“Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time.”
Anna Collins
I jolted awake with a deeply pressing need to use a toilet and absolutely no idea where I was. Pure instinct dragged me off the bed and into the room … closet … cubby that held a toilet. It wasn’t until I was seated and in the process of emptying my bowels that I blinked properly and realized I was on a boat.
I was on Darius’s boat.
And I was naked.
And pooping.
On Darius’s boat.
“Ahhhh!” I gasp-screamed out loud, then slapped both hands over my mouth in case he heard me and wondered why I was in his bathroom screaming. I also, ridiculously, attempted to stop pooping, only to learn that it can’t be done.
No, no, no, no, no!
So, instead of pointless self-recrimination about pooping in a boat toilet that had to be pumped out to be emptied, I considered my situation. Clearly, I’d been exhausted from a night of painting-theft, because I was not, by nature, a napper. Whether it was a lack of sleep or an excess of orgasm that did it, I’d effectively gone down for the count.
I shushed my brain so I could listen to the sounds of the boat. I could hear water sloshing as though against a dock, and the distant sounds of traffic, which meant I was probably back in the marina. Harder listening resulted in no further information – like whether Darius was still on board. I hoped he wasn’t. Bad enough that I’d fallen asleep stark naked on his bed, but to be found in his toilet was far too much information for a guy I hadn’t even had a first date with.
Which made what we’d done earlier a what? A dalliance?
Clearly I’d been reading too many historical romance novels.
I was gratified to find water in the tap for hand-washing, and then I resigned myself to flushing the toilet, which I did. And that was how I discovered there was no water pressure.
No water pressure in the toilet. No way to flush the poop down.
Crap.
Literally.
“Crap!”
The way I saw it, I had three choices. Either fill a bucket with water and pour it into the toilet bowl in an attempt to force it down, but risk creating a poop floater for Darius to find, or leave it in the toilet as it was, which was essentially the same thing minus the float. Or, I mentally sighed because I knew what the right answer was, I could take it with me.
First, I needed my clothes, and the last place I’d seen them was on the deck, which, if the boat was parked in the marina, meant illegal naked activity. I poked my head out of the head, and smirked at my own feeble joke. The cabin was empty of human life forms, for which I was profoundly grateful. I felt like a cartoon burglar, creeping toward the cockpit of the boat, wondering if I could actually slither on my stomach up the steps to retrieve my clothes without any human eyeballs spotting my shiny white butt.
And then I saw the note, placed on top of my neatly folded clothes, sitting on the table. Bless the man for his forethought and consideration. I quickly got dressed as I read the note, which was an invitation to join him for dinner that night. I might have accidentally kissed the note for delivering such a lovely invitation before I set about rummaging through the man’s galley for something with which to transport my unpleasant cargo.
It was too much to hope for that he had a dog poop bag onboard somewhere, so I settled on a Ziploc baggie and then grabbed a pair of wooden chopsticks. Tongs would have been nice, but I wasn’t sure I was up to the task of disinfecting them afterward.
Getting the poop into the bag was not easily done, and wasn’t even the most horrible thing I’d ever done, which was a story for another time. I was quick and efficient with the chopsticks, as one was when one traveled as much as I did, and then dropped them into the Ziploc with the poop and sealed the whole thing up with a nod of appreciation for the engineering of a well-made plastic product.
Three minutes later I was sauntering down the dock like I wasn’t carrying a bag of poop, mentally planning what I was going to wear to meet Darius for dinner.