Chapter 12

Chapter 12
Angie

She’d spent the last fifteen minutes pacing a circle in her apartment. First, the email.
Then she’d texted him!
For once in her life, she felt like she had big ol’ lady balls.
Giant ones.
Brass ones.
Buzz. Buzz.
Angie glanced down at her hand, at the cell resting on her palm. “He’s calling me,” she whispered.
Buzz. Buzz.
“Oh, fuck nuggets.” He was calling her. Oh God. What was she going to say? She couldn’t answer it. Except, he’d just asked if she was up.
Buzz. Buzz.
She was going to pretend that she’d fallen asleep. That was all she could do.
“Yeah, you fell asleep in all of five seconds, you nitwit?” she muttered. Fuck. She had to pick up. She had to.
Okay, no biggie. This was just like email or texting, except with actual vocalizations. Totally doable. She swiped a finger across the screen. No problem at all. This was—
She dropped the phone.
“Fuck,” she muttered, dropping to her knees and hurrying to scoop it up. “Shit. Fucking fumbling fucking fingers.” She put her cell up to her ear. “Hel-hello?”
“You’ve got a dirty mouth.”
All of her breath left her. Just whooshed right out of her lungs, her mouth.
Heat flooded into its place.
“Angel?”
She struggled to regain her ability to speak. “Yes.”
Not exactly an articulate statement, but it was a word and one that fit the circumstance.
“You okay?”
“Uh-huh,” she squeaked before sucking in another breath.
“I wasn’t criticizing you,” he said softly. “It’s sexy hearing a woman who can use the many forms of the word fuck.”
She snorted, and suddenly her lungs were working again. “Why do I feel like that’s a line?”
“It’s not.”
His voice was like liquid honey, running over her nape, dripping with sticky sweetness down her spine.
“Why did you call me, Max?” she asked, and if her voice was slightly breathless, then so what? She wasn’t going to tell anyone.
“I wanted to hear your voice.”
“Now that definitely is a line.” She could sense his smile. “You’re grinning. I know it, so I’m right,” she said, triumphantly.
“Maybe I am, but you’ll never know.”
If they FaceTimed, she’d know. But, Angie glanced down at herself, taking in the hole-filled sweats, the wine-stained T-shirt. Yes, she said wine-stained, because even though she’d sent the email—and the text—it had taken half a bottle of red wine for her to work up the courage.
“I can hear your smile through the airwaves,” she said. “Your voice changes.”
“Like a boy going through puberty?” he asked.
Now he was frowning.
“No.” Angie held her cell between her ear and shoulder as she gathered up her bottle and wine glass. She needed to keep moving, to not focus on the fact that she was talking to Max.
Max.
“Then what?”
She sank into the armchair in her room, covering her lap with a blanket. The bed was tempting her, its cozy white duvet and flannel sheets would be much appreciated on the cold evening, but it felt too . . . intimate to be lying there, chatting with Max when he made all the nerves in her body feel as though they were on fire with just a simple conversation.
“Angel?” he prompted, making her realize that she’d been quiet for too long.
“It gets warmer,” she blurted. “I noticed when you talked with Brayden. Your lips tip up at the edges.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“I’m not crazy,” she snapped.
Now Max’s voice was genuinely concerned. “I didn’t say you were, sweetheart.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Oh.” Not snarky or condescending, just a quiet oh.
Angie sighed and let her head flop back onto the chair. “I suck at people.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” she moaned. “I was an only child growing up, I was homeschooled, and I’m an engineer. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those, just that with my parents and my upbringing and my weird awkward personality—” She broke off with a groan
“You suck at people?”
“Exactly.” Huffing, she pushed to her feet and crossed over to her bed, tugging the covers over herself.
If she was going to be like this—read, strange—then she might as well be comfortable.
“I don’t think you suck. I think you’re nice and sweet and beautiful.”
Angie froze.
“And that’s not a line.”
Her laugh was a little brittle, but it softened, rounding at the edges as Max joined in with her.
“There you are.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Great,” he said. “So, now you can tell me what your favorite movie is.”
“Empire Strikes Back.” Not one iota of hesitation; she loved that movie so much.
“Are you serious right now?”
“Um, yes?”
“Because that’s my favorite movie.”
Angie felt his grin, and her heart skipped a beat, but somehow, she was able to . . . what? Shore up her courage? Feel comfortable enough to be herself? To crack a joke? Whatever it was, she was relaxed enough to say, “No way. It’s mine. You can’t have it.”
In all her life, she’d never really teased anyone.
She hadn’t had that type of relationship with her mom and she certainly hadn’t been secure enough in herself to tease her father.
Work held a certain distance she’d always found comforting and safe. The people there were either her employees or her boss, so she needed to preserve a certain amount of professionalism.
But Max was different.
She thought that maybe things could be different with him.
“Pish,” he told her. “I’m older. I saw it first, and thus, I own it.”
“No way,” she said. “I’ve seen it at least several hundred times. I can quote every line, even the Wookie sounds.”
Wookie sounds?
Angie mentally groaned.
Was she fucking serious? She wasn’t supposed to admit to a man she liked that could make mean Wookie sounds. That sounded insane.
“Arrr!”
She blinked. “Uh—”
“Arrgh. Who. Arghhg.” A pause. “In Wookie language that means, ‘It is mine.’”
“You’re lying.”
He cracked up. “I am. Brayden thinks it’s funny when I do that, because it’s pretty much the only impression I can do.”
“Pretty much?”
A chuckle. “Fine. The only impression I can do.”
“That’s still pretty”—she yawned—“good,” she said.
“You’re tired.”
“I have to get up early for work in the morning.”
“I’ll let you go,” he said gently.
“No.” Another yawn. She was pleasantly buzzed, snuggled beneath her blankets and being serenaded by a gorgeous male voice. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that sleep was drawing her in. Yet, she didn’t want the conversation to end.
“Angel—” he began.
“Tell me about the game,” she said.
“It was a shitshow. Sometimes it’s like that—no bounces, can’t quite slide into that groove.”
“And Brit wasn’t playing,” she murmured.
“You really do watch, don’t you?”
“It’s my sister’s team,” she told him, burrowing into her pillow and closing her eyes. “I couldn’t not watch.”
“Yeah.”
“And then I met you, and . . .”
“And what?” he prompted.
Her breathing slowed, her words sounding almost slurred. “And I felt something. For the first time in an eternity, I felt something.”
“Me too.”
She smiled, her eyes slid closed.
“Goodnight, Angel,” he murmured.
“’Night.”
Angie slipped off into oblivion just as Max hung up.