Ride Steady (Chaos, #3)(34)

“WHAT THE FUCK?”

I looked up, tossing a ringlet back that had escaped the red bandana I had tied (rather adorably, I thought) around my head to hold my thick mess of curly hair back, and saw Joker at the doorway to his room, looking unhappy.

The ringlet fell in my eye.

Joker’s eyes narrowed on it.

“What the f*ck are you doin’?” he asked when I didn’t answer his opening question.

“That’s twenty cents,” I returned.

“Hunh?” he grunted.

“Regular curse words are a nickel,” I told him. “Bad curse words are a dime. Everyone knows the f-word is a bad one and since, starting now, you’re paying me every time you curse, that’s twenty cents you owe me.” I shook my hair, bandana and all. “I’ll give it to charity or something. The way you cuss, we’ll probably be able to build a homeless shelter in a week.”

He didn’t look any less unhappy when I finished talking but he did take two steps toward me.

“Carissa, what are you doin’ in my room?”

It was the day after my kiss with Joker. A day where I thought of nothing but Joker… and that kiss. A day and a sleepless night where I thought long and hard about it and made a decision.

I wanted more.

There were a variety of reasons for this.

He was handsome. He wasn’t my type, but really, who knew what my type was? All I’d had was Aaron, and I’d found Aaron was definitely the wrong type for me.

So maybe Joker was my type.

He was also nice. Sure, he cursed constantly and in the beginning he’d seemed thoughtless about my pie, but he and his friends had done a variety of good things for me, all of them huge. But it started with him, which meant he started it.

Further, once he’d prowled out after our kiss, I’d seen the pie plate in his room on his nightstand.

The empty pie plate.

So he had liked my pie.

And last, there was that kiss.

Truthfully, the rest could go away and the kiss could remain and it was so good, I’d still want more.

He acted like he could take me or leave me, but even if I’d only ever kissed Aaron, I’d kissed him a lot and we’d never (not ever) shared a kiss like that.

I didn’t know what was holding Joker back. I may only have had Aaron as experience but there was no way to miss Joker had been into that kiss. A woman throws herself in your arms and you don’t want that, you push her away. You don’t stick your tongue in her mouth, redefine her world, and shuffle her straight to your bed.

He liked it as much as me.

But I didn’t care what was holding him back. I was just going to do whatever I could to put a stop to it.

I looked around his room that now had a stripped bed, four pillowcases full of dirty clothes, a box filled with bottles to recycle, and two huge black trash bags filled with trash. Then I looked down at me, wearing my red Converse, my cuffed boyfriend jeans with the holes in the knees (and up the thighs), my cute tee that declared my devotion to Betty Boop, and the Windex and used paper towel in my hands.

After that, I looked to him. “I’m cleaning your room.”

“For f*ck’s sake, why?” he bit out.

“That’s thirty cents,” I returned disapprovingly.

He didn’t respond. What he did was lean his torso slightly back, wrap his fingers around his hips, and scowl at me in a scary way that again got me talking.

“Yesterday, you were right,” I informed him, lifting my chin. “I would be a fool not to take what you and your friends are offering. It’s extraordinarily kind, too kind, but I’m in a pickle. A bad pickle. I need help. I have no friends. My dad is in Nebraska taking care of my gramma, and I don’t want him worried about me. And my options are limited. But bottom line, I’m concerned about my son. I’m concerned about his father’s behavior, a father who would be raising him and clearly doesn’t know right from wrong or how to be respectful. Now, I have to do everything I can to make certain my son has a good upbringing, that being from me.”

I lifted the Windex bottle and jerked a thumb at myself on the “me” and kept talking.

“So I’m taking you up on your offer,” I declared. “However, the generosity of it makes me uncomfortable, so I’ll be doing what I can to give back. And since you started all this, you’re up first. You need your room cleaned because no one should live like this.” I threw out the Windex bottle. “So I’m cleaning your room.”

“I don’t want you to clean my room,” he returned.

“I didn’t want people I don’t know to offer assistance I need. And further I didn’t want to have a life where I was in a position that I was forced to take that assistance no matter how embarrassing my needing it was. But we can’t always get what we want,” I retorted.

His scowl got scarier. “What’s happenin’ to you is not embarrassing.”

I held his eyes and quieted my voice. “You’re wrong about that, Joker.”

His jaw flexed.

I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders, taking us back to the point. “But I’m taking it and doing that. I’m also giving back. With you first.”

“You’re not cleaning my room,” he declared.

I shook my head. “Too late. It’s half done.”