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“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, patting her hand, coming away with some kind of sticky substance.
“Thank God you’re here. I thought I was going to die down here with the Queen of the Damned.”
At the sound of the familiar voice, I pulled out of her hold and faced the woman. “Steak girl?”
“Excuse me?”
“The woman at the store buying the steaks. That was you.”
Her face brightened immediately and she flung herself around me again. “Steak boy! Oh my gosh! This is so…”
“Serendipitous?” I laughed.
“It’s really not,” the woman in black said with a sigh. “You live in the same town and go to the same grocery store. If anything, it’s more of a statistical question. And the odds of running into each other are much higher than the odds of this house collapsing on us during a tornado, which would have been such a fatalistic way to go.” She sighed heavily again, then went back to ignoring us.
Getting back to the point of being down here, I got down to business. “Um…are you hurt? What are you wearing?”
She immediately wrapped her arms around her body, her face flaming bright red. “God, this is so mortifying.”
“It’s a good look on you,” I grinned, feeling a little flirtatious.
She punched me in the arm, a small smile filling her face. “You’re just saying that because I’m down here in a dark hole wrapped in a shower curtain. But thank you for making me feel better.”
I wasn’t making her feel better. Seriously, she looked hot with that curtain tucked into her breasts, accentuating the firm, rounded sculpture of her chest.
Did I really just think of her breasts as a sculpture?
Damn, I needed to have my head checked. I snuck one last peek as she climbed down from the couch. She was trying her best to be modest, but didn’t realize that with the way the curtain was wrapped around her, it was revealing most of the front of her. I’d keep that little nugget to myself. At least until it was her turn to go up and someone else might see everything I was.
I was not supposed to be ogling the woman. I was supposed to be getting her out of the house before it collapsed on her.
“Are you ready?” Brock shouted.
“Uh…just a minute!”
“I’m going to get your friend out and then come back for you.”
She nodded, looking over at her friend. “Don’t worry. She’s not actually suicidal,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I still think it’s best to…” I jerked my head at the hole, then walked over to the friend. “Hey there,” I said, bending over. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
She kept a blank stare on her face. “I’m not a kid. I actually have a degree in human psychology.”
“And…you use it well,” I nodded.
“Do you have any idea what the human brain is capable of? In such circumstances, the mind can prevent you from dealing with a trauma so terrible that a person may never recall the events that occurred.”
“Is…that what you’re doing now?” I questioned.
“I’m not traumatized.”
“Of course,” I muttered, turning away from her. She was a special one. I hooked her up, then gave Brock a thumb’s up. I was about to go through the steps of what she needed to do, when she stared vacantly at me, causing a shiver to run through my body.
I stepped back and let the crazy woman do her thing. It was better this way. It gave me more time to spend with the woman I had been fantasizing about since I met her in the grocery store. And based on the fact that she was down here with this crazy woman, her boyfriend hadn’t shown up.
I grinned to myself in delight. To the victor the spoils.
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