Starfire (Peaches Monroe #3)(58)
Author: Mimi Strong

Wednesday through Friday, I could hardly work up the effort to worry about the weekend, due to all the work setting up the bookstore’s new location.

We weren’t going to be open to the public until Saturday, and three days had seemed like plenty of time to get set up when we were planning, but reality is nothing like a spreadsheet.

Adrian and I worked non-stop, more worried about getting things ready on time than about unpaid overtime.

On Wednesday, while we were setting up shelves and trying to come up with categories and organization that would make sense to the customers, he started telling me the silliest, corniest jokes. They weren’t funny.

We stayed until midnight, and I knew I had to get home to rest when the jokes started to be funny.

Thursday, he brought me in an extra one of his Led Zeppelin shirts from high school. I thought he was making a joke, but he insisted I wear the shirt, because he was wearing one, and it was Led Zeppelin Day. I checked that the brown paper was covering the windows, then pulled off my shirt and squeezed into the black Led Zeppelin T-shirt, my peaches distorting the logo. Adrian nodded his approval, then clicked the button for the stereo. Led Zeppelin blasted from the speakers, and we got to work.

When the playlist circled around to Whole Lotta Love, we stopped what we were doing and sang along, playing air guitar and drums, screaming the lyrics as loud as we could. (Have you listened to the lyrics? That is a sex song if I’ve ever heard one. And the drum solo is f**king awesome.)

~

On Friday morning when I arrived, the store seemed almost ready. It looked like it was one hour of hard work away from being ready to open. Curse my optimism! We were still troubleshooting the computer system late that night, at ten o’clock.

“Get going, you still have to pack,” Adrian said.

“I’m only gone for the weekend. Just one night.”

“Don’t get married this weekend, okay? I still want at least one more date with you before it turns into adultery.”

“Ugh.”

He said, “If you don’t have the stomach for adultery, I understand. We had a good run.”

I turned my head to give him a sidelong look. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Am I?” He rubbed his facial hair, looking tired but still sexy. He hadn’t shaved since the weekend, and had the golden-brown beginning of a beard. “My body hurts and I can’t think straight.” He rubbed his stomach. “When was our last decent meal?”

I checked my watch. “We had candy necklaces at six, which was four hours ago.”

He frowned. “Candy necklaces are not a meal.”

“I’ll stick around and order us some pizza.”

“No, you should go. Pack your bag and fly off in your private jet to meet  p**n  stars.”

The contempt in his voice irritated me. Especially him calling the tiny plane a private jet.

“I’ll go. Have a nice weekend f**king your other girlfriend.”

He pushed aside the computer keyboard in irritation. “Have a nice weekend f**king Mr. Porn Dick.”

“Oh, I will. And I’m going to tag team him and his dad.”

As soon as I said the words, I regretted it.

We stared at each other for an eternity, then Adrian cracked up.

“You are just all kinds of wrong, Peaches Monroe. That must be why I love ya so much.”

In the silence that followed, I swear I could hear the sound of his eyelids clapping as he blinked.

“You love me?”

“Who wouldn’t love a girl who nails the drum solo for Whole Lotta Love?”

“Do you mean you love me as a friend?”

He looked irritated. “I’m not asking you to marry me, am I?”

I picked up my purse and started for the door.

He ran out from behind the counter and caught me in his arms.

“What I feel for you is real,” he said. “You’re my friend. You’re the smartest, coolest chick I know. And I love everything about you.”

I turned slowly to face him, looking up into those eyes so cool and blue they made me shiver.

“Adrian…”

“Go have a great weekend. Don’t give me another thought. Get me all the way out of your head, and if I make it back in there, into your head, let me know.”

“Kiss me. I won’t go until you kiss me.”

He bent down and kissed me, his beard scratching my upper lip and chin. The kiss traveled through my body with a buzzing ball of energy.

He pulled away, opened the door, and shoved me out.

I knocked on the door, leaning over to peer through the tiniest crack in the brown paper on the window.

He didn’t answer the door, so I knocked again and yelled at the glass, “I dropped my purse on the floor!”

A few seconds later, the door opened. Adrian had my purse in his hand.

We stared at each other for a moment, then he stepped outside the store, dropped my purse on the sidewalk and grabbed me in his arms. He turned me and roughly pushed me up against the storefront, mashing his lips into mine as he clutched my bu**ocks, lifting me up so my feet weren’t even touching the ground, pinning me to the wall.

Except… that last bit didn’t actually happen.

I’m sorry for lying, but Adrian didn’t step out of the store.

If something like that had happened, things over the next few days would have been much different.

What actually happened was I stepped outside the door and it locked behind me.

Finding myself in the dark, as well as in a different part of town from where my bookstore usually was, I felt like I was forgetting something. It must have been the surroundings, though, because my purse was right on my shoulder, where I’d put it.

I hadn’t dropped my purse when he’d kissed me.

I spotted a bus off in the distance and smiled at my good timing. I hustled across the street and got out my change for the short ride to my neighborhood.

As soon as I got home, I took off the Led Zeppelin shirt, hung it at the back of my walk-in closet, and put Adrian out of my mind while I packed for the next morning’s plane ride.

~

We hadn’t even boarded the airplane, and I was already regretting inviting my parents.

They didn’t bring Kyle, because he was congested with a summer cold. The doctor had warned against flying, because of Kyle’s history of ear infections, so he was staying behind at a friend’s. Also, and more importantly, Kyle was a seven-year-old kid, and (I suspected) my mother thought he might get in the way of all her wine drinking and vacation enjoying, plus the many  p**n -star questions she had in mind for Dalton’s father.