Fatal Wounds

24

Valentina

The weather is official warm. Warm when I wake up, warm when I go to work, and warm when the sun sets. The flowers are also beginning to bloom, a beautiful byproduct of spring. And Easter isn't too far away, so naturally my wardrobe is moving away from winter and moving towards spring.

That's what I'm using to justify my shopping spree. Brooke loves shopping, she never comes up with an excuse. I, on the other hand like to have reasoning behind my actions. So, since the season is changing so is my wardrobe.

Both Brooke and Crystal came along. Crystal is looking for new outfits to fit her beautiful mom body. According to her she never returned to her pre-mom body so she's splurging on a new wardrobe as well.

As soon as the smell of pepperoni pretzels surrounds me, I'm inhaling deeply, "I'm hungry."

Brooke and Crystal laugh, "It does smell good." Brooke grins looking around the food court.

"Wetzel's pretzels?" Crystal gasps, "I haven't had those in forever!"

With matching grins we make our way over towards the pretzel stand. Instead of getting a reasonable amount of food we end up with two pepperoni pretzel bite buckets and one cheese pretzel bite bucket, and three lemonades.

"Shopping wears me out." Brooke huffs as she stuffs a pepperoni bite in her mouth.

"Amen." I hum a muffled sound as I bite into a cheese bite.

"It never stops me though." Crystal nods somberly with two pretzel bites in her hands.

"These smell weird." Brooke scrunches her nose pushing the bucket of cheese bites away.

"No they don't." Crystal frowns popping another in her mouth. I take another cheese one and agree with Crystal.

"Whatever. I'm sticking to pepperoni." She takes a big gulp of her lemonade, grabs a pepperoni bite and sits back in her chair with a satisfied smile.

•••

"Hey amor."

"Jesus!" I gasp holding a hand to my chest.

"Nope, just me, Theo."

I look at Theo, with wide eyes, who's sitting in the living room with his laptop and papers scattered across the glass table. I forgot I told him he could come over and wait since I spent longer than I intended to at the mall.

"Hey." I mumble feeling my heart steady. I place my bags near the couch on the floor.

"Come here." He beckons me over, tapping two fingers against his thigh. I make my way over to him, standing between his legs and the table. His fingers clasp around my wrist and he gently pulls on it, "Come here." He says again gesturing to his lap.

A smile pulls at my lips as I grab onto his shoulders and get onto his lap, my knees beside his thighs. "Yes, Theo?"

His smile is soft as he runs his hands down my arms, they settle at my hips and he uses his fingers to draw soothing circles. He pulls my body closer to his, till we're stomach to stomach.