I switch back to my message thread with Kate.
CHRISTOPHER: Looks like our well-behaved reunion will be sooner rather than later, Katydid.
KATE: Just got Bea’s text. Paintball! Better watch your back, Petruchio.
CHRISTOPHER: No need. We’ll be on the same team. Jamie made sure of it.
KATE: Both of us on the same team sounds like a recipe for disaster.
CHRISTOPHER: We made a pretty good team last night, making pasta, and that recipe was anything but a disaster.
KATE: Yeah, but paintball isn’t going to be nearly as delicious.
CHRISTOPHER: I disagree, at least, if you plan on being extra labially liberated.
KATE: I’M DELETING YOUR NUMBER. I BID YOU GOOD DAY SIR.
When Curtis comes in with next meeting’s notes, I’m still wiping away tears from laughing.
? TWENTY-THREE ?
Kate
I don’t have butterflies in my stomach. I don’t glance up every time someone enters the room, hoping it’s him.
Because I am not crushing on Christopher Petruchio.
I’m just possibly slightly affected by his kindness and care and friendly text messages the past few days. And my dreams the past few nights, which have possibly involved obscene moments in the kitchen that started off how we did and ended very differently. Me pressed back on a counter, hands I know so well, strong and beautiful, skating up my thighs, easing the ache between them. Hard, slow kisses turning my limbs loose, liquid gold.
“Everyone suited up?” Hank, the Peace, Love, and Paintball employee in charge of orientating our group, asks from the middle of the gear room as everyone trickles in from changing.
I crouch to retie my bootlaces, which don’t require retying, to hide the fact that my face has turned bright red as my thoughts wandered down Lusty Lane, and to avoid Bea’s eyes because my sister’s looking at me curiously, like maybe she has a guess as to what’s running through my head.
“This is an aggressively unflattering green on me.” Toni plucks at the hunter-green fabric of his coveralls.
“It is not,” Bea tells him. “You look cute as a cabbage.”
“Cabbage?” Toni sighs bleakly.
“That’s how you tell someone they’re cute in French,” Jamie explains. “Call them cabbage—chou.”
Toni bats his lashes. “Jamie. Stop it.”
Hamza laughs and hooks an arm around Toni’s neck, pulling him in for a kiss to his temple. “I already told you that you look cute.”
“You’re obligated to say that.” Toni pouts. “Plus, cute is nice, but I want to look sexy.”
“I got news for you,” I tell Toni, peering down at my own green coveralls as I stand. “None of us looks sexy in these getups.”
Which is of course when Christopher strides out of the changing room, looking sexy as hell in his green coverall paintball suit. I shouldn’t be surprised—the color complements the golden undertone in his skin, his amber eyes and dark locks. It’s obscene what happens to my body as I watch him rake back his hair and set a pair of goggles on his head.
Toni throws an accusatory hand Christopher’s way and says to me, “You’re really going to try to tell me you still stand by that statement?”
“Ready when you are,” Christopher says to Hank as he finishes doing the last few top buttons of his coveralls.
He stands beside me but doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t even acknowledge me.
It feels like a slap.
A sinking dread settles in my stomach. Maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe two nights ago didn’t mean to him what it meant to me. He’s trying to fix things, he said. Maybe that’s all the other night was, Christopher trying to “fix things,” doing it how he knows best—sweet-talking and flirting, hugging and making homemade pasta, promising a satisfying time in bed when I was clearheaded enough to know I really wanted it. That whole routine has to be as natural for him as breathing.
If that’s the case, if I’ve misread this so badly, I feel like a fool.
“Okay, folks!” Hank claps his hands as Margo and Sula join us in their green suits, goggles on their heads. “Welcome again to Peace, Love, and Paintball, the ultimate progressive paintball experience. The rules go like this: you and another team will—”
“Wait.” Jamie lifts a hand. “Sorry to interrupt. You said another team? We were hoping for a friendly time out there for our group only. When we called and inquired about that, we were reassured it was possible.”
“It is,” Hank says, sounding apologetic. “But only if no one else shows up. This group came in while you were all getting changed. We’re up against a lot of competition with the more traditional, rifle-style model of paintball, so we’re not really in a position to turn down business.”
Jamie sighs and peers over at Bea.
“That’s understandable,” Bea says encouragingly. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“If by fine, you mean ‘about to get your asses reamed,’?” an obnoxiously loud voice calls from behind us, “then it sure will be.”
We turn around to see ten dudes in head-to-toe black, clutching paintball guns. I roll my eyes.
“Uh.” Hank clears his throat. “Folks, this is a gun-free establishment. You’ll need to leave those in your vehicles.”
“C’mon, man,” the guy who yelled and is the obvious ringleader says, “paintball without guns is for pussies.”
His whole posse chuckles.
Everyone else is behind me, so Christopher is the only one I see opening his mouth to say something, but I speak before he can. “How about you boys take your sexist bullshit along with your inferiority complexes and give them a flex somewhere else?”
Bea, standing on my other side, slips her hand inside mine and squeezes. I don’t squeeze back. I’d crush her fingers if I did, I’m so angry.
“I’m sorry, what was that, baby doll?” the guy says. He’s bigger than the rest of them, red-cheeked, eyes narrowed, chest puffed up as he stares me down.
I snort. He’s such a misogynist cliché.
“Something funny?” he sneers.
“Your pathetically uninspired insults would be funny for how predictable they are, except for the fact that they reveal your disgusting bigotry,” I tell him.
He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Aw, we got ourselves a little snowflake who likes big words, boys.” They laugh again. “Did I hurt your feelings, princess?”
“The only feelings I have when it comes to you, Chad, is pity for every poor soul who’s had to suffer your presence.”
The asshole takes a sudden step toward me. I take a step toward him. Which is when Christopher wraps an arm around my waist and drags me back. “That’s enough,” he growls at the jerk, then he spins us both so I’m settled in front of him, facing Hank, with Christopher between me and Chad the Asshole behind us.
Hank takes that opening and says once again to the butthead brigade, “As I explained, you’ll need to return those paintball guns to your vehicles if you want to play. Otherwise, we do ask that you leave.”
I glance around Christopher long enough to see Chad or Brad or whoever the hell he is curl his lip and stare me down as he tells Hank, “Nah, we’re staying.” He smiles, a creepy, predatory glint in his eyes. “We’ll stash these and be right back.”
As soon as they wander out, I finally manage to yank myself out of Christopher’s grip. “Don’t manhandle me, Petruchio.”
Christopher opens his mouth like he’s about to answer me, but infuriating tears prick my eyes, and I can’t let him or any one of those dick bags see it. Spinning away, I stand with my back to him and glare at the ground, blinking until my eyes clear and the threat of tears is gone. Hank answers Jamie’s questions about the history of Peace, Love, and Paintball while we wait for the team of jerks to come back. I’m too angry to hear anything that’s said.