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“I gotta go.” I turn, ready to walk away, but Gabe pulls me against him, his front to my back, and wraps his arms tightly around me. I fight the tears, because I can’t cry in front of him. Not over this.
“I’m sorry. I know she’s not your favorite person,” he whispers. “But I was worried about her.”
“She’s mentally unstable, Gabe!”
“She’s had it tough.”
“So?” I turn in his arms. “So have you, so has Mace, and Tommy, and me. Everyone has had it tough. That doesn’t give us the right to be an asshole.”
“I didn’t plan for this to happen.”
I take a step back, out of his embrace. I’m too fucking mad to allow him to touch me. “Oh, so you just fell into her vagina?”
“I didn’t fuck her,” he says bitterly, and then sighs. “She called me in Vegas. When I got home, she was waiting on my doorstep. She was a mess. She hit on me, I turned her down gently—”
“A little too gently, it seems.” I shake my head.
“We got drunk. I fucked up, Lo.” He licks his full lips.Lips I came so close to kissing. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” He runs a hand through his hair, a sure sign he’s agitated with the third degree I’m giving him. “I don’t know what happened, but when I woke up this morning, she was ... we were—”
“Naked. So, you did fuck her ... or she raped you when you were blackout drunk.” I shake my head and look away, my throat burning against the onslaught of tears I’m attempting to hold back. “I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation. She’s your ex—or your girlfriend, now, I guess—and I’m just yourfriend.”
“Lo, that’s not—”
I hold my hands out to stop him. I don’t need to hear anymore. “I’ll see you ’round, Dash. Unless ... of course, Annie says you can’t come out to play anymore.”
I walk away, tears freely flowing down my face now as I pull my sweater closer and battle the wind kicking up the avenue. He doesn’t follow me.
“Fuck!” Gabe hollers. I glance back. A silver trash can clatters to the ground, rolling down the street as he walks in the opposite direction. I continue along the sidewalk, heading for home, and I don’t bother turning around again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lo
Two weeks after my trip to Vegas, Clem comes home from her shift at Pete’s and tosses a menu on my bed. I reach for the glossy paper and peruse the mouthwatering meals. “Oh, Taco Tuesday?”
“Let’s go with rent-is-past-due Tuesday and you need to get up, wash off some of that funk, and find a new job.”
I roll my eyes and fling the menu across my room. It lands in an old bowl of cereal milk, and I scrunch up my nose. Cleaning that up later is not going to be pretty.
“Honey, I know what happened in Vegas didn’t exactly stay there, but you have to move forward, and as much as I love you. I’m not paying for your freeloading ass to sit around and eat all the cereal.”
“I haven’t eatenallthe cereal.”
She glances at the leaning tower of used bowls on my dresser. “Okay. Well, I’m afraid your little tentacled friend is gonna jump out at me from one of these bowls of left-over cereal milk, because I know for a fact, they are growing things ... moldy, alien things.”
When did I becomethisperson? I haven’t talked to Gabe in two weeks, and replaying the incident in that strip club, and then our conversation about Annie over in my head hurts just as much as the first time.
I didn’t plan for this to happen.
But it did. And while he’s fucking his ex-girlfriend, I’m falling apart. I get up late, browse the internet for job prospects, eat cereal, contemplate becoming a cam girl, and wallow in the pillow fort I’ve made of my bed.
If it weren’t for Clem and her new lady squeeze, I’m pretty sure I’d spend all my time watching Netflix and diddling myself—because apparently, I’m the only single twenty-seven-year-old woman left in LA.
“That place is hiring. I saw the sign as I passed on my way home from Pete’s”
I glance at the menu slowly sinking into the goopy oat milk. “Black Sombrero?”
“Yep. Now you can have Taco Tuesday every day of the week. You just have to get your stanky ass up, put on a cute outfit, and wash your goddamn hair.”
