Chasin' Eight (Rough Riders #11)(98)

Yet, for as addictive as their lovemaking had become, the friendship part of their relationship hadn’t changed. They never ran out of things to talk about. Silly things. Serious things. She never had to guess Chase’s feelings on anything. He threw them out boldly and without apology. The silences between them weren’t awkward, demanding conversation.
What she wouldn’t give for some silence right now. Total silence. She sighed.
“That’s about the fifteenth time you’ve sighed in the last five minutes. What’s wrong now?”

Rather than let it go again, she snapped, “Do you have to eat those stupid sunflower seeds every damn time we get in the truck?”

Chase said, “Yup,” then spit the spent seeds into his discard cup.
Rattle the bag. Fill his mouth with seeds. Crack the seeds. Spit out the empty shells. Repeat. Sometimes for six hundred miles.
It drove Ava f*cking insane.
Sure, it was Chase’s truck. But if she had to listen to Mr. Chipmunk Cheeks enjoying his nuts for the next three hours, she might do something rash, and rude, and violent to his nuts.
Needing a distraction, she flipped on the radio, scrolling through static until she found a station that played decent music. Her bare toes tapped in time to Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face” as she resituated herself and her laptop.
Click. Off went the radio.
Ava didn’t demand he turn it back on. She just reached over and did it herself.
“Shut that shit off,” Mr. Chipmunk Cheeks said around a mouthful of seeds.
“I’m listening to it.”

“You wanna hear music, listen to your damn iPod.”

“I told you my ear buds broke, but you couldn’t be bothered to stop so I could pick up a new pair. So deal with it.”

He sighed with utter exasperation. “You can have the radio on if you find a country music station.”

“No way,” she sneered. “I hate that whining, puntastic drivel.”

“And ‘Poker Face’ is what? Pure musical artistry?” Chase sneered right back.
“Yep.” Ava cranked the music a notch higher.
He turned it back down. “You’re starting to piss me off.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

How had they survived these last two weeks?
Wait a second. Hadn’t Chase told her he’d rarely made it past the two-week mark with any lover? Maybe this was how he intended to end it. By picking fights.
But you started it. Be the bigger person and let it go.
“I wish I had your damn camera pointed at you right now so you could see your diva side, a side which you claim ain’t there, because darlin’, it sure as hell is.” Spit. Spit.
That smart comment totally screwed him for her being the bigger person. “I wish I had my damn camera pointed at you right now so you could see how ridiculous you look with your mouth crammed full of sunflower seeds,” she mimicked. “Ooh, and the bonus? You’d get to hear how f*cking irritating it is when you spit them out.”

He smiled at her with sunflower seeds all over his teeth.
“Eww. Gross, Chase, shut your mouth. That’s nasty.”

“Now you’re just bein’ mean.” He rolled down the window and emptied his overflowing seed cup.
Great. Now when he spit out his spent seeds she’d hear a ping against the paper cup after the pa-tooey spitting sound.
Next pee break Ava was buying barbecue-flavored CornNuts. The crunch and the smell would be the ultimate payback. “When are we stopping?”

“Not until I need to fill up. Why? You gotta use the bathroom again?”

“My bladder is different than yours. Plus. I’m hungry.” When he offered her his bag of seeds, she almost grabbed it and chucked it out the window. Which he knew, if the smirk on his face was any indication. “I want real food.”