Bass was doing a good job of keeping his mind off of Miles' niece as he flirted with a leggy blonde. He was already trying to plan out the quickest way to get her home with him, when she told him, "Give me your phone for a second."
He figured that she planned on putting her number in, so he immediately obliged.
The girl may have had plans of giving him her number before, but all of those disappeared as she stared down at his phone for a few seconds and then shook her head in disbelief.
"I sure know how to pick them," she muttered to herself as she set the phone down.
"What?" Bass questioned wondering how she'd gone from fully interested to pissed off in under a minute.
"I apparently have a thing for assholes with girlfriends," she commented.
"Girlfriends? What the hell are you-" Bass cut himself off as he looked down at his phone screen.
It was open to one of the pictures of Charlie that he'd taken earlier. Fantastic, she wasn't even there and she was still managing to get in the way of him taking someone else home.
"She is not my girlfriend," he insisted. "I don't have a girlfriend. She's just a girl I work with."
"Don't give me that crap," she responded. "Look, I get it. I liked you, but look at your phone. You have hundreds of pictures of this girl all from today. Either you're a complete stalker, you're dating her, or you should be."
"You have no idea what you're talking about," Bass insisted. "And why the hell were you going through my pictures anyways?"
"Because it's better to figure out that a guy's already taken before you get involved with him," she responded. "I've made that mistake before."
As she got up and left the table, Bass glared down at the picture of a laughing Charlie.
He put his phone back away and looked around the bar, but his mood was ruined. He didn't want to spend the rest of the night trying to talk some other girl into going home with him after the way that had just gone.
When Bass got home, he fell back onto his bed with a feeling of sheer exhaustion. He couldn't believe that Charlie had still managed to cock-block him without even being there.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was having a terrible dry spell and it was only since meeting her. Twice now he'd had chances completely ruined by her.
He couldn't blame it all on her though, as much as he may have wanted to. There was something wrong with him. He was the one who had left the hundreds of pictures she'd taken and gotten him to take on his phone. He was the one who hadn't wanted to stop taking pictures and the one who still hadn't deleted the pictures even after they'd ruined his night. Even the time before, he'd been the one who had chosen to look after a drunken Charlie instead of going home with the twins. He hadn't even gotten their numbers either; he'd just blown them off.
Bass had a serious problem and he needed to fix it. That was what tonight had been intended to do, but instead he'd just ended up at home alone, even more sexually frustrated than before with thoughts of Charlie plaguing his mind. He rolled onto his side, only to spot the shirt and jeans that Charlie had left behind when he had let her leave in his clothes.
It hadn't taken him long after she had left to notice that the clothes there, but he still had yet to do anything about them.
He knew that he easily could have taken them to her at work, he just wasn't exactly sure of why he hadn't. He'd made up the excuse to himself that he'd forgotten, but he hadn't. Not really. So why the hell were the clothes still there? He couldn't seriously be trying to use that as a way to get her back there. That was way too much and he'd already promised Miles that nothing was going to happen between them, even if Charlie wanted something to, which seemed doubtful based off of how frequently she turned his flirtation down.
He needed to get rid of the clothes and get her off of his mind as soon as possible. If he could just get rid of the clothes and not have to be reminded of her, then maybe he could get her off of his mind too.
Rachel was more than a little surprised when she answered her door to find Bass of all people standing there with a bag in his hand.
"What are you doing here?" She questioned suspiciously as she leaned her weight against the door frame and narrowed her eyes at him.
"Is Charlie here?" He asked in response. He held the bag up a little as he commented, "She forgot this."
Rachel seemed amused as she questioned, "So, what? You're Miles' errand boy now, coming to bring Charlie stuff that she forgets at work?"
That was a better response than explaining to her that it was clothes Charlie had left at his place that he was bringing of his own free-will, so he decided to go along with it.
"That's exactly why I'm here," he responded. "Do you really think that I'd voluntarily choose to spend my night playing lost and found at your house? So is she here?"
The smart thing to do would be to just leave the clothes with Rachel and run. That way, he'd get away from the clothes and any thoughts that Charlie herself might provoke. At the same time, there was a part of his mind that kept insisting that Rachel would look in the bag then and he'd end up getting Charlie caught. So no, he needed to hand them to her in person… But that was it, and then he was out of there.
Charlie was not expecting it when Bass turned into her living room and commented, "Nice sweats."
Dammit. How was she supposed to know that he was going to show up at her house when she was using the sweats he'd given her as pajama pants?
"They're comfy," she defended herself as she sat up a little from where she'd been lying sprawled across her couch.
"I know. Why do you think they look so worn?" Bass questioned in an amused tone.
Danny tore his gaze from the movie they'd been watching to look between Charlie and the smirking model as he commented, "I thought you said you got those sweats from Miles."
"She did," Bass attempted to cover for her. "But they were mine first."
