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Before I could control it, my hand flew out and slapped him, hard. My glove left an angry red mark across his cheek, and he stumbled back in shock.
“Fuck off,MisterSterling,” I said in an eerily even voice, just loud enough to be heard over the airport hum. “Don’tevercontact me again.”
I turned on my heel and stalked away, leaving him next to his fancy car.
“You’ll regret this,” he called after me. “You know you will, Skylar!”
I didn’t answer, just held one finger up in an extremely rude gesture as I continued to the main terminal, eager to get as far away from Brandon Sterling as I possibly could.
Fifteen
It took me nearly two hours on an airport shuttle and two trains back to Harvard Square that night. I got more than a few strange looks as I muttered to myself like a crazy woman, occasionally punching a fist into the down of my parka. Every time I thought I had calmed myself down, a new wave of fury would sweep over me as I remembered his words. “I guess I know what kind of girl you really are, Red.”
Fuck him. There was nothing else to say—or think—about it.
At one point, a cocky-faced man with his friends, all of whom looked three sheets to the wind , asked me to smile. The suggestive leer brought out my inner New Yorker in full force as I snarled, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
The man didn’t reply, just murmured “bitch” as he and his friends got off at Kendall Square. Yeah, the way I was feeling right now, he had no idea.
It was nearly eleven by the time I returned to my apartment to find Jane sitting on the couch, drinking from a bottle of wine in her lap while another sat unopened on the coffee table. There was no glass in sight. A rerun ofThe Mary Tyler Moore Showwas playing on the small TV set in the corner, and Jane chuckled in the dark while she rubbed smears of mascara beneath her eyes.
I flipped on the lights. “What’s up, Howard Hughes? Bad date?”
Jane groaned. “The absolute fuckingworst.”
“I bet I can top you.” I stripped off my parka and gloves and flopped them on the kitchen table before joining her on the couch.
“You’re on,” she said and took another swig directly from the bottle. “So, Physics guy? You’d think he’d be shy and sweet, an egghead type. But when I go to the bathroom, he follows me and tries to convince me to give him a blowjob right there in the club. Like, in the fucking hallway. He even unbuckled his fuckingpants.”
“Sounds like a real winner.” I pulled the bottle from her lap and took a long drink myself.
“Yeah. I’d rather not have a record for indecent exposure going into my first year as an ASA. And when I got back, he was sitting with another woman with his hand up her skirt.”
Black tracks of mascara-stained tears trailed under Jane’s glasses and down her cheeks. Immediately I scooted over and pulled her head onto my shoulder.
“Janey, I’m sorry. What a shit,” I murmured as I smoothed her messy bob. I took another long drink of wine.
“It wasn’t even just some chick he picked up at the bar,” Jane said into my sweater. “Turns out he had a whole other date planned for the night, Skylar. He double-booked us in case I wouldn’t put out.”
“Did you at least throw a drink in his face before you left?”
She sat up, took the bottle from me, and had another long slurp, and then belched loudly. “Two, actually. His and his runner-up’s. God, men are shit.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. What is this sludge we’re drinking?”
“Good old Three-Buck Chuck.” Jane giggled and gave me the bottle back.
I scowled. Wine wasn’t my drink, and this was bottom-of-the-barrel crap. But I took another several gulps.
“Yours really must have been bad,” Jane said as she watched.
I handed the bottle back to her and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “You have no idea.”
I proceeded to tell her everything about my night, from my impromptu double orgasm to Brandon’s insane surprise at the airport and our terrible fight. By the end, Jane was staring at me with her mouth open in disbelief, all thoughts of her own shitty night long gone.
“I can’t believe he said that!” she said after I recounted his parting remark.
She thrust the wine bottle at me as if she knew I really needed it. She wasn’t wrong.
