Free One Hit Wonderful by Hannah Murray

you.”
    “Prince Valiant, that’s me. Can we get going with this?”
    She sent him a baleful glare. “All of a sudden you’re in a hurry?”
    “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s eighty-five degrees outside,” he pointed out, “and at least ten degrees hotter than that in this big tin box. And I have a date tonight, one that I would prefer not to be sweating like a teamster for.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll wake up Beau or we’ll step on him when we’re moving the mattress out.” She leaned down and reached around the edge of the mattress, but the dog was just out of reach. “Who’s the date with?”
    “Phillip.”
    “New guy?” She eased into a crouch, wincing as her knees protested. “Where’d you meet him?”
    “Coffee shop on Fifth Street. He was reading The Wall Street Journal in these cute little horn-rims.” Charles sighed. “I do love an intellectual man.”
    “Don’t we all,” she muttered, and stretched her arm into the gap where the dog slumbered on, blissfully unaware.
    Charles stepped forward. “What are you doing back there?”
    “Trying to reach him.” She grunted as her fingers met nothing but air. “How’d he get all the way down there?”
    “Let me do it, my arms are longer.”
    She shook her head. “You’ll never fit back here.”
    “Well, then let’s move the mattress out of the way, and he can just scamper on out.”
    “If we just move the mattress, we might spook him,” Lily said.
    “Gee, how awful.”
    She shifted, her back pressed against the wall of the truck, and reached her arm behind the mattress again. “If I can just reach…” She stretched out, pressing her shoulder into the gap, and felt her fingers tickle fur.
    Charles leaned around the edge of the mattress to peer over her head. “Almost got him,” he said. “Just another inch or two.”
    Lily bit her lip and reached, pressing her cheek into the edge of the mattress, wincing as the muscles in her shoulder sang with the effort. Her fingers met solid dog under the fur this time, and she grinned. “Beau?” She tapped his flank lightly with her fingers, and got a snore in response.
    “Poke him,” Charles said from over her head. “Patting him isn’t going to work, he’s got fur like a grizzly.”
    “Beau, wake up,” Lily cajoled, and gave him a gentle poke.
    “We should’ve just moved the mattress,” Charles muttered. “You couldn’t spook this dog with a bazooka.”
    “Beau, wake up!” Lily said, and jabbed hard mid-snore.
    The dog sprang up as though she’d jabbed him with jumper cables, barking his head off and scrambling to get out of the narrow space between mattress and wall. Lily lost her balance and fell back with a shriek. She rapped her head on the side of the truck and watched, helpless, as Beau’s frantic efforts to get out of the truck shoved the mattress right over. On top of Charles.
    As soon as the mattress wasn’t in his way anymore, Beau scrambled over it and out the back of the truck. The last image Lily had of him was of his big, bushy tail as he ran for the house, barking all the while. She gave brief thought to running after him, but she was laughing too hard to move.
    Partially pinned in the corner by the felled mattress, she didn’t even try to get up. Instead she wrapped her arms around her knees and laughed until tears streamed down her face. She kept trying to catch her breath long enough to ask Charles if he was okay, but then she’d remember the look on his face as the mattress was coming down on him, and lose control all over again.
    “Keep laughing, bitch.” The muttered words from under the pillow-top California king only made her laugh harder. “I’m going to kill you when I get out of here.”
    “I’m…I’m…”
    “A complete and utter whore for laughing at me? Yes, you are!”
    “I’m…sorry!” she finally managed, and thought her ribs might crack. She tried to get up, only to get knocked back into the corner when Charles