Starting with the Unexpected (8 page)

“I will. Good night, Ollie.”

I wanted to believe that I didn’t dream the feeling of Marcus pressing a kiss to my forehead, but I was out so quickly that there was no way to know for sure.

T
HE
NEXT
time I awoke, I was alone again, and I knew Marcus had left for work. I moped about that for a few minutes before I dragged myself out of bed. With luck, Jordan would be awake. If luck was
really
on my side, maybe he’d have breakfast started.

Alas, when I went into the kitchen, I was greeted by the sight of Jordan eating a bowl of cereal. So much for a cooked breakfast, because I wasn’t about to make it. “Morning,” I said as I headed to the pantry to see what we had.

“Morning,” he mumbled around a mouthful of Captain Crunch. “How’s the head?”

“Tolerable,” I answered as I pulled out a container of granola. “I have no idea how you eat that shit.”

“By pouring milk over it and putting it in my mouth, then chewing,” Jordan said, rolling his eyes. It was an old argument. “I take it you’re going to work, then?”

“Yeah.” I searched for a clean bowl. One of us really needed to do dishes. “If I don’t give Kat the opportunity to gleefully tell our listeners how much like shit I actually look, she’ll never forgive me.”

“I will never understand you two,” Jordan said and shoved another mouthful of cereal into his mouth.

“By the way, you’re invited to lunch with my mom today. She wants to meet Marcus and proceeded to tell me that you and I are far too skinny and probably never eat.”

“She’s somehow managed to completely ignore the recycling bin full of pizza boxes every time she’s visited, then,” Jordan said with a snort. “Did you warn Marcus that your mom will love him and hug him and feed him and call him George?”

It took several minutes, but once I stopped laughing and wiped the tears from my eyes, I was able to answer. “God, the mental image…. She’s not
that
bad.”

“Nah, she’s not,” Jordan said with a grin. “She’s pretty damn awesome. But she
will
drag him into the family, like it or not.”

I nodded. There was no way I could argue about that. It was the truth. It was just my mother’s way. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Marcus would mind.

“So?” Jordan gave me an expectant look.

“What?” I responded, glowering at him.

He rolled his eyes and went back to staring at me, the look on his face telling me that I knew perfectly well what he was asking.

Nosy little shit. “We’re dating,” I told him.

“Well at least that’s a little more truthful,” he grumbled. “Is he at work?”

“Yeah,” I answered and made a triumphant noise as I finally found a clean bowl. I waved it in the air and set it on the counter. “We need to do dishes.”

“I’ll wash them when I’m done eating. You can put them away,” Jordan said. “If you’re dating and he’s at work, why are you eating at home? You should be at the diner.”

“I don’t want to smother him,” I said. I poured the granola I’d scrounged, frowning at it as I did. “You know, I specifically bought this because it said it has coconut in it. I see next to no coconut.”

“The bastards,” Jordan chuckled. “There’s still a bag of shredded in the freezer.”

“Coconut is a very serious thing,” I said. I turned my frown at him and opened the freezer.

“So is the fact that you actually think Marcus would feel smothered at this point in time,” Jordan countered. “Dude, he’d probably be thrilled if you showed up.”

I peeked around the freezer door to look at him. “I’d like to see him too, but I need time to think. I’ll see him at lunch.”

“Do you think he’s going to sleep here afterward?”

I glanced at Jordan as I shut the freezer door, and I was relieved to see that he’d asked the question seriously. I wasn’t sure I was up to dealing with too much teasing right then. “I’m hoping so,” I answered and I began to dump an unholy amount of coconut onto my breakfast. “That’s up to him, though.”

“Jesus, Zach. Have some granola with your coconut, will you?”

I answered him by pinching some out of the bag and shoving it in my mouth. He knew better than to grumble about my weird food cravings.

“That’s just wrong,” he grumbled. “Coconut’s one of those things that should be enjoyed in moderation.”

“Says the guy who ordered twenty deep-fried Twinkies the last day of the fair,” I snarked back.

“I ate them in moderation,” Jordan protested. “They lasted for three days.”

I made a face as I grabbed the milk and took a seat at the table. “Gross.”

Jordan rolled his eyes again and gave me a good-natured poke to the side. “Shut up and eat your coconut.”

