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“What?” I spit out, gasping for air as I race against my own endurance on the elliptical. “No I don’t.”
“Girl, you’re red as hell, and it’s not from working out.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me. “I saw the way you looked at him just now. And don’t even act like you didn’t stand straighter to make your ass look better.”
“You are out of your mind,” I mutter as I stare straight ahead. “Austin is m
erely eye candy. Nothing wrong with that.”
She rolls her eyes and lowers the resistance on her machine. “Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself.”
“He’s slept with just about every girl who graduated with me in high school. I have no desire to be with him, ever.”
She finally shuts her freaking mouth long enough for us to finish our workout, shower and get dressed. I’m halfway through applying my eyeliner when she brings the subject up again. “I think I know what your problem is,” she says, tousling her long blond hair into a messy bun.
“That I have a nosey friend who needs to shut up?” I say as I glare at her through the locker room mirror.
Susan presses her lips together in a sarcastic duck-face and slides two bobby pins under her bangs. “You’re surrounded by sexy men. You need to date a sexy man.”
She says the last two words as if all I need to do is go to the man store and pluck one off the shelf labeled Sexy. “Nathan is sexy,” I say. “I think maybe I’m just not good at relationships.”
“Do you want to break up with Nathan?” She asks the question as if it’s a threat and I’m not sure how to answer. Though the thought has occurred to me a lot lately, I can’t bring myself to think or even say the words break up. It’s just so…harsh. I mean, he hasn’t done anything wrong. This is all my fault.
Her cold fingers grab my shoulder. “Your silence says it all, sweetie. Get out there and ask Austin to take you lunch.”
“Oh my God, shut up,” I say, shoving my mascara wand at her. “I do not like Austin. He is probably crawling with diseases. In fact, we should go sterilize the weights.”
Susan perches on the bench next to me, touching her finger to her lips and then pointing to me. “Do you remember why you went after Nathan in the first place? Because he was cute and chubby. The last—what?—four guys you dated were total beanpoles and you spent all your time bitching that their skinny asses made you feel fat.”
I groan, not wanting to be reminded of all the loser men I’ve dated in my twenty-seven years on Earth. Susan continues, “So you made it your mission not to date any skinny guys and then you found Nathan and his beer gut won you over. But now you spend all your time with these sexy body builders and now you want a meathead.” She says it like she has it all figured out—like she has a PhD in Delaney Psychology.
I cap my mascara and turn toward her. “You know your stupid rambling kind of makes sense.”
She winks. “You wanna rub your hands over an oiled up six pack, don’t ya?”
I smile and this time I really do throw the mascara at her. “You are such a pervert. There is more to dating than sex appeal. I love Nathan and I’m not going to break up with him.”
“Right,” she says, following me out of the locker room and out of the gym, whispering dirty things about biceps and sex positions that only strong men can do.
“I think you need to lay off the wine at work,” I tell her, pointing toward the desk where she keeps her stash in the mini fridge.
“Oh I’m not drunk,” she says, poking me in the ribs while she does this little hip-shimmy dance thing that only a drunk person would do. “I’ve just got you all figured out. You’ll come around eventually. I’m telling you…muscles will have you in bed begging for more in no time.”
She stands in the doorway while I walk to my car, completely ignoring how I tell her to shut up. “You know I’m right,” she calls after me. “But why don’t you prove me wrong and go have sex with your boyfriend?”
Chapter 3
Cat groans when I flip on the living room light. She’s passed out on the couch, or at least she was a few minutes ago, and now she mumbles something about fuck me and lights are stupid as she rolls over and shoves her face into the crease of my brown suede couch. Ever since our parents chose to combat their mid-life crisis by going back to college for doctorate degrees, my twenty-one year old sister Cat has taken to crashing at my house much more than she used to.
I sit on the back of her legs and rest my feet on the coffee table. “It’s almost eight-thirty. You have to be at work soon.”
With that, she pulls her head out of the couch and gives me a pathetic version of a puppy face. “I need breakfast, Del. There’s no food at my house. Mom and Dad don’t buy food anymore.”
I punch her in the back of the knee. “There’s an envelope of cash stuck to the refrigerator, dumbass. You’re supposed to buy food with it.”
She wriggles out from under me and sits up, pulling her knees to her chest. “But I don’t want to.”
I roll my eyes and head to the kitchen while she tells me thanks and singsongs about how I’m the world’s greatest sister. I make us both fried egg, bacon and cheese sandwiches and meet her back on the couch a few minutes later.
“You okay?” she asks, diving into her breakfast after shoving a stray piece of bacon back under the bread.
