Page 22 of As a Last Resort

AUSTIN

Her text dinged as I pulled in from a midday run the next day. When I looked, the memory of her legs poking out from under a Scuttle’s Ferry T-shirt took over my brain.

SAM: Busy?

Heat raced down the back of my neck, even though the thermometer outside already read eighty-nine degrees.

I ignored it, telling myself I was putting a little distance between us.

It had been a long time since a woman had taken up so much real estate in my mind.

Her face seemed to be hovering over every single thing I looked at.

But when her name popped up on my phone as an actual call , I picked up.

People like Sam don’t call other people unless someone died or something was on fire.

“So, quick question for you.” Her voice was an octave higher than normal when I answered.

“Oh-oh, what happened?”

“Let’s just say, hypothetically speaking, a washing machine was producing a voluminous amount of foam and won’t stop.”

“Okay.”

“What would be something you could try to get said washing machine to stop decorating your floor with bubbles?”

“Did you turn it off?” I asked.

“Hypothetically speaking, yes.”

“And it’s still spinning?”

“Violently.”

I could hear a whirring sound in the background reminiscent of a tornado. “Can you get to the wall outlet to unplug it?”

“I tried and it’s really heavy. I don’t think this thing has been moved in about thirty years. It’s stuck to the floor.”

“I’ll be right over.” I didn’t think twice about it. Maybe seeing her would help kick her out of my mind. Like when you have a song stuck in your head all day, you’re supposed to listen to it and it works its way out of your system. Maybe I just needed to work her face out of my system.

I hung up and Patrick side-eyed me. “Not a peep out of you.”

“Knight in shining armor looks good on you!” he called out as I hopped off the boat.

“If I’m not back in thirty, run the two p.m. solo. You think you can handle that, Lightning Bolt?”

“It would be my pleasure, Capt’n.” He winked and bowed to me.

I sprinted down the dock and up the street to the Starfish. I could hear the howling from outside the front door. I turned the knob and it was locked.

“Sam?” I yelled as I pounded on the door. It sounded like someone with a jackhammer was right inside having a heyday. I looked down and tiny bubbles were oozing out under the door.

Uh-oh.

“Sam!” I yelled again.

“Coming!”

The door opened and her face filled with relief the moment she saw me.

Her hair was piled up on top of her head with little bubbles attached to it and her face was flushed.

The left side of her shirt and jeans were completely soaked and suctioned to her skin.

Jesus. So much for working her out of my system.

“Here, watch your step.”

“Why’s your door locked?”

“Because I want to keep the bad guys out. Obviously.”

“This is Florida. People don’t lock their doors here.” My attention was ripped from her as I looked to the ground, where the floor was completely covered in soapsuds three inches high. As I walked through the living room, it felt like little suckerfish popping up against my shin.

“Wow. You could have called me sooner.”

“I texted you.” She wiped her forehead, knocking loose a flurry of bubbles that started floating toward me. I held in a laugh. “Don’t give me that look. It happened really fast.”

The room was small so it didn’t take long to get to the back closet where the washer and dryer sounded like they were keeping a gremlin hostage.

I tried to pull the unit straight out but it wouldn’t budge.

I shimmied myself between it and the wall and pushed.

My feet skidded out but I caught myself.

“Oh no, is it slippery over there too?” she asked innocently, looking at me with her arms crossed and her hip jutted out to one side. Such a pain in the ass.

I was able to move it a few inches forward and reach behind to unplug it. The gremlin slowly quieted as I eased myself from the wall and turned toward her.

“See? Not that bad—”

A sound popped behind me and the machine started rocking back and forth.

My feet went flying out from under me and I landed flat on my butt, a snowstorm of bubbles floating up all around me, covering me as I landed.

I turned on all fours and scrambled to get back to the washer but my hands kept slipping out from under me, sending me face-first into the foam.

I managed to scoot a few inches, pulled myself up on the washer and unplugged the dryer too.

It slowly came to a halt with one last pop for good measure.

We both stood staring at it for a moment, waiting for a possessed demon to poke its head out the top.

“What in the hell was that?” I asked, more to myself than to her.

When a good five seconds passed, I looked over to her. She gave me a once-over, then cracked up. I was soaked from head to toe. I plopped onto the floor, soapsuds covering every inch of my frame.

She crawled over toward me, grabbed a fluff of bubbles and rubbed some on my cheeks and around my chin. My skin buzzed where she touched me. I took a handful and put them on my head in the shape of a mohawk.

“You look like George Washington.” Tears hung from her eyelashes.

“Yeah, well, you look like a wet cat.”

She tried to get up but slipped back down on the linoleum.

Half her face was covered in foam. She tried to get up again but her arm slipped out from under her and she fell face-first into the bubbles.

She looked completely absurd, trying to get up and falling right back down, a new spray of white puffing up every time she thudded back to the ground.

My side squeezed a little more with every slip from laughing so hard.

I hadn’t laughed like this in a long time.

I tried to crawl closer to help her and my knees skidded out from under me and my hands slid forward. I was completely laid out. She roared next to me. I blew a huge breath her way as a wave of white flew toward her. We looked utterly ridiculous.

