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“I’m not anorexic or anything,” she huffed.
“I know, but I still remember how you looked when we first met and before we pulled you out of that fucking house. Never want to see you looking that thin again. It’s unnecessary. You look good all the time, but better when you’re healthy.”
She chuckled. “That compliment was hard to work out for you wasn’t it?”
“Fucking women, always take things the wrong way when it concerns their bodies or weight.”
“You’re not wrong about that.” The light humor in her tone was so fucking welcome. It was the first real glimpse of something other than rage or sadness in her eyes when she looked at me and I was going to savor it and lock the memory away for later when I couldn’t have her lying in bed with me. I was a fucking moron. She had been there before, and I stupidly gave that up because I was the idiot who didn’t at least attempt to give her my all and see if she could handle it.
“You’re thinking awfully hard over there,” she said before chomping down on a carrot stick.
“Thinking about you.”
She was quiet for a minute as she thought about something and then she tipped her head and sighed, unable to look at me for some reason. “I knew it was over before you ever cheated on me.”
I nodded my head. “Because I packed you up and sent you back to Kip’s place.”
“No, before that.”
“What do you mean?”
It was her turn to nod. “The first time I got into your shower, it clicked that I wasn’t meant to be permanent.”
“How so?”
“I never said a word and just waited for you to clue in. That was probably my fault, but then when you packed my things up and even brought my shampoo bottle out and put it with my stuff, I knew. That was the moment I knew that the club whores, and what they could give you that you felt you couldn’t get from me, would always be more important to you than I was.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I bet if we went back to the clubhouse right now, and looked in your shower, we would see your Old Spice three-in-one.” I grinned at her because that was true enough, but it didn’t explain where she was going with that shit. Did she not like the smell of it? Fuck me. That couldn’t be it because she had used it on herself more than a few times.
“We would also see a bottle of apricot scented body scrub, a minty shampoo, and I think strawberry and vanilla were in there as well. I’m having a hard time picturing what they were now.”
I swallowed thickly, imagining all the bottles of shit that had collected in my shower, left behind by club girls at one time or other. I didn’t think about them, they were just there, window dressing at best. Options for whoever shared my shower next. And then it hit me.
“You thought I should have thrown it all out the minute we became a couple.”
“At the very least, before you invited me to shower in there after we became a couple,” she agreed. “But you never did. I lived there in that suite with you for a little over a month and the only thing that changed was my shampoo was added into the mix when Kip brought it from his house. Before that, I had to use yours because like hell was I going to use one of the club girl’s scents and have her know exactly why I smelled the same way when I walked out into the common room.”
“Shit,” I groaned, finally understanding why it would bother her so damn much.
“That wasn’t the worst part.” We stared at one another for a few minutes before she finally relented. I guess she was waiting for me to put it together on my own, but I didn’t know how I could have possibly thrown everything in her face any worse than that, now that she’d explained it to me. Besides the obvious day when she caught me with someone else.
“The worst part was when you brought my shampoo out and put it on my backpack for me to take back to Kip’s house.” She had said that before, but it was only now dawning on me why that had been important. I felt sick because my intentions hadn’t been to single her shit out. I’d made sure to grab it because she was always squirreling her money away and I didn’t want her to have to go buy new shit when she didn’t need it.
“You left all of their things in your shower the whole damn time I was with you, and even after you kicked me out, it’s all still there.” I was about to argue that point, but she was right. I had effectively kicked her out and we both knew why. I was a selfish bastard. “You made damn sure to yank mine out of that shower though while their things got to stay. That’s when I knew it was over between us. That’s when it really sank in that I could never compete with those women because they were more important to you.”
“That’s not true at all.”
“I wasn’t important to you,” she reiterated, “and you proved that to me just four days later.”
“Nova, I packed your stuff up because I knew you would need it and wouldn’t want to spend the extra money to buy new, not because leaving their stuff and getting rid of yours was more important. I couldn’t even tell you who that shit belonged to or how long it’s been there. It’s possible whoever left it there doesn’t even work at the club anymore. I don’t even know.” I huffed out a sigh and tried to keep my temper from flaring because while she had the right to feel the way she did about those things still hanging around my bathroom, she was wrong about why they were there.
“I don’t care whose shit is in there. It never occurred to me to remove them because they weren’t important. The fact that I removed yours was simply because you were going back to Kip’s, and I didn’t want you to do without. Swear to God, that shit doesn’t mean fuck all to me. It certainly doesn’t elevate anyone in importance over you. That shit was all in your head just like needing something I didn’t think I could get from you was all in mine. That was our fucking problem all along. We didn’t talk about the things that we were building up that should have never been given headspace to begin with.”
“Why don’t we pull our heads out of the past and live in the moment then?”
It was the best suggestion I’d heard in a really long time. “Yeah, that sounds just about right.” She grinned and then we both got down to demolishing the lunch I’d packed for us. When I got back to the clubhouse, I had some cleaning up to do. There was no way she would ever find someone else’s shit mixed in with mine again. Not unless it belonged to her.
