I’m currently on my way to my little brother’s commencement ceremony. James Attleburn is about to be a fancy Manhattan lawyer. I’ll stand beside him, sun-tanned from the small-town oyster farm I’ve relegated myself to, and Mom and Dad will have ample opportunities to remind me of my layoff and criticize my decision to escape the cityfor the summer.
It’s going to be oh-so-amusing.
Not.
At least I’m meeting up with Jane tomorrow. A bright spot in my weekend away.
“Who do you want invited to the after-party?” Kitty’s voice isn’t jumbled by poor service, for once.
“Jane, Sami, some of the other girls from college. Maybe some old high school friends,” I throw out. It isn’t a long list, but as long as Kitty’s there, it’s complete.
“Anyone from Garnet Shores?”
I huff out a laugh. “Well, Grayson might be pretty sad if he missed the best day of his life.”
“I’m assuming Grayson’s the dickhead oyster farmer.”
My mouth opens to confirm, and that’s as far as I get. Because it doesn’t feel fair to make “dickhead” a permanent addendum to his name any more.
In fact, it feels dead wrong.
So I gently correct, “He’s the oyster farmer.”
“Either this backwoods California service is warping your voice, or you just said his name like youlikehim.”
“I didn’t say his name. I said he’s theoyster farmer.”
“Don’t use semantics to get out of this.” There’s a quick intake of breath on the line. “Andyou didn’t deny it. Oh my god. How the tables haveturned.”
“Okay. Slow down.” I thought her ex-husband drained the hopeless romantic out of her, but apparently it’s back. At my expense. “All I did was remove the ‘dickhead.’”
“Mm-hmmm.”
I want to be annoyed, but I feel my cheeks pulling up instead. “Kit, you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“I hear a smile in your tone,” she sing-songs, like she can see me through this phone screen. “You guys hook up?”
My hands slip on the wheel, and the car jerks in themiddle lane.Oh my god.Righting the sedan, I calmly say, “No.”
But he looked at me like he wanted to.
And I wanted him to keep looking at me like that.
I’ve revisited that moment in the office more times than I’m proud to admit in the last three days. Analyzing it inside and out, inspecting it like an FBI detective, searching for indications that my brain and hormones blew it out of proportions. But then I think about his cocky little smirk and that backwards hat and those muscles when he caught me watching him in the warehouse. And the way he worked with his hands on our ride-along. And him taking care of me when I sliced my palm.
And how thinking of a downtown finance man no longer does anything for my libido.
That’s when I land on my libido as the cause. Sex with Kyle had been rare and dissatisfying in the last few months of our dying relationship. Heck, it’dneverbeen satisfying. I’m probably just starved for an orgasm.
Case closed.
“You haven’t hooked up with him, but youwantto,” Kitty concludes. Or she’s taking a shot in the dark and hoping I slip and confirm it.
“I do not want to hook up with Grayson Gold,” I state, like it’s a journal entry that I’m trying to manifest. “He’s too?—”
Dirty. Unrefined.
Those are the adjectives I should say, but I don’t, because like the word “dickhead,” they aren’t entirely honest.
