Seduction and Snacks (Chocolate Lovers #1)(25)

I rolled my eyes at his retelling of the story. As I recall, Drew made me take him to see a voodoo priestess he found in the yellow pages that week because he said the friend put a hex on his penis. For two weeks he slept with a two-pound package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts on his junk since he refused to sacrifice a live chicken.

"So, he starts talking to her. They're doing some stupid movie-quoting shit that bored the f*ck out of me, and I turned my charms onto her friend to pass the time. We totally hit it off and left those two losers to their geekiness. This girl was smokin' hot and had an ass that wouldn't quit. We found the closest empty bedroom and f*cked like rabbits all night."

Drew had a faraway look in his eyes like he was remembering every detail.

"That's funny, because you couldn't remember shit about her the next day except for the fact that she put a curse on your twigs and berries so they would shrivel up and fall off. All of a sudden you have perfect clarity? You woke up in the bathtub alone, dip shit," I said with a laugh.

"Hey, we're talking about you, not me. And I thought we agreed to never ever speak of the curse again. Her highness, Zelda Crimson-Grass stressed how important that was," he stated seriously.

"So, anyway, where was I?” Drew asked, after looking over each of his shoulders in case the great and powerful Zelda, who charged thirty-five dollars a minute and accepted Visa, Mastercard and traveler’s checks, was standing behind him holding a voodoo doll with pins stuck between its legs. “Carter wakes up the next morning freaking the f*ck out because he thinks his dick is falling off."

Jim laughed and clunked his bottle of beer down on the table to wipe off the drops that dribbled down his chin. "Okay, why the hell would you think your dick was falling off?"

I huffed. "Because…"

"Because Carter here banged a virgin whose name he never got and had a bloody one-eyed snake," he said, interrupting me with a laugh.

I thought I heard Jim growl a little under his breath and I looked his way to see what his deal was, but he brought his beer back up to his mouth right then and wasn’t looking at me. I must have just imagined it. I turned to face Drew to find him still laughing.

"Okay, seriously, you are making this whole thing sound really awful. You need to work on your storytelling skills, idiot," I complained.

"There is nothing about what I've said that isn't true. You're just pissed off after all these years of searching you have never been able to smell her again."

No, that didn’t sound weird at all.

After getting a strange, almost angry vibe from Jim the last several minutes, he finally seemed to relax.

"Wow, so you actually looked for this girl and never found out who she was?" Jim asked.

Drew started to answer him, but I punched him in the arm.

"You shut your mouth. It's my turn," I said to him.

I sighed. I hated thinking about this part. For some reason it made my chest hurt.

"Yes, I looked for her. I would have given anything just to talk to her again and I don’t care how much of a * that makes me sound. I asked everyone on that f*cking campus and no one could tell me anything. I even went to admissions and tried to bribe the secretary into letting me look through yearbooks," I explained.

"Ha ha, she called the cops on you, remember?" Drew laughed.

"Um, yeah I remember. She called the cops because you told her we needed to look at pictures of all the female student body, pun intended, and see which one gave me a hard-on. She thought I was a pervert."

"So, why did you want to find her so badly? I mean, everyone has one-night-stands at some point. Most guys would consider themselves lucky they didn't have to deal with the whole morning-after bullshit," Jim stated.

I should feel embarrassed about this shit, but in all honesty, I didn't. Even though we just met him, I felt like Jim was the type of guy I could confide in and he wouldn't judge me, as opposed to my ex-best friend who was miming the act of playing a violin to go along with my sad tune.

"There was something about her," I said with a shrug. "Something that drew me in and made me want to just be near her. We talked for hours while we played beer pong. She got my sense of humor and we had the same taste in music and movies. Everything I can remember about her just makes me want to find her and see if she really existed. And it had nothing to do with the sex. Although, I would like to apologize to her for ruining her first time since I was completely trashed. It's more than that though. No woman has ever been on my mind as much as her. And it drives me f*cking crazy that I can't remember her face," I said irritably as I flicked my beer bottle cap across the table.

Understanding seemed to wash over Jim’s face and he nodded his head. The anger I swore I saw flash in and out of his features during this entire exchange suddenly vanished.

"Okay, now that you got all the touchy-feely shit out of the way, tell him about the creepy stalker shit you do," Drew said pointedly.

"Fuck you. It's not stalker shit."

"Right, because dragging my ass into every single f*cking girly store and making me stand there while you smell everything that's made with chocolate, made near chocolate or made by something that shits chocolate isn't weird at all. And don't think I haven't forgotten about that last time a few months ago when the clerk asked us how long we'd been dating and you put your arm around me and said, "Well, sugar plum, this big, strong, sexy beast and I have been together for ages now," he said, mimicking the high-pitched voice I used at the time.