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“You look like hell,” Michelle commented.
“Great,” I said around a mouthful of bacon. “It matches my mood.”
Michelle’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “What happened last night?”
I filled her in, usually with a full mouth as I stuffed my face as fast as I could. I wanted to get this damn food in me before it was cold and didn’t taste good anymore. I also wanted something to distract me as Michelle got…
Yup, there it was. She got that look on her face. Michelle was a lovely woman. My best friend in fact. Obviously. But she was also shyer than I was and a bit of a goody-two-shoes. I wasn’t exactly a hellraiser, I knew how to be responsible, but out of the two of us I was the one who occasionally broke the rules and said to hell with it all. Like at the kegger with Pike.
“He’s been back in town for two days and you’ve already slept with him again!?” she hissed. “Billie!”
“What! I know! I know. But I couldn’t help myself! You should’ve seen him, Michelle, when that creep came onto me Pike just shoved him up against the wall and then decked him like it was nothing. He was—it was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” Not that I’d ever tell Pike that. “I was so wet—”
“I do not need to hear this!” Michelle looked around wildly, like the old lady in the corner booth across the restaurant could somehow hear us. “Seriously! Billie!” She slumped back in her seat. “I also can’t believe Pike’s actually back. I thought he would never return.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Do you know why he came back?”
I shrugged. “No, it didn’t really come up while he was fucking me senseless.”
“Please stop saying things like that,” Michelle groaned.
“Look, I made it clear that it wasn’t going to happen again.” I finished off the last of my waffle. “I told him that there was nothing between us and that it was a mistake. I never did that last time. Now he knows that I’m not interested, and we can just avoid each other.”
“You know that Morgan will kill you both if he finds out.”
“Morgan doesn’t have any right to,” I snapped. My head was still aching and I felt better but still had that dull sick feeling in the back of my throat.
“He just wants to protect you.”
“I don’t care what he wants. It’s not his job to protect me. It’s not his right, it’s not even his privilege. You know he was an asshole to me. The only reason you’re defending him is that you’ve had a crush on him forever.”
I would normally never bring that up. It was rude, and I knew that Michelle was embarrassed about it, especially after Morgan and I had our falling out. Personally, I thought Morgan was insane not to notice Michelle this whole time. Michelle was awesome, why wouldn’t he want to date her? It was just another reason why my brother was an idiot. In fact, Michelle had never even confirmed that crush to me. I wasn’t blind, I could see how she would blush and stammer around my brother or when talking about him, the way she was blushing right now, but whenever I said it, she never would say anything in the affirmative.
Her silence spoke volumes though, if you asked me.
But I was currently hungover, and frustrated at myself, at Pike, and at the world, so I was exactly in a charitable mood.
“That’s not true,” Michelle said, and she sounded a little hurt. “Whatever feelings I had for someone wouldn’t change the advice that I gave you.”
Ugh. I knew that. “I’m sorry Michelle I’m just… it was a rough night and it feels like someone’s hammering an ice pick into my eyebrow. I’ll get breakfast, no halfsies, my treat.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do, don’t worry about it.” I grinned at her and waved towards the waitress for the check.
“What are you doing to do?” Michelle asked. “Now that Pike’s back in town? And for good, it seems, I heard that he’s got a job, settling in.”
News traveled fast around here. We weren’t exactly what you’d call a small town. We had 15,000 people and we were smack in between two major cities, but it sure felt like we might as well be only five thousand people for the way that everyone seemed to know everybody’s business.
I sighed heavily and rested my elbows on the table, pressing my face into my hands. “I’ll just have to find a way to distract myself. Something. Or someone.”
Michelle patted me on the head. “Good luck with that,” she said dryly.
I flipped her off without looking at her.
9
Pike
Being underneath a car immediately made me feel at home.
Coming back to Canyon was a bit mixed. It was good and bad. And I still wasn’t sure that I had entirely found my footing. But underneath a car, or when I’d popped the hood and was elbows deep in it, I felt like I was home. Like I was settled. Like I actually knew who I was, because I didn’t have to think about who I was or whatever else was going on in my life. I could relax.
