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I hate that childish nickname, probably because Mom and Brit have a way of making me feel like I’m ten-years-old again. The only time it doesn’t irritate me is when Dad uses it. Then again, he’s the only one in my family who doesn’t go out of his way to push my buttons. Mom and Brit like to railroad me. They are too much alike. Blunt and abrasive. Same dark hair and startling blue eyes. Identical lithe figures with curves that scream fuck me.
The doorbell rings, and I groan again. No doubt it’s Mom. They usually come at me in stages. If Brit is the lightning, then Mom is the thunder. I push off the bed and drag my feet all the way to the front door. The least she can do is barge in like Brit—then I wouldn’t have to leave my bed of desolation. I pull the front door open, and my brain screeches to a halt.
Perry leans forward, bracing both hands on the doorframe. His brown eyes, normally warm with a seductive glint, narrow on me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, retreating a couple of steps. The way he sizes me up is raising the hair on the back of my neck.
“We need to talk.” Letting go of the doorframe, he crosses the threshold into my apartment, and I take a few more steps back. The door slams shut behind him. “I thought we had an understanding, Jules.”
We haven’t spoken of that night, not even once, almost as if we’d come to a silent agreement.
“We…did.”
He brushes his fingers against my cheek, and his knuckles are soft, free of the callouses Chris has from working in construction. Perry has the hands of a man who crunches numbers for a living. “You’re a mess,” he says, and I wonder if he and my sister are reading from the same script.
“Thanks for pointing that out.” I turn away with a scowl and head for the kitchen. Whenever I get nervous, I always fight the need to keep my hands busy, but it’s a battle I’m losing now. I feel him lingering behind me as I open a cupboard. A second later, I close it and move on to the fridge, unsure of what the hell I’m doing.
Avoiding. That’s what I’m doing.
“I’ve been dealing with this shit storm all morning. How the hell did this get out?”
Jumping from the sharp sting of his words, I grip the refrigerator handle and stare at a jar of pickle relish, mustard, and an open package of hot dogs that are going bad. The milk is probably sour as fuck. Forget hair and nails. I need to go grocery shopping.
“I don’t know, Perry.” And I don’t. How am I supposed to know how my boyfriend caught wind of my drunken one-night stand? Between the tears and yelling, I asked Chris, but that only lit his anger on fire. “I was alone, remember?”
Shoving the door shut on the fridge, I whirl and face Perry, and it’s weird how he doesn’t seem so appealing to me anymore. His eyes are dull and boring, and his blond hair has no life to it. He’s good-looking, sure, with defined muscles hiding underneath his suits. But now I question the reasons behind my initial attraction to him. The truth, especially when it crashes into you in the form of self-awareness, is ugly.
I’d thrived off the attention. The desire in his eyes. The way his voice strummed my insides. My relationship with Chris deteriorated long before I fucked up and slept with another man. Even though we’d been on a “break,” it still felt like cheating to me.
Never mind the fact that Perry is married. I can’t even wrap my head around my actions, and I’ve never been so ashamed of myself. New tears sting my eyes, and I lower my gaze to the shitty linoleum floor, toeing a crack that’s been bugging me since Chris and I moved in.
“Jules,” Perry says, his tone softening the slightest bit, as if he senses the eruption of tears on the horizon and is tempted to head for the hills. “I’m just trying to figure out how this happened. Did you run into anyone that night?”
“Just you and your usual crowd.”
Darlene was there, and if I have to take a guess, she springs to mind first.
“I trust them. I’ve known them for years. No way did any of them leak this.” He folds his arms, and the way he stares me down hits hard. He thinks I told someone.
Seriously?
“Tell me you don’t think it was me.”
“If not you, then who else? Tell me who could have opened their big mouth?”
“Darlene, for one!”
He shakes his head, dark eyes resolute. “She’d never hurt Vicky like that.”
“Maybe she’s jealous,” I shoot back, taking a guess.
His silence confirms my suspicion. He fucked Darlene, too. His wife’s best friend. His business partner, for fuck’s sake.
But I’m not much better. I slept with my boss. My fucking boss.
I feel sick. Sick and small as I wonder how I ended up here. Cheating on my boyfriend, sleeping with a married man…I don’t do shit like this!
“You’ve gotta go,” I say, pushing him out of the kitchen and toward the front entrance.
