Steve just sighed. He’d heard the spiel a thousand times before. He knew his friend was just trying to look out for him, though, so he nodded. “Look, don’t go planning some white picket fence future for me just yet. She’s just…she feels different, is all.”
“After your track record with women, I’ll take different every fucking day of the week,” Jamie shot back. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, going silent for a moment before cracking an eye and looking at Steve. “What’s her ass like though?”
Steve barked out a laugh. “What happened to I ‘need to feel something’?”
“Feelings are important, but asses are, too,” Jamie replied, as if it were common knowledge.
“Then I guess I’m in luck, by your mark, because her ass is perfect,” Steve admitted, his hand twitching involuntarily as memories from the night before flood his memory.
Jamie nodded, safely. “This is very good. I’ll allow it. Stay over every night you can.”
“Mmmhmm,” Steve grunted. He rolled his shoulders and searched for another topic, wanting to change the subject, but Jamie wouldn’t let him.
Leaning back in the stool, Jamie gave him a piercing look, “What’s the deal with you not coming home tonight, either? You actually taking her out?”
“No. I’m changing the locks on her door so her shitty ex can’t get in her apartment. He actually came into her apartment using a key he had,” Steve said, angrily.
“An ex?” Jamie made a face.
“Yeah, and don’t look at me like that,” Steve said holding a hand out at his friend. “She isn’t messing around. Jordyn isn’t like that.”
Jamie crossed his arms over his chest. “Isn’t like what, Steve?”
“You know what I mean,” Steve replied. “This is a bad situation for her. He cheated on her and hasn’t gotten it into his head that she’s done with him.”
“Ah, so he’s a psycho who breaks into a girl’s apartment, and a cheater. Nice.” Jamie rubbed his chin and stood.
“That’s why I’m not coming home. I’m just staying to make sure he doesn’t come around tonight,” Steve said. Jamie grinned, wondering if his friend was saying it more for his own benefit than explaining to Jamie where he’d be.
“Sure you are,” he said, smirking. “Bring her around when you decide to take her out, yeah?”
“It’s not like that,” Steve said curtly, but Jamie waved a hand, already walking away toward his first appointment of the day.
“Sure it ain’t, punk.”
“Jerk,” Steve muttered, despite the smile that tugged at his mouth.
Chapter Ten
Jordyn tried notto bounce on the balls of her feet while she paced in her apartment. It was just past nine, and she hadn’t heard anything from Steve. She wondered if he already came and left while she was out with Dora. She would have the luck to miss Steve while she was trying to distract herself from thinking about him. The thought made Jordyn stop short in her pacing.
One great—okay, no, there was no downplaying what she’d had with Steve. It hadn’t just beengreat, it had been amazing; awesome; so beyond anything she had ever imagined for herself that she still couldn’t believe it had happened.
Things like last night didn’t happen to women like her. Things like this happened in movies or books, but not in real life. Not her life. Or at least it hadn’t until she’d met Steve, and now that it had, she was practically obsessing over it and him. She hadn’t ever been this caught up in where Alex was or what he was doing. There had never been this kind of pull in her chest towards him...then again, she wondered if that had anything to do with why he had cheated on her…
“No, that is not healthy thinking,” she told herself. “I am not blaming myself, and whatever I am feeling for Steve is fine. It’s fine,” she told herself, raking her fingers through her hair with a deep breath. “Even if I need to regroup and just...relax.” She turned towards her couch and flung herself down with a loud thump. “Just relax.”
She flipped on the television and began scanning through the channels before settling on a sci-fi B movie. It was the perfect thing to watch, something mindless but action packed enough that she could pretend to not keep looking at the clock on the wall every few minutes. Jordyn pulled her blanket over her and succeeded, at least for an hour, and then another, but then the movie ended and she was left alone with her thoughts again.
Jordyn felt her stomach tighten, the feeling of dread she had been trying to escape now had her firmly in its grasp. That too tight and heavy pressure made it hard to focus on anything other than the fact that it was almost midnight and Steve still hadn’t arrived.
It was time to face the music.
Steve wasn’t coming.
She stood up slowly, stretching her arms over her head and sighing heavily. “Of course he’s not coming. It’s a Saturday night and this isn’t exactly the most interesting place to be,” she mused to the empty room. Her throw blanket was tossed to the side, fuzzy rug, while cozy and cute was probably not the scene a guy like Steve was interested in. He had looked very much in his element in The Velvet Throne. Obsessing over a man she barely knew was... well, Dora was right in her earlier assessment: one night stands were just that.One night.
Jordyn went to the door to yank the chain into place, just in case Alex decided to come crashing into her apartment again. After she had thrown him out, he’d called her nothing short of twenty times through the course of the day. Dora had taken great pleasure in hanging up on him, or sending him text messages in response to the pleas for Jordyn to speak to him.
