She couldn’t even remember what she and Seth had talked about after the earth had moved; she only knew that the sleepy cadence of his voice was enormously sexy. Though she’d hardly been able to hold her eyes open by the time she hung up, she hadn’t wanted to say good night to him.
There was no way she was going to make it in to work today, but she doubted any of the employees would miss her. She didn’t amble into the kitchen for coffee until almost noon, and then she lounged in her pajamas—which she’d slipped into only upon waking almost completely naked this morning—until after two. Her phone was troublingly silent, but then if what he’d once told her was true, he slept late himself.
And she wanted to hear from him. Imagine that. Even in the back of her intoxicated mind last night, she’d taken some comfort in knowing she might wake up this morning having come to her senses. That her totally out-of-character behavior around him was simply the result of minor glitches in her normally mundane life. A person could take only so much monotony before they had to let off a little steam, right? Seth had been her pressure release. Unfortunately, the pressure had built back up overnight.
If he was still on board, she couldn’t wait for tonight.
There was damage control to do in the meantime. By now, Candace would probably be at Brian’s side at Dermamania, and Macy owed her an apology. Not just for the few tense minutes they’d spent discussing Candace’s lifestyle choices last night, but for the past year they’d spent discussing them. Seth had been right with the whole live-and-let-live thing. As he’d said, if there was distance between Macy and her friends, it was because she’d put it there. The world wouldn’t be crammed into her neat little unchanging box no matter how much she wanted it to be.
Candace’s life was hers to live. God knows she’d fought hard enough to break free from people telling her what to do. Macy didn’t need to be the one stark reminder of Candace’s dark times before Brian had come along. The girl didn’t deserve that, and Macy was going to start working on changing it. Today.
Still, walking into the tattoo parlor where her best friend spent most of her time away from home and class always gave Macy the shudders.
Dark sunglasses shielding her eyes, she drove to the parlor and deflated when she didn’t recognize Seth’s car in the parking lot. Not that he was the reason she needed to come here to do this, but seeing him would’ve been a perk.
Inside, the usual heavy metal was playing at thankfully tolerable levels and the banter was flying fast and furious. Candace was nowhere in sight.
“…all directly out of your friggin’ minds,” Brian was saying without looking up from the tattoo he was working on.
“Dude, that woman ranks off the top of the fuckability scale,” the client under his needle said. Macy wasn’t sure if arguing with your tattooist in the middle of the process was the smartest thing one could do.
“Agreed,” one of the other artists—she thought they called him Tay—announced from across the room, where he was perched on a stool in front of the computer screen. “I’m staring at the evidence right now. I’d hit it like a big rig with no brakes.”
“She’s hot, okay, but she’s got nothing on Maria Brink or Cristina Scabbia.”
“Dude, you just have an Italian boner for Scabbia.”
“Hey, fuck—” Brian took that moment to lift his head and address Tay, but his gaze landed right on Macy still standing near the door. “Oh, hey, Mace.”
She grinned. “Would you be having this discussion in front of your girlfriend?”
One corner of his mouth tugged upward, and a dimple dug deep into his cheek. “She’s privy to the never-ending hottest-chick-in-metal debate, don’t worry. She knows she outshines them all.”
“Awww,” the guys said in unison, breaking into laughter. Tay muttered something that sounded awfully like “pussy whipped”.
“Says the choad who has none,” Brian fired back.
Macy pitched her voice higher to be heard over the bubbling testosterone. “Is she around?”
Brian nodded toward the back of the parlor. “She’s in my office. Go on back.”
“Thanks.”
He watched as she skirted gingerly around the counter to the hallway. “And how was your night?”
If only he knew—and she hoped like hell he didn’t. She realized she hadn’t even thought to take her sunglasses off. Number-one hallmark of a hangover. Her grunted