“What the hell happened here?” Our heads snapped to the door as Josie stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. It felt like we were two kids who got caught with our hands in the cookie jar.

I cleared my throat and tried my hardest to keep a straight face. “Washing machine was acting up just a bit. I came by to help. I think we stopped the bubble production, but there’s just a bit of a cleanup needed now.”

Sam burst into laughter beside me but slammed her hand over her mouth.

“I’m so sorry. The, um, bubble production , was my fault. I think I put too much soap in the dispenser.”

She held her breath and glanced at me. And we both fell into hysterical giggles again.

Josie looked at me from the door with a sly smile and narrowed eyes. “It’s been acting up a bit lately. I’ll tell Harold. In the meantime, let me check which room I can switch you over to temporarily, Ms. Leigh.” Josie winked at me as she turned and walked back out.

“What’d you do, put the whole bottle in there?” I joked.

She paused. “Was I not supposed to?”

“Wait, you seriously put the whole bottle in there?”

“It was super tiny!” she yelled. “I thought it was one of those things like the shampoos they give you in hotels.”

“Those last a couple days!” I yelled back.

“Well, you don’t have as much hair as I do!”

“Why are you yelling at me?!”

She burst into a fit of giggles again.

“I don’t understand,” I eked out in between breaths. “Do you not do laundry at home?”

“No. You send your laundry out in the city. People come to your door, pick your dirty clothes up, and drop it off clean the next day, folded all nice in these little stacks that all match.”

I had no idea something like that even existed.

“Most apartments in the city are too small to have a washer-dryer. It’s big business up there.”

Little did I know, laundry fairies were real.

“I haven’t done my own laundry for years.” She tried to wipe some of the suds off her.

“I didn’t do laundry until I was forced to as a full-grown adult.”

“Yeah, well, when you run out of clean underwear as a teenager and your mother can’t get off the couch, you figure it out.

” She laughed through it like it was such a normal thing to say.

“Although I will say, I avoided this particular situation happening somehow throughout my early years of domestication. I guess it’s been a while. ”

Lexi and Sam are four years younger than me.

When she was a freshman, Vanessa and I were riding high on life after having graduated, talking about marriage and kids and what it all looked like long term.

I technically had a room at our parents’ house still, but I didn’t ever stay there.

Vanessa’s parents were never home, so I practically lived at her house.

I remember Mom talking about how Sam’s dad got sick.

Really sick, really fast. He passed quickly.

Her mom didn’t take it well, not that anyone would take an unexpected death well but she turned to pills, then alcohol.

Sam was over at our house a lot after he died, especially as her mom’s drinking ramped up.

She was a staple at family dinner nights, but I wasn’t anymore, which was yet another reason Mom didn’t love my fiancée.

Vanessa couldn’t fathom having dinner with family every single week so I wasn’t around a ton.

I was working a lot, saving up money at the time to buy a house.

“Have you seen her yet?” I asked as I made my way on all fours to the small dining table in the middle of the room. I eyed the chair, hoping to use it to gain a fighting chance of standing up.

“Well, she made a spirited appearance on my Zoom call with my boss and the rest of the due diligence team in her thong bikini yesterday morning.”

My jaw dropped. “She didn’t.”

“Oh, she did. I’m still waiting for the fallout. While I think she’s doing better than I expected her to be, she single-handedly may have cost me my job.”

I pushed up and braced myself against the chair.

“You good?” she asked from the floor.

“Of course.” I stood straight up too fast and the chair slipped from under my palm. I crashed onto the floor, my head making contact with the side of the table as I went down.

And then, everything went black.

“I really don’t think we need to call an ambulance,” I heard a faint voice say. It was velvety and made me feel warm all over. I heard some shuffling.

“Patrick just took the boat out. I say we give him a few minutes and if he doesn’t wake up, I’ll call one for him.”

I blinked my eyes and stared up into the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. They kind of sparkled. Had they always been that color?

“Yes.” She smiled.

Was that out loud?

I tried to sit up.

“No, no, no, stay down. You hit your head pretty good.” She was cradling my head in her lap.

She was so pretty. And smelled so good. She giggled and leaned down toward me, “I think you hit your head harder than we thought.”

I whispered back, “I think you’re prettier than you think.”

“You’re quite charming after a head injury. Does it hurt?”

“Your eyes are glittery.”

“Glittery? Oooh, that sounds fun.”

“And your eyelashes are really pretty,” I whispered.

“Well, that’s a new one, Casanova.” Josie’s face appeared above me. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two. And the president doesn’t matter.”

“Great. You stay down,” Josie ordered. “I’ll be back with a mop.”

“I’m fine, really.”

After she walked out the door, I tried to sit up.

“Samantha, don’t let him get up,” she called from outside. “He could have a concussion.”

“Well, since I have you captive in my lap, let me take this moment to thank you profusely for coming to my rescue.”

“You were in grave danger. You were lucky I was so close.” My eyes felt heavy again.

“I would have been sucked into the bubble vortex, never to be seen again, if it weren’t for your quick bubble production exorcism skills.” She bit her lip, holding back a smile.

“I would’ve been sad. If you got sucked into the bubble vortex, I’d come with you.”

“I think I’d like that,” she whispered as I closed my eyes.