That earned him the finger, but I did start digging into my breakfast. “So you’re joining us for lunch, right?” I asked.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Jordan told me. “And yeah, of course I’m going to lunch. Usual place, right?”

“Of course. Noon.”

“I’ll be there,” Jordan promised as he carried his bowl to the sink. When he saw the pile of dirty dishes, he made a disgusted noise. “How the hell did we manage this?”

“With the sheer force of our laziness,” I said, grinning at his back as he grumbled under his breath. “It’s our superpower. We’re like the Wonder Twins, only more useless.”

Without completely turning from the sink, Jordan reached a closed fist in my direction. “Shape of used butter knife.”

Laughing, I leaned over from the table to bump my fist against his. “Form of fuzzy green mold.”

“Great,” he sighed as he went back to scrubbing. “Now all we need is a blue space monkey.”

Once I’d eaten and helped with the dishes, I holed away in my room again to start plotting. I hadn’t been making excuses when I told Jordan I needed time to think, but I hadn’t been completely honest about it either. It wasn’t that I needed to think about whatever was going on between Marcus and me. I was pretty confident I already knew my mind on that.

No. What I needed was to figure out how I could bribe Christophe to earn me a Friday afternoon reservation. Sure, we were friends. Considering how busy they were, though, it would probably take an act of God to find a place to seat us. Eventually I simply called my boss, asked him if me talking on air about a restaurant I particularly enjoyed would be pushing too close to the “free advertising” line for his comfort, then called Chris and left a message on his voice mail explaining the situation.

He called me back around midnight, sounding less than pleased with me.

“You want me to do
what
exactly?” he asked, not bothering with a greeting.

“Please, Christophe?” I whined into the phone that I’d tucked in between my ear and my shoulder. “You keep saying you want me to check out the restaurant.”

“Yeah, but a lunch reservation with so little warning?” Christophe said uncertainly. On the plus side, he sounded less irritated and more likely to listen to my pleas. “What’s the rush?”

“It’s a first date,” I admitted, hoping it would sway things in my favor. “A really, really important first date. Please?”

“A first date? Now I’m really confused. Jordan was telling me the other day that you have a boyfriend.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Yet
, I amended silently. “We’ve been spending time as friends since his last relationship ended, and this would technically be our first date.”

“And you think I can magically pull a Friday afternoon reservation out of my ass?”

“Ew,” I said, making a face despite the fact that he couldn’t see it. “I don’t need to know what goes in or out of your ass, man. You’re cute and all, but
so
not my type.”

Christophe snorted, and I could tell he was grinning. He only made that noise when he was trying to keep from laughing. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do, but you owe me.”

“Free advertising,” I told him. “You know I’ll be happy to extol the superb taste of your cooking on air.”

“Okay, now you’re being a suck-up,” Christophe laughed. “Again, I’ll see what I can do. Now go away. I have things to do.”

“Yes sir,” I said cheerfully. I disconnected the call and tossed my phone onto my bed, feeling better than I had all morning. We had a date, and now I just had to survive him meeting my mom.

W
ORK
WAS
interesting, to say the least. Nearly everyone there exclaimed over the state of my face, and Kat felt the need to mention it at the beginning of the show. I knew Marcus always caught the first hour of the show before he fell asleep, so I turned the story into an amusing anecdote in which I got into trouble just so Jordan would have to throw someone to save my ass. I also left Marcus out of the story completely. His ex was upset, and while I doubted Davis was intelligent enough to pick up on the fact that I was insulting him, I didn’t want to stir the pot if he turned out to be one of our listeners.

Okay, that’s a lie. I totally wanted to stir the pot, but I didn’t want to do it at Marcus’s expense. He’d dealt with enough shit from his ex.

The longer our day went on, the more my head hurt, but Kat knew me well enough to see the signs, and she manipulated the rhythm of the show so flawlessly that I doubted anyone actually noticed that she was doing 90 percent of the work. I’d need to take her out for a drink or three when I was feeling better.

By the time noon rolled around, I honestly wasn’t sure how I’d survive the rest of the day. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my mom, but I was hurting. A lot, actually, and I hadn’t been smart enough to bring anything for the pain. Instead, I sat slumped over my desk, my head cradled in my arms.

