Page 4 of Axes and Ohs

He smiles ruefully. “She didn’t even stick around to see me land. Whomp whomp. But!” He leans closer, and I get another whiff of his cologne. It makes my stomach do a complicated gymnastic vaulting maneuver before finally sticking the landing. “Though I didn’t know it at the time, all that pain and suffering was for a reason.”

“It was?” I croak.

“Yep.” He smiles triumphantly. “Because now I can tell you with no hesitation that I am the king of impulsive decisions.”

I laugh loud and long, which is not a thing I think I’ve ever done with a semi before. Life’s just full of new experiences, isn’t it?

“You can be, like, the duke of the land,” he informs me. He waves a hand. “Or the earl. Or whatever they are in that Bridgerton show.”

“Oh.” I blink. “You watched Bridgerton?”

Immediately, I’m aware of how judgy I sound, and I want to kick myself, but Carlos just grins wider, and it does things to me I should not be allowing it to do. Not when he’s just here to be nice to me. Not when he appears to be straight. Not when I’m in public, for fuck’s sake.

I squirm in my seat.

“I do. My niece is fourteen and lives for that shit. And since Esme has her Tio Oso wrapped around her finger⁠—”

“Tio Oso?”

“Tio, as in uncle.” He rubs the back of his neck. “And Oso is Spanish for, um, bear.”

I remember this from the Spanish classes I took in high school, but damn, he looks cute as he explains it. And it fits. Carlos is stocky and protective, giving off definite bear vibes. I would be his Goldilocks any day.

Bad Erick. Stop. No more impulsive decisions.

Carlos’s cheeks turn pink, like maybe he caught something in my expression. “Anyway. I stand by my statement. You’re a duke at best, which means you should, you know, bow before me and whatever.”

The way he says bow before me gives Bad Erick the encouragement he didn’t need, but I try to laugh it off anyway. Carlos and I are facing each other fully now, all four of our knees pressed together, and I laugh that off too.

“Oh, honey,” I say sympathetically. “Me impulsively deciding to fuck with a homophobic client by fucking up my dad’s company’s biggest ad campaign ever, and then also impulsively deciding to come clean, and then rounding that out by impulsively declaring that I want to follow my heart and be a preschool teacher… that was just the tip of the impulse iceberg. I’ve got more.”

“Yeah? Hit me with ’em.” He makes a gimme motion with his fingers.

“Okay. One time… maybe four years ago now?… I impulsively took a guy I’d been dating on a helicopter ride over Manhattan to ask him to be my boyfriend. I’d mentioned going on a helicopter ride in Alaska once, and he said he loved helicopters. So I thought it was perfect. I actually called it Operation Shock and Awwww. I mean, only in my own head, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Carlos agrees. “But dude, that’s not impulsive! That’s cool as shit. I’d be putty in your hands if you surprised me with a big gesture like that. Don’t tell me this asshole didn’t appreciate it.”

I bite my lip. “Brett vomited in my lap. He was afraid of heights, and he’d made up the helicopter thing. When we landed, he told me he couldn’t ‘keep up’ with me, and he thought we were better off as friends.” I shrug, although even now, the memory hurts.

“Ouch.” Carlos’s voice is gentle. “That sucks. But he wasn’t honest with you. You were his mechanical bull.”

“Oh. Damn. I never thought of it that way, I guess.” I take a sip of my drink because I’m feeling all kinds of feelings, and it’s dangerous and worrisome.

He gives me a long look, then says, “I can still top that, though. Back in August, I broke up with the woman I’d been dating for a year.”

My face falls. “Oh. Fuck. Just… impulsively? Do you regret it?”

He tilts his hand from side to side. “Not just impulse. Mamá fell back in July and broke her hip. She needs a lot of help getting around, with groceries and appointments and all that. My sister, Crystal, has two teenagers, a husband, and a big-ass German shepherd, so it made sense for our mother to move in with me so I could take care of her. But Rosie—that’s the ex—she felt like I was abandoning her. Like all I cared about was work and my mom, and I wasn’t even trying to put our relationship first.”

As he talks about his ex, I watch his face. There’s regret there, for sure, but not the heartbreak kind. More like disappointment in the situation.

“We had a big fight,” he continues, “but in the end, I figured there were a lot of things wrong about the relationship, and if I wasn’t invested enough to fix them, I wasn’t in love with her. I wasn’t giving Rosie what she needed. So…” He makes a clicking sound and draws a finger across his throat. Then he takes a long drink of his beer. “Now I’m like… was it a me thing? Do I not know how to be a good relationship partner? Did I give up too fast?”

This conversation is getting deeper than a strangers-in-a-bar convo, but something about this guy has me shaking my head and leaning closer. As in, close enough to count his eyelashes.

Not that I do, obviously, because that would be weird.

“From what you’ve said, it sounds like she abandoned you at a time when you really needed her. She wanted to make it about her, when you were already stressed-out about caring for your family. I’m not slamming your ex for having her own needs and priorities, but the situation wasn’t all on you.”