“I want to put a baby in you,” I breathed.
He looked over his shoulder, a soft look on his face when he saw me. “Hey, you. What did you say?”
I coughed. “Uh. Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.”
“You look good.”
I looked down. I was wearing ratty boxers and a T-shirt with a hole in the armpit and a stain of what I thought was probably barbecue sauce near my nipple. My hair was sticking up in a thousand different directions, my breath was bad, and I had what felt like crust in the corner of my left eye. “Really,” I said dubiously. “You think this looks good.”
He turned around and shrugged, leaning against the counter. His biceps bunched up as he crossed his arms over his chest. I could see the outline of the bar through his nipple under his tank top. “I always think you look good.”
“You just went outside and ran seventy-four miles before the sun was even up and now you have rosy skin and sweat stains and look like a Sean Cody frat-boy porno, and I look like I just rolled out of bed after being the centerpiece of a midget gang bang in the parking lot of an Arby’s. And not even the good Arby’s. I’m talking the one over on the south side that they found the dead body in and also discovered they were serving horse meat instead of beef. That Arby’s.”
“Then I guess I like eating horse meat with dead bodies because I like the way you look in the mornings,” Vince said. “I pretty much like the way you look all the time.”
“I haven’t brushed my teeth,” I said, “but I’m about to kiss the fuck out of you.”
He opened his arms wide. “Bring it.”
I didn’t even have time to feel embarrassed that I tripped over my own feet in my haste to get to him. And when he laughed as I knocked against him, I knew he wasn’t laughing at me, per se. Oh sure, he found me amusing, but it was never mean. When he laughed over something I did, it was always a warm sound, something that I could never get enough of hearing. He was still chuckling when I put my stank breath all over his face, Wheels barking happily at our feet. He was still sweaty, and it felt gross and awesome and he smelled so damn good. His arms were clasped loosely around my waist, and I cupped his face in my hands as I peppered him with kisses.
“Good morning,” he murmured against my lips.
“Hi,” I said, having one of those random moments when I realized that this wasn’t a dream, that this was my life. That he was here with me because he wanted to be, because he chose me over everyone else out there in the world. I still didn’t understand it, not completely; you couldn’t have years of issues with self-esteem and not be incredulous about certain things. But every day, I believed him more and more, which led to these moments, these moments when I felt like I was seeing him again for the first time, my traitorous heart tripping in my chest. I was afraid to open my mouth, and not just because of the stank breath. I was sure I’d blurt out all these feelings, and even though I knew he’d grin at me because of it, I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.
Well. Too crazy.
“Sleep good?” he asked, trailing his lips along my jaw.
“Argh,” I said because words were hard when he was doing that and smelling like he did.
“Cool. And I only did six miles this morning. Not seventy-four. I don’t think I’ve ever run seventy-four miles.”
“Same things,” I grumbled. “You could have just stayed in bed with me and I would have licked your nuts or something. Exercising is terrible. No one likes to do that.” I rubbed my hands over the muscles he got from exercising and realized I was a big fat liar, because I liked it when he did it. And the results from it. And all his boy parts.
Of course he saw right through me. “Really. So you don’t like how my thighs are all hairy and muscular.”
I squeaked but covered it up with a manly sneeze. “Exercising doesn’t make your thighs hairy.”
“Maybe. But they sure are strong.” He reached down and slid the hem of his basketball shorts up his legs. “Don’t you think?”
I stared down between us, over the slope of my stomach, entranced by the sight of his muscular and oh-so-hairy thigh, just as it had been advertised. It was paler than the rest of his leg, but not by much, given that the shorts he usually wore while running were much, much shorter. Obscenely short. Boner-inducingly short. He looked like porn.
“If you weren’t cooking bacon right now,” I told him seriously, “I’d ride that motherfucker for like a week.”
“Bacon!” he yelped, shoving me away. “Holy shit, I forgot about the bacon.”
“And the sexy died a tragic death,” I sighed. “If we were vegan, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“They don’t eat things with faces,” Vince said. “When Corey’s friend Tyson told me that, I felt really bad about it. Because of the faces. But then I remembered I don’t eat the faces, and I felt a lot better about it.”
“You don’t need to listen to him,” I said, opening the cabinet and pulling out the coffee mugs. “He’s a vegetarian. That means he obviously can’t be trusted. He’s been brainwashed by PETA and says stupid things like meat isn’t neat. I assure you, meat is very neat, especially when it goes in my mouth.”
I turned around to see Vince smiling at me. “What?”