There was the thump-rattle of a bottle of pills being dropped onto the desk next to me, and I turned my head just enough to see that Kat had presented me with Advil. “Marcia ran out to get you some, you stubborn idiot,” she snorted. “Take some and get the hell out of here.”

“I’m waiting for someone,” I told her, popping open the bottle to shake out a couple pills.

“About your height? Brown hair, brown eyes, looks lickable?”

“Keep your tongue to yourself, lady, or I’m calling your boyfriend,” I growled. “But yeah, that’s him. He’s here?”

“He’s here,” she agreed, glancing somewhere behind me. “He’s turning a lovely shade of red too.”

I swallowed the painkillers dry and turned to see Marcus standing right behind my chair. He was indeed a little red, but he was smiling. “Hey, Ol—” He cut off what he was saying when he saw the panic on my face, and his smile got wider. “All of us are going to be in trouble if we’re late meeting your mom.”

Grateful that he hadn’t let Kat hear his nickname for me, I nodded and got up slowly. “Yeah, we’d better get going.” I sighed happily when he gave me a quick hug.

Kat cleared her throat. “Do I get an introduction or not?”

“I’d vote for no, but I don’t have a death wish,” I grumbled so only Marcus could hear me. “Marcus, I’m sure you already recognize Kat. Kat, this is Marcus. He broke up with me by text before we ever met.”

The look on Kat’s face was comical, and set us both laughing. Even as she managed to pull herself together, we continued to giggle. “I thought he was a girl,” she told me.

“So did I,” I said. “Luckily for me, that turned out to not be the case.”

“Luckily for both of us,” Marcus said with a bob of his eyebrows.

“You’re together?” Kat squawked. “Jesus H. Christ, you’re like some kind of weird-shit magnet. Don’t you ever have something normal happen to you?”

“Considering I ended up working with you, the answer is no,” I teased and dodged the playful punch she aimed at my arm. “We’re going to go have lunch with my mother. Do you want to join us?”

“Well, that explains why all you did for lunch was sit at your desk and eat a chocolate bar from the vending machine, at least.”

“You what?” Marcus demanded, leveling a glare at me. “Somehow I don’t think that’s what your mother had in mind when she told you to have a snack.”

Kat snickered and stepped back quickly as I narrowed my eyes at her. Damn woman was having far too much fun getting me in trouble. “Thanks for the offer. Seriously. I’d join you guys, but I really just want to get home and sleep.” As she started to walk away, she called “And Marcus, do something about your man’s headache. I understand orgasms are a great cure for those.”

I groaned and rubbed the undamaged side of my face with a hand as I heard my coworkers snickering in her wake.

I
GRINNED
at the look of surprise on Marcus’s face when I pulled up to where we were meeting my mom for lunch.

“A buffet?” he asked me.

“It’s our usual place,” I told him with a grin. “And it’s a good one. No mystery meat, no squid salad.”

“Squid…. What?”

I snickered and reached over to pat his knee. “Ask her about squid salad when we’re in line. Trust me, once you’ve heard the story, you’ll understand why Mom won’t so much as go into a buffet that doesn’t have clearly marked options.”

Marcus gave me a look that said he was a little frightened by that statement, but he undid his seatbelt and climbed out of the car.

Mom was waiting for us at the front door, happily chatting with Jordan. When she saw us, she smiled widely. It was very rare to find her not smiling, to be honest. She was a short, bubbly, plump woman with a heart of gold, and I’d won the jackpot when I got her for a mom. “There you are. Good lord, Zachary, look at your eye!”

“Unless I’ve somehow gained chameleon-eyeball superpowers, Mom, I can’t do that without a mirror.”

She swatted my arm and grinned at me, then pulled a petrified Marcus into a hug. “You must be Marcus. I’m so glad to meet you.”

“Umm….” was all Marcus could get out. He looked over at me with wide eyes, as if asking me what he was supposed to do.

“Don’t traumatize him,” I told my mother. “Marcus, this is my mother, Linda.”

“Nice to meet you,” Marcus croaked as Mom let go of him. He looked from her to me, his eyes getting even wider as he did. “And here I thought you and Brandon looked a lot alike. Jesus.”