mitch and I didn’t come up with different names for Operation Take out the Trash over chili, cornbread and cupcakes seeing as Mitch was helping Billy with his homework and Billie was inexplicably and unusually grumpy. This took all my attention between bites of delicious chili, cornbread and, finally, cupcake as she grumbled, griped, moaned and misbehaved.
Mitch made good chili, by the way. There were four different kinds of beans; it was spicy, meaty and flavorful but not too hot and he topped it with grated cheese that was all melty. The cornbread was awesome. And cupcakes from Tessa’s Bakery never disappointed partly because the cake was rich and moist but mostly because she always topped them with a mountainous swirl of frosting.
I decided it was Billie’s broken sleep last night that was making her grouchy and I was with her. I was tired too. Except I couldn’t be grouchy with a grouchy kid on my hands and Mitch close.
Finally, we got them ready for bed and in bed, something that was usually not a chore, they were good kids. Billy didn’t put up a fuss but Billie was whiney and recalcitrant and I was a lot more tired when I finally got her settled and, while I read to her, she dropped off, clutching her new teddy bear.
And it was after that I wandered back into Mitch’s living room to see him on the sectional, beer in hand, long legs stretched out, feet up on the huge ottoman, a baseball game on his flat screen but his neck was twisted and his eyes were on me over the back of the couch.
“She down?” he asked quietly and I was tired, worried about Billie, worried about everything else and hoping Billie got a good night’s sleep and still his question made my heart flutter.
It was simple but intimate. His concern for Billie mingled with concern for me wrapped around a familiar kind of question a father asks a mother, a husband asks a wife.
I liked it. The simplicity and intimacy of it was beautiful and it was more beautiful coming from a handsome man, a good man, a nice man who was sitting in his awesome sectional in his gorgeous living room with his eyes warm on me.
I thought all this.
But I said, “Yeah.”
Then, tired, worried, suddenly alone with Mitch, feeling weird about where I was, what I was doing and how quickly all of it happened, not to mention what Mitch had said to me that morning, I considered my options of what was next. And this was where I should sit on his sectional.
I decided the safest bet was as far away from him as possible so that was where I went. He was in the middle of one side of the sofa. I sat close to the armrest on the opposite side.
He watched me do this and his lips twitched but he didn’t move.
It wasn’t lost on me that the last time we had a moment of alone time in a living room while a baseball game was on TV, we’d ended up in a clinch. And I was tired but it was still early-ish. And lastly, going to bed meant going to his bed.
So I had to kill time and do it not ending up in a clinch.
To accomplish that, I blurted the first thing that came to mind, “You have good taste.”
“What?”
As I spoke my eyes were on the ottoman while I shifted to curl my bare feet under me and leaned against the armrest but when he asked his question, I looked at him.
“You have good taste,” I repeated and his brows went up in question so I haltingly explained, now feeling weirder, “You, um…dress really nice and your, uh…apartment is really nice too. I mean, uh…you have really nice furniture.”
To that comment he asked strangely, “You know Design Fusion?”
I tipped my head to the side and asked back, “The store in Cherry Creek North?”
“Yep,” he answered.
“Yes,” I answered.
“My sister, Penny, owns that store.”
Uh…wow.
I’d been to that store. The furniture in that store was unbelievable and the price tags on it were even more so.
“Wow,” I whispered and he grinned then flicked a hand out.
“This is her shit,” he told me.
“Pardon?”
“She furnished this place for me wholesale.”
At that, I blinked. “Your sister furnished your apartment?”
“Yep. She’s a nut. She decorates everything. The inside of her fridge is decorated.”
I blinked again. “The inside of her fridge is decorated?”
Mitch nodded, grinning.
“How do you decorate the inside of a fridge?” I asked, intrigued by this concept.
“She’s got decals on the sides of the fridge and fancy bowls she puts fancy shit in that isn’t food that sits on the shelves. Sometimes she even puts small vases with flowers in there.”
I didn’t know if that was weird or cool. I also didn’t share this indecision with Mitch.
Luckily, he kept talking. “When she redecorated her kids rooms three times in a year, her husband had enough, talked her into opening her own store so she could decorate other people’s houses and make money doin’ it instead of spendin’ all theirs doin’ it. So, when I moved in here, she took over and I let her because if I didn’t, she would anyway and if I fought it, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“So you had no say?” I asked, surprised, seeing as Mitch seemed like a man in command of everything and definitely his surroundings.
Mitch shook his head. “I told her it had to be comfortable and it had to look like a guy lived here and not a gay guy. She succeeded on the first; the second is up for debate.”
He stopped talking but his eyes didn’t leave me and I got the feeling he expected me to chime in with my opinion.
So I chimed in with my opinion and stated, “It’s, uh…not totally gay.”
He threw his head back and burst out laughing. I bit my lip. His laughter became chuckles, his chin dipped back down and he caught my eyes.