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He had been a fool and a half to think that a golden girl like her would ever acknowledge him as her equal.
Bile rose in the back of Josh’s throat. “I get it, Clara.”
“They’re politicians.” She stared at her hands. “Everyone’s skittish about the reelection campaign. Please understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t beat yourself up.” As sad and pathetic as it was, he couldn’t stop himself from trying to save face. He’d die if she knew how close he’d come to believing tonight meant something. “It’s not like this was a real date.”
Clara reared back for a moment. “Oh. Sure. Right.”
Another nail in the coffin. Everything made sense now, her unusual calm; she’d never thought they’d make it past the bedroom. He wanted to ease the guilt off her face. She wasn’t to blame for his feral hope. “We’re having fun. Messing around.” His voice sounded far away in his own ears.
Clara’s eyes turned the gray of a thousand thunderstorms. “Of course. I know that.”
He wished he could trade places with Rocky Balboa. He’d give anything right now to hit hard slabs of frozen meat and run until he puked. Maybe then he could replace the emotional pain that sat like acid in his stomach with physical pain that meant something. That showed up on the outside.
If the world were fair, Josh would have been able to get into a ring and fight for what he wanted. If the world were fair, he would have stood a chance.
chapter thirty-one
JOSH’S PAIN MADE him crave sugar, so he and Clara showed up to the studio the next morning bearing brownies. They weren’t supposed to arrive until noon, but he couldn’t stay trapped in the house with her any longer.
When he suggested they get going early, his roommate, because that was all she would ever be to him, hadn’t argued. But her eyes had darted to where the keys to the rental car hung on a hook by the door and she’d shivered like they’d sprouted
big hairy legs.
“It’s okay,” he said, understanding her hesitation to get behind the wheel again after the accident. “I’ll drive.”
As he talked shop with Naomi, Josh tried his best to pretend he didn’t have a giant stamp on his forehead that read I had sex with Clara and I’ll never get over it.
As his ex-girlfriend had forewarned, getting involved with his business partner and roommate left him nowhere to lick his wounds. He couldn’t escape Clara. Every time he turned around she looked carefree and pretty, the opposite of his rotting soul. The worse part was, she kept trying to apologize to him over and over again. Which only made him feel worse. He’d never felt as alone as he had climbing into his vacant bed the night before, knowing she was lying feet away and miles apart from him. He’d read the situation with her so wrong, it might as well have been written in a foreign language.
He would count it as a tiny victory if he could at least avoid Naomi detecting his massive miscalculation. Luckily, his ex seemed distracted.
Josh remained paranoid all morning, convinced there were signs of their indiscretion everywhere. For a moment he thought he saw a lingering love bite on her wrist, but it turned out to be leftover chocolate.
This must be karma. In the past, he would have loved the idea of a no-strings-attached romp, but this was Clara. Clara. He wished he’d never gotten a taste of her.
Just a few more weeks. Then at least he could move out. She wouldn’t be the first person he saw when he woke up and the last before he went to sleep. God, he felt sick.
Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he hit pause and took off his headphones, turning to find the object of his unwanted affection.
His breath caught in his throat at the sight of her, at the way the lightweight top she wore left her arms and shoulders bare. He faked a cough to cover his reaction. Even though she kept a healthy distance between them, Josh got a whiff of the sunscreen on her skin. Somehow she’d rewired his brain to find all of these formerly ordinary things arousing. She wasn’t even showing any cleavage, for fuck’s sake.
“Kiana looks great, doesn’t she?” Clara said, looking at the screen over his shoulder, oblivious to the effect she had on him.
Josh forced his gaze back to the video, where a blonde was enjoying some heavy petting from her partner. The shot focused on her reaction. Clara openly admiring another woman in the throes of passion was too much for him at the moment. His hindbrain sat up and growled. “You’ve seen this?”
“Oh yeah. I was there when they shot it last week,” she said, nonchalant.
The sensory knowledge he’d gained the other night had only added fuel to his desire for her. He stood up abruptly, needing to put more distance between them, needing to think of anything but licking her warm, wet skin.
“You wanna order Thai for lunch?” he asked.
“Oh, um . . .” She grew enthralled with a crack in the vinyl of the table.
“Clara’s got plans,” Naomi said, joining them. “But I’ll go in on noodles with you.”
“Plans?” He looked at Clara for clarification. Since when did Clara have plans that didn’t include him?