"Right, Charlie's wearing third-hand sweats that she got from Miles," Danny muttered sarcastically before turning his attention back to the TV screen. "Convincing."
"I thought you were supposed to be going out tonight," Charlie pointed out as she looked over at Bass, wondering what exactly it was that he was doing in her house.
"I did. Briefly," Bass responded. "It didn't go well... Here, you forgot this."
He handed the bag over and Charlie looked in it to see the shirt and pants she'd left behind before she set the bag down on the floor and focused her attention back towards him.
"I thought that you were supposed to just get whatever you want just because you're a male model," she retorted with a smirk. "How did you manage to strike out?"
"I'm glad to know that you find my bad luck amusing," he commented.
"Charlie, if he's staying, then you'd better shut him up," Danny insisted. "I'm trying to watch a movie here."
Charlie shot Bass a questioning look as she folded her legs up, so that she was only sprawled across two spots instead of all three, in order to create a spot for him to sit if he was going to stay.
Bass debated for a moment before sitting down. It was fairly harmless, just watching a movie with her and her brother. Miles had said that Charlie was off-limits for sleeping with, not that they couldn't become friends. And with Miles out with Nora and a mental block keeping him from getting laid anyways, he figured that he didn't have anything better to do anyways.
Less than half an hour passed before Bass's cell phone began to ring.
He looked at who it was and then answered with, "Aren't you supposed to be with Nora? What? Did she dump you again?"
Danny paused the movie and then turned to glare over at the two on the couch as he told his sister, "This is your fault, Charlie."
"No. She didn't dump me, asshole," Miles grumbled in response. "And did I just hear Danny?"
"I don't know. Is Danny Charlie's brother?" Bass questioned.
Danny did not seem amused by the fact that Bass hadn't even bothered to figure out his name when he clearly hadn't known it before showing up.
"Where the hell are you and why, Bass?" Miles demanded. "How many times do I have to tell you that Charlie's off-limits?"
"What exactly do you think is happening right now?" Bass questioned. "What? Do you think that I'm having sex with Charlie in front of her brother and taking calls from you during?"
Before Miles had the chance to form a response, Charlie decided that it would be fun to mess with her uncle a little and loudly commented, "I can't find my shirt. Do you know where it went?"
Bass turned to look at her in surprise before glaring at her as Miles began to yell in his ear.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Miles insisted. "I hope you realize that this means that I'm going to murder you."
Charlie smirked widely as she insisted, "Seriously, Bass. Danny's going to be back any second and I can't find my shirt!"
"I'm going to make it a slow and painful death too," Miles continued. "Or maybe I'll keep you alive and just torture you until you wish you're dead."
Danny seemed to decide that it would be fun to join in and get the model into even more trouble, so he angrily demanded, "Why are you two still half-naked? I left the room so that you could get dressed."
Bass gave in then and interrupted Miles mid-death threat to tell him, "Hold on a second." He dropped his phone on the table and waited a few seconds before loudly commenting, "I found your shirt, but I still can't figure out where the hell my pants went."
Rachel appeared in the doorway then, after overhearing some of the commotion, as she demanded, "What the hell is going on in here?"
It added the perfect effect to their little skit, but it definitely was not an act on her behalf.
"It's a joke," Danny explained as he turned to look over in his mother's direction. "We're just messing with Miles."
Rachel looked between her still fully clothed daughter and Bass as her heart rate began to return to normal a little.
It was completely silent for a moment except for the faint sound of Miles' voice coming from Bass's phone.
Bass picked it up and interrupted Miles again to tell him, "Calm the hell down. Do you really think that I would have ever answered my phone, or that I wouldn't have hung up on you by now, if I was really in the middle of trying to get dressed after getting caught with Charlie? Besides, Rachel would have already murdered me for you if something was actually going on."
"Do you seriously think that was funny?" Miles demanded. "I might still have to beat the hell out of you just for pretending that something happened."
"That seems bad for business," Bass pointed out. "So why aren't you with Nora?"
"I am. Why aren't you out like you said you'd be instead of with Charlie?" Miles retorted.
"I was. Long story short, it didn't go well. I'll tell you later," he responded. "I came to drop Charlie's clothes off. Why are you calling me while you're with Nora?"
"Because I made the mistake of feeling sorry for your pathetic ass and was going to invite you over to get drunk," Miles responded. "Which is something that I'll never do again, by the way."
"Feel sorry for me or invite me over?" Bass questioned.
"I'm not doing either," Miles insisted. "…Not ever again."
Bass heard Nora's voice come through the phone then as she told Miles, "Oh, stop being a baby and give me the phone."
Bass let out a laugh at that.
"Are you coming or not?" Nora questioned.
"Give me ten minutes and I'll be there."
A/N: Please read and review! A huge thanks goes out to ambrown1022, RevolutionReader, LemonSupreme, Dark-Supernatural-Angel, ToTheSkyAndBack, and the anonymous guest for reviewing last chapter! :)