Great Sass (Providence Family Ties) - Mary B. Moore Page 0,6
my sofa and covering his face with a bruised hand. “I didn’t even think that seeing me like this might be a trigger for you.”
Apparently, when I’d gone into my head, it’d looked like I was heading into a ‘special Sadie’ moment. Now I was the dick because he was trying to get out of my sofa and struggling because he’d had the snot beaten out of him.
Pushing him back down gently and hoping that I wasn’t pressing on a bruised area, I waited until he’d stopped moving before squatting down in front of him.
“Sometimes something like this can be a trigger for me, but then sometimes hearing Dobby fart can trigger me. There’s no rhyme or reason with what can set me off—well, except dealing with someone who’s angry and leaning in my space. That does it every time,” I mumbled, thinking out loud.
“That’ll set anyone off, Sadie Odessa,” Elijah reassured me, still fond of my middle name.
Still, I had to concede that he was probably right about this, so I shrugged and continued. “I wasn’t having one of my moments, I was actually thinking about how I did Bartitsu for the same reason. Then I made a mental note to look online and see if there were any groups in the area once my leg was better.”
“Bar-tit-su?” he repeated slowly, frowning at the name. “Is that some kind of British joke?”
Ironically, I’d thought the same thing, but I figured it was just my friend Brixton taking the piss when he’d suggested it all those years ago.
“No, but I can understand why you’d think that. Bartitsu’s an English martial arts style with things like jujitsu, Savate, and bare-knuckle boxing. There’s even Vigny in it,” I told him excitedly, listing some of my favorite parts of it. Sure, when I’d gone to the first three classes, I’d almost peed my pants, but once I started to understand it, I was hooked. “It’s also known as the martial arts style Sherlock Holmes used.”
Elijah stared at me with his mouth open for a moment. “I need to break this down.”
Standing up, I held up a hand to stop him. “First, you need some tissues and ice packs. Sit still, and I’ll be back in a second.”
Not waiting for a response from him, I hurried to the bathroom and opened the cupboard under my sink. I had a kit with an assortment of first aid stuff in it so I grabbed that. Then I plucked out the little plastic basket thing that had painkillers and tampons, picking up the latter and dropping it back on the shelf because they weren’t going to help.
“Sadie, my nose is bleeding again. I don’t want to get it on your couch, so I need to know where the paper towels are.”
Apparently, the tampons would come in handy after all, so I grabbed the box back up and put it in the basket, making sure to get a fresh roll of toilet paper as I headed back to him with it all.
Passing him the toilet roll, I sat down and twisted so that I had one leg on the couch between us and gestured at him to get on with it. “Give it a clean, and we’ll stick a tampon up it. It sounds weird, but it’s a pretty good trick.”
He was already holding a fistful of tissues under his nose, but when I mentioned shoving a tampon up there, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye like I was crazy. “You’re not shoving that shit up my nose.”
Ignoring him, I looked in the box for one in a pink wrapper, not wanting to shove a super plus up his poor nostril.
“The good news is, you can have a light flow one and not the log sized version. Aren’t I kind?” I snickered, pulling one out and tearing the paper wrapper off it.
Leaning slightly away from me, he shook his head as much as he could. “I don’t care if it’s the size of the moon—”
“Trust me, you would.”
“—I’m not having a tampon stuck up my nose. Do you know how unhygienic that is?” he continued, ignoring my sage advice.
“How’s it unhygienic? You just saw me take it out of its wrapper—it’s sealed wrapper.”
“Because…” he spluttered, waving at my crotch. “It’s a vagina thing, not a nose thing.”
Tilting my head, I tried to understand where he was coming from. What was it with men and periods? A majority of women suffered when the little