Lingus (13 page)

"Hey, I was worried you overdosed on dick," I told her first thing.

Nikki snorted. "I came close to it," she said, with a hoarse voice.

"Are you sick?" Nicole never got sick. Ever. I think she'd caught a minor cold once about three years ago, and it lasted all of twelve hours before she was back to normal. Personally, I thought even germs were scared of her.

"No," she said with a deep, throaty laugh before making a pained noise. "It hurts to talk, so don't make me laugh."

"Why do you sound like crap if you aren't sick?"

Nikki sighed dramatically. "I've had a salami down the back of my throat on and off for the last thirty-six hours," she replied, frankly.

My face instantly grimaced. I'd seen Calum's peen a few times in the past when Nicole had shoved her laptop in my face, and that thing was... gargantuan. Colossal. Ginormous. I thought it was fake the first time I saw it. Nicole tried to deep throat that thing? I was surprised she didn't have permanent damage to her vocal chords, larynx, pharynx, and freaking esophagus.

"Well... as long as it was worth it, then don't complain."

She giggled softly. "Oh, it was worth it. It was definitely, definitely worth it. That man is a machine. Maybe even a god, it was un-fucking-believable, Kat. I've slept about four hours since Saturday."

"You're such a slut," I told her with a laugh, rolling up the bag of remaining chips.

"Fuck yeah," she tried to purr but sounded more like a chain smoker with her gravelly voice. "I'm seeing him again later tonight."

"Jesus, Nik. Don't your petals need some rest?"

I asked her this despite already knowing the answer. No. For Calum Burro, she'd probably take cocaine to stay awake for the vaginal slaughter that would surely take place.

"Yeah, but I'll ice myself later," she explained. "I'm gonna go make some tea now to soothe my throat. Hopefully I'll be able to go to work tomorrow."

"Okay then, text me if you need me," I told her.

She made a funny noise on her end of the line before saying, "I will."

I got a flashback of the porn convention, and the little thing she said to catch his attention. "Oh! Did you find his g-spot?" I spit out, laughing.

She snickered roughly. "I sure as hell did. He was calling me God, Jesus, Allah, Ghandi, and every other divine being all night. "

Chapter 17

R

O

B

B

Y

L

I hit the delete button.

L

I

I hit the delete button.

After a minute, I pressed the delete button again.

The frustrated groan that pushed its way out of my chest was exhausting. I started typing in Tristan's porn name only to stop, delete some letters, type a few more in, and then delete all of them. I knew that if I went through with looking up Robby Lingus on Google or any other search engine, there wasn't any going back.

Do it.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

It really wouldn't be a good idea to see his videos, I repeated to myself at least six times.

Not a good idea.

Not a good idea.

His words from yesterday tumbled through my head. He said he'd call me. It was ten, and I hadn't heard from him. It was hard to beat back the disappointment I felt creeping over me. I hated it when people said they would do something, and then didn't. It ate away at me little by little until I was just a measly crumb.

What else could I have expected? Guys seemed to lack manners because they worried so much about what other people thought, and obviously, Tristan wasn't an exception to that. It was ridiculous of me to expect him to be any different from what seemed to be every other guy on the planet. In fact, he was one of the worst.

He fucked girls on video.

I thought that if I said it enough, I might become desensitized to the words and general idea.

As soon as the idea echoed through my thought process, I felt like vomiting.
He
just wants a friend
. Tristan told me that he wanted to be friends and most friends didn't talk to each other everyday. Right? I had no reason to be jealous or upset. My cat's loud purring distracted me from my man-hating. Matlock, named after my favorite old TV lawyer, was a big, white, siamese-mix that showed up on my doorstep last Christmas. He was a hermit and kind of a bastard at times, but I'd grown to love him.

Said bastard was walking over my keyboard like he owned both the computer and me. I belonged to him, not the other way around. I had to push him off my laptop, otherwise he'd try to sit on it or lick the screen like he'd done so many times in the past. He hissed at me for kicking him off before sauntering over to the other side of the couch and flicking his tail back and forth.

He reminded me of Josh in cat-form.

I had to force myself to open up my Christian files to work on my newest book. I'd been publishing my own murder-mysteries for about a year and a half. I sold them under my penname, Sophia Nylund, after two of my favorite Golden Girls. My dad used to blame my lack of grandparents as the reason why I liked to watch shows with seniors through middle and most of high school. I wasn't making enough money to quit my day job but even if I would've been, I didn't think I would. I liked my kids. Maybe in a few years I'd think differently, probably when children became the spawn of Satan in general, and I hated them all.

The sound of my phone beeping unexpectedly made Matlock hiss at it.

New Message

Magellan

Showed up on the blank screen of my phone, and even though I should have taken my sweet-ass time unlocking the phone, and then reading his message, I didn't. The little white box just said:

Please tell me you aren’t busy.

Hmm. I wrote back a simple:
No
, when I should have written yes so he didn't think I was sitting around waiting for his call— when I was.

Less than thirty seconds later, his name was across the screen again.

Please take me to urgent care?

Chapter 18

I officially hated the navigation feature on my phone.

I should have known better than to trust it to get me to Tristan's house as quickly as possible. For some reason, the navigation always took me somewhere completely random that was most definitely not the location I wanted to go to. It'd been close to an hour since I'd gotten his last text message that included his address, and informed me his front door was open. After driving across town, several wrong turns, braking at every street sign with hopes that I could see the reflective lettering in the night, I finally parked in front of a Craftsman-style house that matched the address in the text message.

