“I wish I knew what to say,” I said, feeling stupid. Usually I had tons of shit to spew, but this, what she was telling me, was hitting a little too close to home. In some ways, I knew how she felt. The need to start a family, to finally have a fucking family, was something slowly creeping up on me, day by day. I wondered if that’s why I’d been coming on too strong with Perry, if instinctually I wanted to get started on something that I’d secretly wanted for a very long time.
And then the thought of Perry’s miscarriage hit me in the gut and I swallowed away the pain, trying to focus on Rebecca.
“I know,” she said. She lifted her head and wiped away a tear. “There’s nothing anyone can say because there’s no good and bad or right and wrong here. It’s just bloody life and it really, really sucks sometimes.” She shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Dex, I know you know that more than anyone.”
I smiled gently. “True. But it doesn’t mean it won’t suck for anyone else.”
The shower turned off and I heard Perry sliding back the curtain. Rebecca straightened up and plastered a smile on her face. “So tell me about Perry before she comes out here and we have to speak in code.”
I grinned and got up, fishing a handful of Kleenex out of the box on the coffee table and handing it to her.
“I’m pretty sure Perry would break that code,” I told her, my voice a bit lower.
“Let’s try,” she said, and after dabbing at her tears, she made an “O” with one hand and jabbed her other finger in and out of it. “Any of this?”
I laughed. “Oh, there’s been plenty of that.”
She smiled, no longer fake, her eyes looking brighter. “That’s excellent! And you told her you loved her. That’s so…I’m so proud of you, Dex. Finally. So what did she say?”
I raised my brows. “Uh, well, here’s the thing…”
“Rebecca!” Perry exclaimed. Our heads swiveled over to the bathroom where she was stepping out with soaking wet hair, her towel barely covering her breasts, and looking shocked.
“Hi, Perry,” Rebecca said, tearing her eyes away from mine. I couldn’t have been interrupted at a better time.
Perry grinned uncomfortably. “Let me go change before I flash you.”
“That wouldn’t be a problem,” Rebecca said, just as I was thinking it.
I cocked a brow at her. “You perv.”
She shrugged as Perry disappeared into the bedroom. “I’ve been hanging out with you too long, Dex.”
“Well, now that you’re a single woman, I’m sure we could make room for you in bed,” I said teasingly, a depraved part of me kind of hoping she’d say yes. But then her face fell at the mention of her newfound singledom and I felt like a complete asshole.
“Dex,” she said, sounding disgusted.
“Sorry. I guess I should keep my threesome fantasies to myself, huh?”
She gave me a small smile. “Just pick your timing better.” Then she put her hand on my knee and squeezed it. “Glad to see you’re still a bit of a jerk, though. I was worried there for a second.”
“Ladies love the assholes, don’t they?”
Her eyes drifted to the closed bedroom door. “For your sake, I hope they do.”
I nodded and went back to chewing on my lip. I didn’t have to tell Rebecca about Perry, she already sussed it out.
A few seconds later, Perry came back out of the bedroom. Her face was fresh-faced and sexy, her body still mouthwatering in a long Pink Floyd tee-shirt and leggings.
Rebecca got up and hugged her tightly and I tried to get my head out of the gutter. I looked over at Fat Rabbit instead who was watching Perry carefully.
“Fatty Rab,” I exclaimed. “Where’s your greeting for the lady of the house?”
The dog looked at me then closed his eyes. Disrespectful fucker.
“How are you?” Perry asked Rebecca, and I wondered if she was picking up on the same vibe that I had been. Although the bloodshot and puffy eyes were a bit of a giveaway.
Rebecca twisted her mouth. “You know. I’ve been better. Em and I broke up.”
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” Perry told her. “We should get a coffee or something like that and talk.”
I coughed and both of them looked at me. I wasn’t sure what they were going to talk about exactly, but I was pretty sure half of their conversation would be about me. Not because the world revolved around me but…I don’t know, some of their world had to.
“Just make sure you’re back by seven,” I said, looking at Perry.
She frowned. “Why?”
“Well, remember when I asked you what you were doing tonight? And you said you were doing me?”
