“Life’s a bitch,” she replies.
And then she lurches away with a shriek.
No more Sabrina in my arms.
No more Sabrina’s thumb on my raging erection.
No more Sabrina’s legs wrapped around my hips.
Just Sabrina gripping my shirt while the whole damn refrigerator rolls backward.
“What—” I start, lunging for her.
The fridge stops with a distinct crunch of cracking plaster or drywall.
She stops.
I smush against her.
The fridge rolls again.
And then something bashes me in the head, powder exploding in my vision.
I suck in a breath and choke on—cheese?
Is that cheese?
Bad cheese.
“Oh, fu—” Sabrina starts, and then she coughs.
And coughs.
I suck in another breath, and I come up choking too. “What—” I start again, but I can’t finish.
An orange cloud is eating us.
It has swallowed us whole, and it is devouring us, choking both of us.
“Drop roll,” I croak. “Drop roll.”
“Not smoke,” she gasps between coughing fits. “Outside.”
“What?”
“Cheese.”
“I do not want to know what I just walked into,” Zen says from somewhere beyond the orange haze.
Oh fuck.
Oh fuck fuck fuck.
“Fridge wall!” Sabrina shrieks, and then she doubles over coughing again.
I shove my dick back in my pants. “Mainte—”
Can’t get it out.
Can’t say call maintenance, because I’m choking again.
It’s up my nose.
It’s in my eyeballs.
It’s all over my fingers.
“Is that powdered cheese? Like on cheese puffs?” Zen asks.
I can’t see them.
My eyes are watering too hard, and if I keep coughing like this, I’m going to send myself into the bad kind of head rush.
“Maybe take the kinky shit to Sabrina’s house next time?” Zen says.
Their hand clamps on my arm and tugs, and a moment later, I get a face full of cold, snowy air.
Sabrina’s hacking up a lung next to me.
Zen got us both.
“One of you two rapscallions wanna explain what the hell I just walked into?” my twenty-three-year-old nibling demands like they’re the adult and we’re toddlers. “And exactly who thought orange powdered cheese belonged anywhere inside Bean & Nugget? Tell me you don’t use that shit when you’re cooking.”
“Chandler—obsession—leftover,” Sabrina croaks out.
Her frog voice is the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
I clearly have a problem.
“Don’t—” I start, belatedly catching on to what Zen’s snicker means.
“So the Cheese Turd strikes again,” they say. “Uncle Grey, mark that down. He has one name now.”
“Make you—lattes—life—call him—to his face,” Sabrina rasps.
“If the Cheese Turd has the audacity to show his face in this place, I’mma call him a lot worse. Sabrina, give me your keys. I’m taking Uncle Grey home, and then I’ll be back with a couple gas masks. Mine’s for fashion. Yours is for cleaning up your mess. Not that either one of you can clean up the hot mess that’s yourselves.”
“Why my car?”
“It’s the Uncle Grey is coated in food car. Keys. C’mon. He’ll buy you a new one if I wreck it.”
“You drive in snow?” her voice is clearing.
Zen doesn’t answer.
I pry open my eyeballs, half expecting everything to be orange, but it’s not.
It’s a blurry white.
Snow.
“I…made it here…fine,” Zen says.
Ah, hell.
“Back inside,” Sabrina says. “You two aren’t going anywhere for a few hours.”
“You two aren’t allowed in the same room as long as I’m here.”
I don’t call them on telling me to bang her just the other night.
No point.
We all know the rules.
Just don’t do it where I have to see it.
14
Sabrina
The idea of being stuck in the café with Grey and Zen while I’m coated in orange cheese is too much to handle, so I break down and give Grey a ride back to the townhouse.
He doesn’t say much.
I don’t say much.
But when I pull up in front of his door—again—he looks me square in the eye and doesn’t even try to get out of the car. “Tell me another puzzle.”