Did he live here by himself?

The house was close to twice as large as the home I'd grown up in, and the neighborhood was one of the nice, upper-middle class subdivisions I'd seen on television. Thinking better of just standing on the street and gawking at the gray house with white trim, I made a beeline for the door and raised my fist to knock before remembering that the front door would be unlocked. He was really vague after the initial text message, insisting that he was sick and needed to go to the hospital.

"Tristan?" I called out, closing the door as quietly as possible behind me.

The hallway was pitch black until I felt around the wall for the light switch. Flicking it on, the hallway and stairs ahead of me were engulfed in bright, pure, white light when my phone vibrated from my pocket. Magellan's name showed up on the front screen before I unlocked it and saw that he wrote
Upstairs on left
. I toed off my tennis shoes before noticing the pile of shoes right by the door and ascended the stairs. I wondered what exactly was wrong with him, because we'd just seen each other the day before, and he seemed perfectly fine.

The upper floor of the house was painted in a neutral tan, and there was only one door on the left of the staircase that was slightly cracked open. "Tristan?"

A pathetic sounding moan came from the other side of the door after I slipped in. I really didn't know what to expect in his room. It took me a second to absorb how large the bedroom was, considering it was lit only by the bedside lamp. A repeat of the same moan came from underneath a lump of comforter on the left side of the bed. I dropped my purse on the floor, and walked over to the large pile that I was assuming Tristan was laying under.

"Hey," I called out softly, to the human-sized lump.

A few seconds later, there was movement underneath the covers as the portion closest to the head of the bed began moving around. Tristan's head peeked out from the top of the crisp, white sheets he was rolled in. His poor, beautiful face looked unnaturally pale and clammy. His eyes opened, and then he blinked until I could see that the green in them was dull and heavy, completely unlike the bright, sparkling green that I'd seen the handful of times before. A deep, painful sounding cough shook its way out of his chest.

"I'm sick, Kat," he groaned out, looking more ashen than he had a moment before. "I'm hot, but I have the chills and everything hurts."

I wasn't a doctor, but I knew those symptoms all too well. It sounded like the flu. Didn't I joke about giving him the flu a couple days before? I put my hand against his forehead, only to wince at the extreme heat pulsing under his skin. "Do you have a thermometer?" I asked him.

He closed his eyes and nodded, wiggling a hand out of the wrap of sheets he was in to point at the nightstand. Sure enough, there was a white oral thermometer resting on the edge. I asked him to open up his mouth before setting the timer and putting it under his tongue. I knew even without the little contraption that he was much too warm for it to be safe. I brushed my hand over his forehead and hair, only to touch sweat across the span of his face. "I feel horrible," he rasped out with a shiver.

The thermometer beeped a few moments later, and after slipping it out of his mouth, I frowned. It read 103.1, which was not good at all. "Tristan, how long have you had a fever?"

"A while."

I sighed. My mom died when I was eleven, and even though Frank, my dad, did his absolute best with me, I had to learn to take care of myself. There were dozens of times that I'd gotten sick and had stay home alone so he wouldn't miss work. We needed the money, and his job didn't count staying home with his sick kid eligible for paid sick time. Fortunately, I paid enough attention when my mom was still alive to know, for the most part, how to take care of myself and get over most illnesses without having to visit the doctor. "Does your throat hurt?"

Tristan closed his eyes and swallowed a few times. "No, I'm just thirsty."

"Let me see your throat," I demanded, just to make sure he didn't have crappy, white dots that would mean he had strep. Tristan made another grumbling noise before opening up his mouth. There was enough light from the lamp to see straight down the back of his mouth, which looked well enough. I couldn't help but notice that he didn't even have any fillings. I tapped his chin so he could close his mouth. "I think you might have the flu, okay? I can take you to the doctor if you want, or else I can probably help you feel better here. Whatever you want."

One dull green eye opened, squinting at me in a haze. "You gave me the flu?" he asked hoarsely.

"How the hell did I give you the flu?"

He let out a short, dry chuckle. "Josh's party," he reminded me. I snorted because he remembered drinking from my cranberry vodka, and that I had joked around about giving him the flu. One of his butt buddies probably gave it to him, I decided. I rolled my eyes at him and started pulling the covers he was covered in away from his body. The heavy, white comforter was knotted around him in a twist, so I tugged it away as well, only to have him groan. "Be gentle. My body hurts."

"You're too hot to be wrapped up," I told him. I wrestled the comforter away, leaving him in only a white sheet that was tucked closely around him. I tugged it off, and then stood there like a frozen idiot.

I'd seen plenty of nice bodies; all three of my past boyfriends had all been athletic and fit. My movie collection consisted of every film that starred hot, half-dressed actors. I saw
300
about five times in theaters with Nicole and another twenty times on DVD. Josh and I watched
Thor
six times and drooled during each one. You could consider me a seasoned gawker.

Nothing could have prepared me for that moment.

Tristan was lying across his bed in just his boxer briefs. Little, black boxer briefs that did nothing to hide big, muscular thighs. His chest was perfect, pillowy, and hard with just a sprinkle of dark chest hair across, but his abs were the Holy Grail of all abs. They formed the kind of eight-pack you could only see on Abercrombie ads. The v-cut of muscle on his hips disappeared beneath the band of his underwear, and then my eyes instinctively froze on the soft bulge the black cotton was covering. Holy shit. Josh's words flitted through my brain.
You're an anaconda because we all know that's what you have in your pants.