“You’re thoroughly distracting.”
I hurl it like an insult, but she takes it like a compliment. “Thank you,” she chirps, her palms working my back.
My eyes drift shut and my head lolls to the side. “Damn, you’re pretty good at that.”
Now as she works my tense muscles, she leans down, letting me get a whiff of that goddamn shampoo as her long, blonde hair falls over her shoulder. She leans in near my ear and murmurs suggestively, “I’m good at a lot of things.”
It goes straight to my cock.
Which was her intention, obviously. I don’t know why she plays with me like this, but she hasn’t tried to escalate anything, so at this point I let her. It’s not the worst thing in the world to be flirted with on a regular basis by an attractive, affectionate woman who expects no commitment and insists she’s only trying to be your friend.
I have some doubts about that, but I’m ignoring them as long as I’m able.
As she does, Carly changes the subject before I can get skittish. “Every year around Christmas, Laurel and I make batches of Nana’s homemade spaghetti sauce. We have a running tradition of making chicken parmesan for our Christmas Eve dinner, so we make it nice and fresh.” She pauses the back rub to kiss the tips of her fingers like she’s an old Italian man. “Bravissimo.”
I can’t help smiling. Her hands go back to my shoulders and she continues to work my muscles. “What are your parents like?” I ask.
She’s mostly pretty open, but she hesitates there. “I don’t really have parents. I mean, I have a mother somewhere out there, but besides a brief guest appearance when I was in college, I haven’t seen her since I was seven and I don’t care to, My sperm-donor bailed when my mom told him she was pregnant. Laurel and I grew up living with our grandparents. That might be why I like Gus so much—he’s the age group I’m accustomed to,” she says lightly.
“Huh. I guess we have that in common. I didn’t grow up with grandparents—my grandfather was psychotic and his wives died before I was born—but I didn’t grow up with my parents, either. I stayed with my cousin when my father moved away.”
“Older cousin?”
“Yeah. Not old enough or interested enough to be a parental figure, but I did okay without one. None of us really had parents; we just grew up like siblings and figured it out on our own.”
“And you’re not close to any of them?” she asks, understandably surprised.
“I was. I left behind a sister I was close to and a cousin, Francesca. Unfortunately the cousin I don’t get along with is the one who makes the rules, and his rule is I’m not allowed back in Chicago.”
Her hands come to an abrupt stop. I think I surprised her. “The whole city? He exiled you from the whole city?”
“He’ll exile me from more than that if he finds me,” I say, more lightly than it warrants.
“What happened? If you don’t mind me asking,” she adds, quickly. Probably because I lost my shit on her last time this came up. “Why does he hate you so much?”
“I hate him just as much,” I assure her. She goes back to rubbing my back, but I hesitate to answer her question. I can’t tell her what I actually did. “He stole my girlfriend. That sounds… it’s more fucked up than that. It’s too much to explain. He manipulated her and she fell right into his trap. Then she somehow developed feelings for him. She started sleeping with the asshole when we were still together, then she tried to leave me for him.”
“Tried to leave you?”
“I wasn’t amenable to the suggestion.” I feel a little tension come back into my shoulders just saying that much, but I figure I’ll throw out something small and see if it scares her off. I know she made a whole speech about how she wasn’t going anywhere, but she did not know what she was signing up for.
The sure movements of her hands across my back don’t falter this time. If she thinks that sounds a little psycho, she doesn’t say so. “Gotcha. So, you tried to keep her. I take it he was not amenable to that suggestion?”
“Correct,” I verify. “That was the first time he exiled me from Chicago.”
“There are multiple exiles?”
I nod my head as her hands continue to work their magic. “Sort of. The first exile never actually ended, I just disregarded it. I stayed away for a long time, but then I went back.”
“For what?”
“For Mia.”
“Ah.” I can’t quite decipher her tone; I wish I could see her face. With lightness that sounds a little forced, she says, “So, this is the Mia whose shampoo I use.”