I go through the motions and pierce the chick in my chair. When we’re done, I thank her and head to the front register where hopefully being around the other guys will dissuade her from making any unwelcome offers.
Except that’s wishful thinking because just before she’s about to walk out the door, she grabs a pen, takes my hand and starts writing on my palm.
What the…
She gives me a little wink and tells me to call her. I look down and see the name Shana and her phone number.
“Dude, she wrote in a permanent marker!” one of the guys yells, laughing.
I head to the bathroom to wash it off, except it doesn’t.
Mark, one of the owners, passes me on my way out. “If you don’t want that number, feel free to post it on the fuck wall.”
I turn my head to see where he’s pointing in the break room. And sure enough, there’s a wall of phone numbers.
“Think of it as the penny jar at the gas station,” he says with a wide grin.
“The penny jar?”
“Yeah, you have a penny you don’t want right now, but maybe one of the other guys needs a penny. So write her description and phone number on one of those notecards and post it on the fuck wall. Never know when you’re going to need one of those girls yourself.”
Jesus Christ. He’s a fucking pig.
I should be grateful he gave me a job. Because I need it. Badly. But the dick bought a copy of that fucking photo of me and Dani and is planning to use it to advertise the shop. It was really nice of Rudy to mention that goddamn photograph when Mark called my old job for a reference.
I wait until Mark walks off to ignore him and head back to my station. The whole night, this bothers me. It bothers me that I feel the need to talk to Katherine about what I do. It bothers me that despite our limbo status, doing my job felt like cheating because I had to touch another woman. And it bothers me that these assholes treat girls like some kind of communal property.
When I get home, it’s after two in the morning. We usually turn off all of the lights at night, but the light over the stove is on, and beneath it is a sandwich and a note. Hope you had a good day at work. Figured you didn’t eat. xo, Kat.
This girl. I smile.
She’s right. I haven’t eaten.
I crack open the door to Izzy’s bedroom and see her sleeping before I check in on Kat, who fell asleep reading her Kindle.
After I devour my food and take a quick shower, I collapse on the couch in the office and turn on the TV. I want to sleep with Kat, but I’m in a bad mood, so I settle for sleeping on the shitty couch. I decide to tell her what happened tonight because she should know this is part of what I do. It’s not like I’m hiding anything from her.
Once I make that decision, I start to relax and doze off, but then a warm body slides over me and a sweet voice whispers in my ear. “Wanna snuggle?”
I clear my throat. “If snuggling is code for fucking, then yes.”
She laughs. God, that laugh. It instantly erases my foul mood.
I wrap my arms around her. “I’m kidding. We don’t have to have sex. But yes, I want to snuggle.” Especially after the distance that’s grown between us these last few days.
Her thighs come to rest on either side of my stomach, and she nuzzles against my neck. “We could call it a snuggle fuck.” She giggles. “Where snuggling turns into sex. That’s probably the best kind of cuddling.”
My cock couldn’t agree more. Especially when she presses herself against it.
“I missed you tonight,” she whispers. “I miss you every night.”
My hands still. Everything from work comes rushing back to me, and suddenly I need to tell her what happened before we get naked.
“What’s wrong?” She swallows. She’s quiet a long moment before she says, “You don’t have to tell me you missed me too. That was probably a stupid thing to say.”
I sit up but keep her on my lap. Her hair is wild around her shoulders, and it pains me that she thinks I didn’t miss her.
Wrapping my hand behind her neck, I shake my head. “Of course I missed you. That’s not why I got quiet.” My thumb rubs against her soft cheek. “Something happened tonight. I don’t know if it’s going to bother you, but I thought I should mention it.”
She sits up straighter and looks at me with so much vulnerability in her eyes, it breaks my heart a little.
“What happened?”
“Don’t get freaked out. It’s not a big deal. You know I do tattoos. Well, I also do piercings, and I just realized I had never mentioned that to you before. And tonight, a woman came in to get her nipples pierced, and I wasn’t sure if that would bother you.”
Kat’s head tilts down, and with only the TV on, her face is shrouded in darkness. “Okay,” she says hesitantly. “Is that all? You pierced her?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Oh, and she grabbed a Sharpie and wrote her number on my hand. I was in shock or I would’ve pulled away.”
I brush the hair out of Kat’s face and then hold up my hand so she can see the writing.
Then she surprises me. “Why are you telling me this?”