Perry’s eyes widened and she looked at Rebecca in embarrassment.
“Oh, don’t worry about her, she already knows you’re doing me,” I added.
“Dex!” Perry cried out.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “So much for speaking in code.”
“Hey, we’re all adults here. Except maybe Perry. You are dangerously close to being underage.”
“Dex,” Perry said again, her tone harder.
I reeled it back with a playful grin. “Anyway, I’m taking you out tonight.”
“Out?” she asked.
Rebecca put her hands on her hips and watched our exchange with amusement. I had hoped to ask Perry out on our first date without an audience, but oh well, too late for that.
“Yeah. You know, outside? There’s a great pizza place around the corner. I’d buy you dinner. Some drinks. Get laid after. You know…a date.”
She blinked a few times but finally smiled. “Are you seriously asking me out on a date?”
“Am I not being clear enough? Yes. Perry Palomino, will you go out with me?”
She looked over at Rebecca who threw up her hands and said, “Hey, if Dex is paying…”
Perry looked back at me, trying to hide her smile now. But I saw it. It made my heart want to fucking burst. “Okay, Dex Foray, I’ll go out with you.”
I couldn’t stop grinning. I thought my head was going to split open.
Rebecca shook her head. “I never thought I’d see the day. Are you sure I’m not making things awkward by standing here and watching all of this? Perhaps you’d like some pre-date privacy?”
“Nah, we’re a good threesome,” I told her with a wink.
She glared back at me. “Anyway, there was a reason for me coming over here other than returning your fartin’ mutt and telling you my sob story. Jimmy.”
“What about Jimmy?” It was hard to concentrate on work matters when Perry had just said she’d go out with me. I know it was reducing me to a thirteen-year-old kid all over again, but I didn’t care. I felt like running down the halls of my old high school and yelling it to the world.
Rebecca’s stern look reminded me that I was living in an adult world. “He’s been trying to get a hold of you too, and when he couldn’t reach you yesterday, he started harassing me. Seems a police officer from wherever you were in Canada called him wanting to confirm that both you guys did in fact work for him.”
I wiggled my jaw back and forth. “Huh. Was that it?”
She looked at me dryly. “Was that it? It was kind of distressing to learn that you guys were involved in some police matter. Some local man was killed by an animal.”
“Sasquatch,” I corrected her.
“Right. Sasquatch. Of course.”
“We’re serious,” Perry said. “It was Sasquatch. Or some terrible missing link. Definitely not a mangy bear.”
I could tell that even Sasquatch was a stretch for the usually open-minded Rebecca. “Either way, it freaked Jimmy out and then it freaked me out. And then he started barking at me, like I had something to do with it. Apparently the police confiscated your footage?”
I was starting to get the feeling that perhaps Jimmy wouldn’t be as understanding over the whole thing as I had thought.
“They did, for evidence,” Perry explained. “And anyway, it wouldn’t have been right to air what we shot. A man seriously died.”
A man that probably deserved to die, I thought, feeling all the anger coming back over catching Mitch trying to rape Perry. But even with that fact, I knew that not showing the footage was the right thing to do. Whether he deserved it or not, death was death and his death must have been a terrible one.
“I understand,” Rebecca said sympathetically. “But I would not count on Jimmy feeling the same way. He was throwing around the words ‘fire’ and ‘cancellation.’”
“Oh come on,” I said. “He can’t seriously consider cancelling us again. We’ve barely been back!”
She shrugged. “You know how he is.”
I groaned in frustration, rubbing my forehead. “Can’t we just have one day of peace before we get shit on?”
“You do get one day,” she said. “He told me to tell you to come to his office tomorrow, both of you, at two. Until then, go back to…what was it, doing each other?”
Perry’s cheeks flushed adorably at that. She cleared her throat and looked at her feet. “So, Rebecca, did you want to get that cup of coffee now? Leave Dex here with his dog?”
She agreed and soon they were leaving the apartment for Top Shop Donuts, promising to bring me back a double chocolate artery-clogger. Whatever they ended up talking about, I hoped a skittish new lover and a jaded lesbian would take it easy on me.