The Girl Next Door - Emma Hart Page 0,41
a pregnant lady.
Boom.
I took control of the remote and switched the TV to the Amazon app. I could barely remember a time that my life wasn’t made easier by technology, and that was pretty sad.
Then again, I couldn’t remember a time when pizza didn’t make me happy, so there was that.
I scrolled to the HBO app and browsed until I found True Blood. A click of the remote told me it was where I’d left off a week ago before my life had done a Fresh Prince of Bel Air and flipped upside down, and that was also something that made me happy.
“Vampires? Really?” Kai carried the food over to the coffee table, unperturbed by me already shoving pizza into my mouth.
“And werewolves and faeries and witches,” I confirmed. “And shifters.”
“Aren’t werewolves shifters?”
“You need to read more.”
He glanced at the TV. “I don’t want to read what you’re reading.”
“You’re missing out.”
“I highly doubt it.”
“Calm down, Judgey McJudgerson.” I shoved the last bit of the crust into my mouth. “There’s a lot of sex in this show.”
His skeptical gaze turned in my direction. “So what is it? Vampire porn?”
“It’s not porn,” I said slowly. “But there’s a lot of boobs.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Then again, if I was Anna Paquin, I’d have no issue showing my boobs off, either.”
“I don’t really know how to respond to that.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t need to, huh?” I grinned.
A low noise rumbled in this throat that sounded like enough of an agreement that I was placated. Thankfully, a half-naked Anna Paquin appeared on the screen and distracted him long enough for me to funnel more food into my mouth, ending the conversation.
I knew she’d get him hooked.
Hell, I had a girl crush on her myself.
“Oh, shit, he bit her.”
I snorted. “He’s a vampire. What did you think he was going to do? Tickle her?”
Kai shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t read vampire porn.”
“I’ll beat you over the head with the books if you keep calling it vampire porn.”
“There are books?”
“It’s based off a book series and I own all thirteen, so that’s a lot of books to beat you with.” I paused. “The books are so much better than the show.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What? That the source material is so much better and descriptive and compelling than a TV show that, by a lack of narration, cannot possibly compete with? Literally half the story is missing because there’s no narration. There is no screen adaptation of a book that has ever been better than the book.”
“Harry Potter?”
“Don’t swear in my apartment.”
“Lord of the Rings?”
“Kai, you can shoot an entire library of books at me and not a single movie or TV show will be better than the original books. It just won’t.” I put my empty plate down on the coffee table. “It’s impossible. And if you really want to argue it, I’ll call my sister and three best friends right now to prove you wrong.”
“Let me think about that for a moment,” he said, staring at me. “Would I like to argue with five women over something I know I’m going to lose? That’s a tough one.”
“Aw.” I touched his arm and got up. “You’re so smart.”
“If I’m going to argue, I’d rather it be over something I actually care about. Like pineapple belonging on pizza.”
“Okay, now you’ve lost me. That’s a fruit, Kai.”
“And? It’s great on pizza.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Look, if I’m eating pizza, it’s not to be healthy. It’s like people who put all those weird veggies on their pizza.”
“Weird veggies?”
“Yes, like onion or pepper or—” I shuddered. “Mushrooms.”
He smirked, looking over at me in the kitchen. “All perfectly good vegetables.”
“No.” I pointed my spoon at him. “No. Mushrooms are not perfectly good anything. They’re gross and slimy and should only be used for locating fairies.”
One of his eyebrows curved up. “Locating fairies?”
“Yes.” I pulled one of the cartons of ice cream from my freezer. “Everyone knows that if you see a ring of mushrooms, it means fairies live there.”
“God, I hope I’m around long enough to teach our child some logic.”
I sat back on the sofa, cross-legged, and cracked open the carton. “As long as you teach them to always use a condom, I’ll forget you ever said.”
“What? You don’t want to be a grandma?”
I scowled. “It’s like you don’t want to make it to fatherhood, never mind being a grandparent.”
He grinned, shoving a potato wedge in his mouth. Clearly finished, he set his empty plate on top