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Billy tipped an imaginary hat. “Lovely to meet you, Memphis. I’m here for a few more days.”
“I know.” I turned and left his room.
After a long hot shower to wash away the last of Cowboy Billy, I slipped into bed, reached for my diary and turned to the 9th of January.
At the top, I wrote: Billy Johnson, Room 23 - My Urban Cowboy. I described the smoking hot man with a sad smile, wearing blue jeans and a cowboy hat.
Then in intricate detail, I listed the wonderful things we did together.
I closed the diary, and as the muscles inside me ebbed into relaxation, I waited for sleep.
But my stupid mind was like a pirate ship at the fair, crashing between two unanswerable questions.
Who will be my next man?
And what the hell am I doing?
Chapter Five
“Oh, my God.” Lolita’s greeting from the treadmill she ran on was loud enough to crack coconuts. Even people with iPod buds in their ears turned to her.
“What?” I ignored her bulging eyes as I tossed my towel over the arm of the treadmill beside hers.
She jumped off her equipment and left the base running at full speed to stand beside mine. I tried to ignore her devious grin as I programmed my treadmill to the calorie-burning workout setting and picked up my pace.
Lolita punched the emergency stop button, and I only just avoided going ass over by jumping onto the side rails. “Jesus, Lolly.”
She jabbed me with her pink talon. “You’ve done it again.”
Damn. She was good. Or was I that easy to read? Either way, the crazy bitch missed nothing.
I chewed my bottom lip, contemplating fibbing, but it was pointless. “I may have.” I shrugged one shoulder, pretending I was all blasé about my latest sexual encounter.
She grabbed my arm and dragged me off the treadmill. “Come on, Jane, we’re running along the beach today, and you’re going to give me every little detail.”
I moaned. “But it’ll be hot outside.” Even at seven o’clock in the morning, it would be like the midday temp. I didn’t mind the heat; I just hated exercising in it, especially when there was a perfectly good, air-conditioned gym available to me.
But Lolita wasn’t listening, and before I knew it, we’d stored our towels and water bottles in our permanent lockers at the gym, and she was dragging me by the arm out the front door of the Hot Horizon Hotel.
I put up one final protest. “I don’t have my sunglasses.”
“You’ll be fine. Start running and start talking.” Lolita smacked me on the butt and sprinted away ahead of me in a blaze of lime and black skin-tight Lycra. She was pretty darn confident that I’d follow because she raced off without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
Of course, I followed. But it took all my effort to catch her, and she didn’t ease up when I reached her side. Lolly was tough on me when it came to exercise. I wasn’t complaining though, I’d lost twenty-two pounds since I met her. She was tough on nearly every aspect of my life.
Lolita was the closest thing I had to an overprotective big sister.
The concrete path was wide enough for us to run side by side and leave room for people going in the opposite direction, which they did at regular intervals. To my right, hovering high above the horizon, the sun was a white ball, casting its blazing rays with mid-summer ferocity. By the time we’d finish, I’d be covered in sweat and have sunburnt skin. Lolly, though, would probably look like she could do it all again.
She slapped my arm with the back of her hand. “Okay, babe, cough it up. What’d you do this time?”
“Same as last time.”
She shot me a look of outrage. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I don’t believe you found another old flame and just strode into his room and masturbated.”
Two young men jogging toward us in skin-tight sweatshirts threw glances in our direction. Lolly sure knew how to draw attention.
“Okay, you’re right, he wasn’t an old flame, but yes, I did.”
