Page 15 of A Daddy for Christmas 3: Nova
I ended the sentence with a whine after over an hour of staring at the two outfits hanging in my closet, hanging from the shower rod in the bathroom, and then laid out at the foot of my bed, all so I could look at them from different angles while I tried to make the most momentous decision of my vacation so far.
“Relax, goddess; you can be such a child sometimes,” she grumbled. “You dress yourself every morning; what’s the big deal tonight?”
“I like this guy.”
“No shit, you’ve seen each other every day since you arrived. If I didn’t know any better, I’d accuse you of having planned this whole trip as a means of having a rendezvous with your hot surfer daddy, but you’d never have been able to keep something like that to yourself.”
“I never said he was a Daddy; he doesn’t really give off the vibe, which is a shame.”
“Oh, you mean the swaggering, loud talking, exaggerated self-importance of the men you tend to gravitate towards? Yeah, that really screams Daddy to me,” she said as she rolled her eyes.
“Hey, to be fair, they’re the ones hitting on me,” I reminded her. “You’re there; you see how it all goes down. I’m just standing around minding my business, and poof, here comes an asshole. I swear they manifest in shadowy corners of the club, marinate themselves in the smoke out back, then shoulder their way through the club reeking of skunk weed and cheap cologne to push up all over me.”
“You do have a way of attracting a particular type.”
“No shit, but Robbie is seriously different,” I explained. “I was at his place until almost one in the morning, and the most he did was slide an arm around me and tug me into a side hug. I really wanted him to kiss me, but when I tipped my head backto gaze up at him, he just smiled and tugged me a closer until we were swaying to the beat of the rain and the music drifting out of the kitchen.”
“Awe, now that’s sweet,” she said as she stroked Squit, whose contented purrs rumbled through my phone speaker. “Kisses are nice, but sometimes the anticipation of the first one is well worth the wait.”
“Yes, but in this case I just have seventeen days to make it happen, and I really want it to happen, so what do you think? Is it the white or the black tonight?”
“I need to see the white pants on you first,” she said. “I already know what the black and gold outfit looks like on you, and it’s stunning, especially when you wear your hair loose, so I need to see if the white and blue looks just as nice.”
“I’m not going for nice tonight,” I grumbled even as I left my phone propped against the pillow so I could go change. “I’m going for grind all over me, then take me somewhere and kiss me breathless.”
“So, you’re going for seduction,” she said, her voice growing fainter as I gathered up my clothes. “Got it.”
“Of course I’m going for seduction,” I sputtered as I headed for the bathroom. “Robbie is like a walking advertisement for a beach vacation, and I’d like to lick every sea salt-coated inch of him.”
“O-kay then,” she said, her giggles drifting across the room.
The last thing I heard before I closed the bathroom door was Megan telling my fur babies that their daddy had found his inner man whore.
Honestly, there had been no reason for me to shut the door when she was a whole goddamn ocean away. I felt a bit foolish for doing it as I stripped off the t-shirt and sleep pants I’d been lounging around in since stepping out of the shower that morning. As they had earlier, those white pants shimmeredwhenever they moved beneath the light, but never more so than after I’d tugged them over my hips, zipped them, and stood preening in front of the mirror.
They went on like butter, hugged like they’d been painted on my skin, and moved like it too, with no tightness or constriction in any way, even when I dropped into a squat or kicked one leg up like I was about to hook it around his waist and do a whole lot of rocking and rubbing. In contrast, the shirt was loose across the shoulders and down my torso but not so much that I couldn’t make it ripple and wave when I swiveled and rocked my hips. The more I admired myself in the glass, the more convinced I became that this outfit, rather than the black, would stand out more beneath the lights in the club, but Megan truly had more experience with club life than I did, so I’d bow to her expertise if she told me to wear the black one.
I pulled my hair from the messy bun I’d tied it back in after I’d washed it and headed back into the room, knowing the moment I came into view of the screen because she gasped and let out a wolf whistle that started Pesto right out of her lap. I couldn’t see where he landed, but I was certain he was giving her the side-eye.
“Turn around and shake that rear,” little Miss Pushy Pants demanded, murmuring and making appreciative sounds when I did. “Oh yeah, that’s the outfit for tonight, hands down; the black one would just get lost in the light and shadows, but that one is going to stand out wherever the slightest bit of light hits. It looks comfy too; holy shit, I love the way it fits on you. Those pants are to die for; I can’t believe you just walked into some random store and found them. We’d have had to hit half of the boutiques in downtown Minneapolis just to find a pair like that.”
“Then I will stand here and be eternally grateful that we don’t have to trek around town because every time we do, I windup with sore feet, a smoking wallet, and a traumatized bank account.”
Her giggles filled the room, while I headed back to the bathroom to change and hang up my clothes so they didn’t get wrinkled before I had the chance to show them off tonight. I returned to flop on the bed in my lounge-around clothes, just in time to see a paw reaching for the screen, little pink toe beans tapping it as Bobby mewed.
“I know, buddy. I’m sorry I can’t reach through the phone and pet you right now. I’d tickle those little toe beans and boop that adorable snoot, yes I would,” I cooed to him before turning my attention back to Megan. “Is everyone eating okay? I remembered to write down that Bobbie won’t touch the shredded stuff and absolutely has to have the pate, right?”
“You did. You even highlighted it in yellow,” she reminded me. “Along with all their favorite hiding places in case I couldn’t find one, which hasn’t happened yet. They are either on the couch or curled up in the easy chair when I arrive, at which point they all jump down and start circling me like sharks, meowing up a storm like they don’t have a perpetually renewing feed station that keeps them in kibble all day long. Speaking of which, one of the little turkeys managed to unplug it the other day, and I shit you not, they were all sitting in the kitchen, staring at the one tiny spot of plastic that they could see in the bottom of the bowl, like it had personally offended them. Then they had the nerve to glare at me like I was the one who unplugged it.”
The way she told the story allowed me to picture the scene she’d walked into, one I knew well, as it wasn’t the first time one of them had managed to unplug the machine. No matter how far back I pushed the dispenser, no matter how I tried to arrange the cords, even zip-tying the slack so it wasn’t just lying on the floor, still, they managed to unplug the damned thing. And ofcourse, like every other feline I knew, seeing the bottom of the bowl meant they immediately started to worry about imminent starvation and acted like absolute drama queens. It was both funny and utterly ridiculous, and one of a million reasons I loved the damp-nosed bed hogs.
Though the whole cold nose on the back of my neck in the middle of the night thing was not fun, let me tell you, especially when it was accompanied by someone’s tail smacking me across the face while another lay on the pillow over my head, breathing foul tuna breath across my cheek. I could do without that part or opening my eyes in the morning to see a furry butthole right in front of my face.
“You’ve seen the looks they give me when I’m late with the wet food,” I reminded her. “I’m surprised I haven’t been shanked in my sleep by one of their sharp-ass claws.”
“Are you forgetting the morning you woke up with claw marks on your ass?” she asked.
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”