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Judgment. That was what I was sensing.
“First of all, you’re at this party too. Secondly, I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I’ve been doing that since I was child. Thirdly—”
“If that’s true, then why are you here?”
“I don’t have to answer to you.” I bent down to grab my shoes and purse. Without saying another word, I moved to the door, but he blocked my path by stepping in front of me. He was so close I could smell the spice of his cologne.
“Thirdly?” he questioned.
“What?”
“Your last decree before I interrupted you?”
Shit, I’d forgotten. “Thirdly, you aren’t my type,” I lied, skirting him and flouncing out the door. I was sure I heard him snicker, but I was proud of myself.
When I made it downstairs, Cleo and Mark were speaking to each other. Cleo was texting on her phone.
“Guys?”
“Felicity!” Cleo gasped and grabbed on to my arm. “What happened? Where did you go?”
“What do you mean?” It felt like I had just seen them.
“Remember we were supposed to regroup? But when we looked for you, and we didn’t see you in the crowd, we thought you’d left,” she replied.
“No. I thought she left, you thought she’d been kidnapped and stuffed into a suitcase,” Mark joked, looking back up the stairs and then to me. “What happened up there?”
“I was just looking around,” I lied again, this time with a smile, and slipped my shoes back on. “You know me. I was able to sniff out the library and curl up to read Dickens. If it weren’t for the clock chiming, I wouldn’t have come down.”
“Seriously?” Cleo groaned. “We want to leave, but no one has seen you yet. You were outside for, like, two seconds.”
“Leave? It’s only been about an hour.”
She shook her head. “Rule number two: never stick around. You start to look desperate. Get their interest and then disappear. Maybe we can—wait, what happened to your number?”
“What?” I glanced down, but the number was gone. I checked the floor to see if it had fallen off. “Oh well. Guys, really, I tried, but let’s call it a night. I don’t want to make either of you look desperate.”
Grinning, I placed my hands around their arms.
“I heard a tone in there,” Mark stated.
“Yes, exhaustion. Now come on.” I pulled them toward the door.
They thought I hadn’t had a good time, but in reality, playing the piano—playing any instrument for the first time in years—was worth anything. I wasn’t sure what that said about me though.
2:12 a.m.
Falling onto the bed, I crawled around on top of the comforters, trying to get comfortable. Because no one had eaten, Mark had driven us to Sam’s Morning Night Kitchen. It was basically what it sounded like: breakfast at night. They talked about all the people who, in just an hour, had come up to them. I made them promise not to check their profiles until we got home.
At least the plumbing would be fixed. Cleo’s sugar daddies always either came to the house themselves or sent someone to fix something for her. Why? Because she said she liked to renovate her home. We owed our new kitchen and bathrooms to her. The patio was all Mark’s people though, fountain and all.
Don’t be stupid.
But I was really curious. Reaching for my laptop, I sat up and was on the sugar baby website before I could stop myself.
When I logged back in, it said, “Welcome back, baby.”
“Somebody really needs to change that.” I giggled. However, my smile faded when I noticed the red circle with a number one inside it, telling me I had a notification. I had a match. One match.
