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22
“What are you doing?” I yelped just after the door closed. “Let me go!”
“Frankie?” We could hear Adam’s voice calling through the door, but neither of us replied.
Xavier’s hand was still locked around my wrist. To my surprise, he obeyed my command, though he certainly looked like he didn’t want to.
“What the hell, Xavi? You had no right to drag me inside like an overbearing caveman.” I shucked my scarf and gloves, practically throwing them into the basket at the base of the coat rack. None of them made it, but I couldn’t even bother to retrieve them.
“No right—no right?” he demanded. “He was all fucking over you!”
“So what if he was? I was on a date for crying out loud! That you encouraged me to go on, I might add. That’s what happens. People make their moves, right? Just like your text said.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Ces,” Xavier snapped, storming down the hallway toward the kitchen, me hot on his tail. “This is the type you go for? The kind that won’t take no for an answer? He deserved a fuck lot more than a door slammed in his face. Like my fists, for a start.” He shoved both hands into his hair, tugged, and groaned. “Christ, I could hear the bastard on the other side of the door, just like I could hear you telling him to get the fuck off!”
I recoiled. “You were listening in on us? What else were you doing, spying through the peephole?”
“Yes!” he hissed, whirling around so fast I was forced to take a step backward, essentially caging myself in one corner of the kitchen. “Is that what you want to hear? That I’ve been sitting on this fucking couch for the last three hours, playing it cool and driving myself crazy? Thinking of you out with some four-eyed twat, smiling at his pat compliments, laughing at his jokes, twirling your hair, and making doe-eyes at him while he’s thinking of all the ways he wants to reenact his favorite pornos. Yeah, he’s really hot for teacher, right?”
My jaw dropped, and before I could stop it, it started to quiver. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“You can believe it and a whole lot more. This isn’t you. I know it’s not you. I knew it the second you left. You’re not meant to be dressed up in some fancy clothes for some arsehole, painted and primped so he can untie you like a fucking package.”
“Oh my God, you made me dress like this.” I poked a finger into his chest with every word.
“Well, I had to get something out of this fucking night, didn’t I?”
“That makes zero sense.”
He leaned down so our noses were practically touching while he spoke through his teeth. “I. Know.”
The quiver of my lip turned into a sob. With sudden force, I shoved him away, then darted around him as quickly as I could, back down the hall and into the half bathroom, where I didn’t quite slam the door. Bracing myself on the sink, I took several deep breaths, begging myself to calm the hell down.
It didn’t matter. His words didn’t matter. Adam’s words didn’t matter. None of them mattered.
Then I looked at myself in the mirror, took in the reddened cheeks, the mussed hair, the smudged mascara. And promptly burst into tears.
Rationally, I understood that Xavier couldn’t have known the way his words zeroed in like sniper bullets on the very things I’d been thinking all evening. That no one, including Adam, was really interested in me. That to him or anyone else, I was nothing more than a mousy little teacher, good for a quick piece of ass and nothing else. That I was a fake in my makeup and finery and whatever else I did to put lipstick on a pig.
I sobbed hard and silent, watching the remnants of my makeup melting down my face. I hated all of it. I wanted my hair back in its messy knot, my eyelids plain and mascara-free, my skin mottled and pink. I wanted to be back to normal. Safe, if essentially undesirable.
“Ces?”
There was a light knock on the door. But I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t stop. He was right. Adam was right. What was I thinking, dressing up like this, trying to impress a man, whether it was the one I’d gone to dinner with or the one who had waited for me at home?
Romance wasn’t for me anymore. This was a joke. I was a joke.
“Ces?”
I took a deep breath. Then another.
“Ces.” There was a note of irritation in his voice now. “Ces, open the door.”
I swallowed. “I just need a moment.”
“Ces, I swear to God. If you don’t open the door right now, I’ll break it down. Don’t do this.”
I shook my head silently. He probably would, too. If Xavier’s temper so far was any indication, patience was not his strong suit.
