Page 24 of Wrong For Me

Leo

Bodhi wastes no time after Rose leaves to come stumbling into the living room in his flannel sleep pants and an old cross-country team T-shirt from his high school.

“Your lady head out?”

I raise an eyebrow. “What lady?”

He rolls his eyes as he heads to the kitchen to start the coffee. “Like I don’t know you brought her back here last night. The walls are pretty thin, you know. I had to sleep with headphones on.”

I can’t wipe the stupid grin off my face. “You shouldn’t have bothered. You might have learned something from my superior skills.”

I’m only giving him shit, though. There’s no way in hell I would want Bodhi, or anyone else, to listen in on Rose the way she was with me last night. Fuck, the mere thought of anyone else hearing those perfect noises she made kind of makes me feel stabby.

I follow Bodhi into the kitchen and grab a carton of eggs from the fridge, suddenly starving. You can’t blame me—I did, after all, work up quite the appetite with my evening activities.

“You suck, you know that?” Bodhi mutters, and I look up from the eggs I’m cracking to see him scowling at me.

“What’d I do?”

“That.” He points at my face. “That, dude.”

“My face is what’s pissing you off?”

“You don’t have to look so smug just because you got some ass.”

Something about those words have my back straightening in annoyance. “Don’t talk about her like that,” I growl before I can think better of it.

His expression morphs from a teasing smirk into something that looks a lot more like interest. “Holy shit,” he murmurs, eyes flashing in a way I don’t like at all. “You’re like, really into her.”

I scoff, ducking my head over the bowl of eggs and applying a little more force to the act of scrambling than is fully necessary. “I just met her.”

“Yeah, and you’re already looking all moony over her.”

“I don’t look fucking moony,” I snap, and he chuckles.

“Mmmhmm, whatever you say, dude.”

“Just for that, I’m not going to give you any of my eggs.”

“I didn’t want your eggs anyhow,” he says, then moves to the cabinet to pull out a box of cereal.

“What a sophisticated palate you have,” I say drily, eyeing his Lucky Charms as I bring my scrambled eggs to the stove. I slap some butter into a frying pan and get to work, stomach rumbling.

“These are the best,” Bodhi says without shame. “Well, the marshmallows are the best. Hey, did you know you can buy whole bags ofjustthe marshmallows? There’s this Amish store in Ohio, and I know what you’re thinking, what do the Amish have to do with amazing marshmallow goodness…”

I let my mind wander as I idly stir the eggs, not really giving a shit about my friend’s obsession with children’s cereal or his gold-medal ability to go off on a tangent. Besides, it’s hard to focus on much of anything when images of Rose keep popping up.

She said she wanted a repeat of our evening. I wonder how soon she had in mind. I have to work this afternoon, another bartending shift at the last day of the festival, but I should be off by five. Maybe—

“Dude, what did those eggs ever do to you?”

I jump a little at the interruption then look down to see my eggs are smoking. “Shit,” I mutter, pulling them off the heat. They’re looking pretty brown around the edges, but I’ve eaten worse. I grab a bag of shredded cheddar from the fridge—when in doubt, melt some cheese.

I bring my plate of eggs to the dining table, where Bodhi is staring at me. “See?” he asks gleefully. “This is what I’m talking about.”

“I have noideawhat you’re talking about,” I respond, reaching for the salt shaker. “But then again, I usually don’t.”

He’s undeterred by my snark. “You just burned your breakfast and you don’t even care.”