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Truth was, I knew my colleagues did amazing work, but I personally didn’t feel like I protected anyone. And even though I had hordes of colleagues and a best friend who I knew, deep down, truly cared for me, I felt lonely.
But tending bar at L’Oscurità, that loneliness had slipped away, and I hadn’t noticed it until now—sitting before someone who was supposed to be my best friend but unable to recognize her.
She stared at me.
I stared back, cataloging her unforgiving features.
Each second that passed deepened the rift between us until the fissures became too broken to mend. I wanted to grab some thread and stitch together the pieces of our friendship.
I also wanted to run away and start fresh, in a place I didn’t have to question everyone’s motives. Where I could just live and be me, whoever that was.
I’d once joked that we could run away to the Caribbean together, except this time, when I pictured it, I didn’t see her beside me.
Jenn sighed, stood, and straightened out the wrinkles on her corporate America pantsuit, reaching out a hand to me.
A fucking hand.
Like we were standing in the Oval Office or something.
“I think we should call it a day. It was lovely to see you again, Ari.”
I took her hand in mine, and she latched her grip tightly as she shook.
My eyes darted around the room, wondering what the hell was going on, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from under her table to tell me I’d been Punk’d.
But nothing happened.
And it wasn’t until I walked out of the building and made it to L’Oscurità for my shift that I realized one of the many things that was off.
The vase I’d given Jenn a few years ago for Christmas had been replaced with another.
She hated that vase.
That was the point.
A gag gift, something for her to laugh at every time she replaced the floral arrangements she was obsessed with and saw the way they clashed with the bile-yellow porcelain.
But she’d never replaced it, and it stood as a token of our friendship year after year, a testament to the distance between us that could expand but never quite keep us apart.
Turned out, that had been a lie, too.
Avoiding Bastian didn’t lessen my lust.
It clawed its way up my body, moving from my core to my head, filling me with crazed thoughts. I no longer recognized this woman who couldn’t control her desire.
Hell, I think our attraction surprised us both. Because I hadn’t seen Bastian with another woman since we’d met, and me?
I’d wake up each night, soaking wet from dreams of what would have happened had Dana not interrupted us.
Would he have fucked me rough and fast or slow and long?
I’d never know.
I didn’t know what I’d expected after what had happened in the basement, but it wasn’t this.
Him acting like he couldn’t care less that I’d had my lips wrapped around him, his Prince Albert stabbing the back of my throat.
Me wondering when I’d have an opportunity for it to happen again, followed by a litany of destructive thoughts that, if I thought about it, stemmed from whatever the hell was happening with my friendship with Jenn.
