And Shannon wonders why I have Resting Asshole Face.
EPILOGUE (SORT OF)
Shannon
“I’m just going to take off my make-up,” I shout out to the main room as I slip into the bathroom. Behind me is a jacuzzi bathtub bigger than the neighborhood pool I swam in as a kid. Geez—this place can have a tub like that but can’t bother with a basic Keurig machine in the room?
Barbarians.
“Don’t take too long!” Declan calls back. “I can’t wait to soap you up.” He’s just proposed (heh—I love that word) a long, hot soak in the tub and I suspect Declan has plans to make a certain part of his anatomy a loofah for a certain part of mine.
My reflection smiles back at me, cheeks pink and eyes as glowing as polished amber. Mrs. Declan McCormick. Shannon Jacoby McCormick.
Declan’s wife.
I grab the bottle of eye make-up remover and smear some on a tissue, working the mascara off. It’s that new kind, where you use three different gels and one tube of loose fibers that look like ground up cockroach legs and then some pixie dust made from an eleventh century druid’s secret alchemist’s box.
But I end up with eyelashes that make me look like a character in a Hayao Miyazaki movie, so it’s worth it.
One eye done, I move on to the other eye and really goop on the eye makeup remover. My ring glitters in the light and I can’t stop smiling. I just can’t. The ring is perfect, no matter where it’s been.
And this ring has been places...
As I finish my second eye, a chunk of mascara is stubborn. More eye makeup remover and a lot of rubbing and it’s free. Whew. I reach for more tissues, wipe my eyes, and then wipe the extra off my hands.
The ring slips off as I’m cleaning my palm, flying high in an eerily familiar arc as I scream “Noooooooooooooooooo” like I’m in slow motion, the platinum circle plunking into the toilet and rotating, diamond down, weighted by three carats of holy shit.
“Shannon? You okay?” Declan calls out. I ignore him.
The toilet has automatic flush. If I don’t get there in time—
My hand goes straight in the water and my fingers are slippery with that waterproof eye makeup remover petroleum product crap that I curse a thousand times as I try to get the ring. I feel like the Gollum. My precious.
My precious......
I did not endure #Poopwatch for three days, defile a French fry tray, and endure countless poop jokes from every man I know between the ages of six and fifty-three (which is every man I know) to have the ring going down the sewer pipes and into the Hudson River because I was removing makeup.
The irony of that is not lost on me.
The door bursts open and Declan is standing there, completely naked, a fine and glorious specimen of a man. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the doorway, hot, sculpted ass propping him.
“You lied,” is all he says as my fingers work to find the ring.
“Huh?” My brain halts but those fingers are determined.
“You said you didn’t have a hand-in-the-toilet fetish. Is this a joke?” he says, laughing. “Playing a little prank? Reliving how we met?”
When he laughs, things...bounce. It’s distracting. It’s incredibly droolworthy, too. The ring I’m scrambling to grab is a symbol of his commitment to let me touch the bouncy stuff whenever I want.
C’mon ring. Don’t fail me now.
His face changes when I don’t answer and he stands up, walking to the toilet, staring down. “No phone?”
I shake my head.
“No vibrator?”
I shake my head.
“No fetal pink pig?”
I shake my head.
“Then what’s so important that you would—oh, don’t you dare tell me you dropped the Goddamn ring in there!” Declan bellows.
He really does know me a little too well.
And just then, the toilet flushes automatically.
He takes one more step and he’s looking down at my arm directly, fist in the bottom of the bowl as the water gurgles and swirls around me. The water sprays up and a thin mist of—yes—toilet water covers my makeupless face.
He mutters something under his breath in Russian, some kind of curse words. It turns me on. I really don’t want to be turned on while I have my hand in a toilet. The brain makes strange associations and I’d rather not have my erotic dreams for the next few months involve this scenario.
Again.
The flush fades and we’re left in silence, me with a disgusting, germy face and my arm still so deep in the toilet I might as well be helping a cow give birth.
“You do have the ring,” he says slowly, eyes narrowing as he crouches next to me. The light layer of dark hair all over his muscled thighs makes me want to be naked and dirty with him. I can’t help myself.
A different kind of dirty...
I slowly pull my hand out of the toilet, fist tight, and reach out within inches of his face. Unfurling my fingers one by one, his creased brow relaxes.
The light bounces off the three-carat diamond.
And the, uh, droplets of germ-filled water.
His nostrils twitch and one side of his mouth twists up in a smile as he says, “Toilet Girl.”
“Hot Guy,” I say back, eyes racing over him as he laughs. Oh, please, keep laughing. I love the view.
“You are crazy, Shannon.”
“That’s why you love me,” I say as I stand and wash my hands.
“I love you because you stick your hand down toilet bowls?”
“No, you love me because I’m willing to stick my hand down toilet bowls.”
He’s looking at me with the same expression he reserves for my mother. “Parse that one out. Does not compute.”