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“Hey, nice to see you,” I said, smiling. Wasn’t his fault he wasn’t the person I wanted to see. “I thought Billie worked Friday nights?”
“Usually, yeah, but she’s got a hot date.” The guy waggled his eyebrows. “Took the night off. She’s always covering everyone’s shifts so it was easy to fill in for her.”
“Yeah, she’s a good person that way,” I agreed, even as my stomach fell to the floor. Fuck. Billie was out on a date with someone?
“What can I get you to drink?” the guy asked. It was a busy night and he had a ton of other people to serve, clearly he wanted to take my order and get on with it.
“Y’know what, I’m not sure, I’ll get back to you,” I replied, giving him an easy grin.
The guy nodded and the minute he turned around to deal with someone else I slid away from the bar and left.
Fuck. I didn’t know Billie would find someone else so soon. Sure, she was gorgeous, sassy, intelligent, I wasn’t surprised that people would try and date her. I just didn’t think she’d say yes. Maybe she was serious about not wanting anything from me. She’d been hot and cold on me, doing shit to get my attention and being pissed when other women were with me, and she’d sure as hell enjoyed having sex with me, but then she would turn around and say there was nothing between us, that we shouldn’t even try. What was I supposed to do with that? Could I be blamed for hoping just a little?
But that hope was the work of an idiot, clearly. She was off with someone else and probably hadn’t even given me a second thought since we’d hooked up on Halloween. Fucking hell.
I needed to clear my head somehow. When I’d been growing up, the only way to really do that was to get into a car and drive, drive, drive. Texas was big, and if you drove out on the old highways and the backroads, especially at night, it was easy to imagine that you were the only person out there. That nothing else existed. Sometimes it even felt like I’d gone back in time, to the days of the wild frontier, when there was nobody out here for miles but a few ranchers.
Fuck it, I had nothing else to do. Why not go on a drive? Put the windows down, listen to some ‘70s rock, clear my head. It might not help but it couldn’t hurt.
I got into my car, revved it up, and peeled out of the parking lot, heading out into the night. I doubted it would get Billie out of my head, but it was worth a shot.
18
Billie
It was a mistake to go out with Carter.
I was nervous as I got ready, trying not to look too fancy, telling myself that it wasn’t a big deal and that it was just a first date. But the moment that we got to the restaurant all nerves flew away, replaced by annoyance.
Carter was being way too fucking handsy. We were seated at a booth at one of the semi-nice restaurants in town. It wasn’t one of the fancy places where you took your partner for your anniversary or to propose, but it was a sure step up from the likes of TGI Friday’s. Not the sort of place you wanted to get caught being groped. I mean, I didn’t want to get groped anywhere, but at least if I was out with my fuck buddy at a sports bar people were accepting of it. Here, we could get kicked out, and I could add public humiliation to the list of grievances I was currently experiencing.
We sat down, and ordered, and then Carter put his hand on my thigh. “That dress looks so easy to take off,” he murmured, his gaze raking over me like he was already imagining me naked.
I glared at him and took his hand off my leg. “This is usually the part of the date where we get to know each other’s personalities, not each other’s body parts.”
Carter laughed. “You’re always so feisty. Like a hissing cat. I love it. Can’t wait to make you purr, kitty.”
I scooted over to the far end of the booth. “Not. Funny.”
This was a serious mistake. I had thought that, well, yeah Carter wanted to get into my pants and had never been subtle about it but I’d thought that he would at least want to get to know me, that he was interested in my personality on top of my body and that his flirting was just, you know, flirting. After all, who flirted by saying hey baby your talent for making bad puns sure is sexy? Nobody. Nobody did that. But that didn’t mean that they actually only wanted you for your body.
