Page 2 of Don't Cross Mo Ellery

His voice is about an octave higher than usual. “You mean thecayennesalt?”

Who can keep track of all these fancy salts? “I didn’t want bad luck!”

“So you threw it in my eyeballs?”

My brain panics, bombarding me with questions:Why were your eyes open? You are not an eyes-open sex guy! Was I boring you?Were you thinking about work? Looking around for your phone?But also, if this is a thing he’s into now—unblinking sex—I don’t want to slut shame!

“I’ll get some water!” I yell instead and run to the fridge. Chris’s water bottle is sitting in there, exactly where it always is. I grab it and run back to Chris, whose moans are definitely more pained than swoony now, and it’s at that extremely inconvenient moment that my phone rings. It’s on the edge of the island, where I dropped it whilst being consensually mauled.

I lunge over and check the number.

It’s work.

“Shhh,” I say solemnly to Chris, who is sort of whimpering, and then I answer as I open the drawer where we keep the dish towels. “Hello?”

“Hey,” says the voice on the other end. It’s Ollie, who manages the front desk. “You working remote this afternoon?”

“Yes, that is exactly right,” I say confidently, as if that was my plan this whole time. “Everything okay?”

“Kendra wants you to join the Midwest Tool Warehouse meeting. They just started.”

Nuts. Even though it’s three months away, we’re already nailing down the marketing material for their annual Black Friday sale. Kendra, my boss, owns our scrappy little agency, and she literally can’t comprehend why anyone wouldnotbe working all the time. She works through lunch. She definitely does not have sex through lunch. So of course there’s a meeting.

I would rather throw cayenne salt in my own eyeballs right now.

“Okay, sounds good!” I say, tossing the dish towel at Chris.

He still has his eyes closed, so it just smacks him in the face and falls to the ground.

“Why do you want to hurt me?” he whimpers.

“Mo? You there?” Ollie says. “Click the link I just sent and hit ‘Join.’?”

“Got it, got it,” I say to the phone. I maneuver Chris onto one of the kitchen stools. He’s got his eyes squeezed shut. “Stay strong,” I whisper. “I’m going to flush it out.”

He nods helplessly, and I make soothing noises so he feels taken care of.

I tip Chris’s head back and grab the dish towel from the floor to hold under his cheek, while, with the other hand, I hang up the call, check my email, click the link, and hit Join. Once the call starts, I’m not totally sure how to do all this eye-flushingandpay attention if someone asks me a question.

I shove the phone in Chris’s hand and lean over to whisper in his ear, “Video’s disabled, but I’m not muted, so just hold this, okay?”

He grips the phone in response, and I’m pretty impressed with my multitasking skills.

Speaking of multitasking, I’m wondering if the sex is over, or if we can circle back to it after I get off this call.

Or during? Hmm.

“Thanks for beingprompt, everyone,” Kendra says, and I know that’s a dig at me, since she had to get Ollie to track me down, but I decide not to care. The meeting wasn’t on my calendar. This is fine.

“Ready?” I whisper to Chris.

He nods.

“So what are we—” Kendra starts.

I squeeze the water bottle so it flows directly into Chris’s eyes. He muffles a scream, and then he whisper-whines, “Lemon! There’s lemon in this water!”

“Lemon in water, cayenne in salt!” I whisper-hiss back. “Isanythingwhat it seems in this condo?”