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Don’t look. Don’t even fucking look.The more I try to avoid it, the weaker my resistance becomes. In my peripheral, she drags the fork out between her thick full lips, then I glance over, and she’s licking them clean.Goddamn it.
“This might be the best mac n’ cheese I’ve ever had. Congratulations.”
“It better be,” I answer, looking back down at my bowl. No more watching her. I spear a cheesy corkscrew onto my fork and pop it in my mouth. While chewing, I contemplate how to ask my next question. “Don’t take this the wrong way,because I’m happy to have you stay here, but how come you don’t have anyone else?”
She swallows. “I don’t have a ton of friends. I mean, I do, but none are close. And you seem to know what you’re doing when it comes to my... situation.” She uses her fork to roll pasta around in her bowl, then sets the bowl down. “When you grow up with a lot of money, it’s hard to find true friends. I thought Veronica was mine, but obviously that’s no longer the case. It’s weird, I almost called her the other day because I needed to talk to someone. It hit me that I lost the only confidant I had.”
That fucking sucks.
“Are you going to talk to her again?”
“No.”
That surprises me. “No? Not even to yell at her?”
“She fucked my fiancé. I don’t owe her anything. Our friendship is over, why should I give her my time too? To make her feel better? Fuck that. She wants him, she can have him. That’s punishment enough... I don’t even want to waste time talking about her now, let’s change the subject.”
With wide eyes, I wrench my gaze back to my pasta. This is the second time she’s shut down a conversation when it got heavy. “Listen, if you ever want to talk about it... I may be a dick, but I’m a surprisingly good listener.” She’s got this weird way of making me feel like we’re old friends.
She peers up at me with a lopsided grin. “I’ll keep it in mind.” Her brows furrow. “Why are you a dick, by the way? In public, I mean. Because you certainly have that persona, but you’re not really a jerk, are you?”
I chuckle. “I’m not a fan of most people, and I can get a little protective of the boys on the ice, so there’s that.”
“I think it’s because you don’t like yourself.”
I scoff and take a bite. “I love me.”
She shakes her head and studies me, tapping the back of her fork on her lips as she formulates her thoughts. “I believe you when you say you don’t like people. But you’re almost never alone, you’re constantly immersed with parties and women. So either you enjoy being surrounded by new people—and what you said was a lie—or you hate being alone with yourself... Or you’re running away from something.”
“Okay, Freud.” I roll my eyes. “If I don’t like myself, how come I’m so confident?”
“You’re not confident, you’re confrontational. You live your life on the offensive, that’s why you’re a dick.”
“Not always. I’m not a dick to my teammates. I’m not a dick to you.”
“Because you trust the boys, they prove to you every day they have your back,” she explains with a shrug. I cock my head and stare at her, and she spins away from me. “I think you trust me because I have the same issues you do. Trusting people doesn’t come easy for me either. It’s easier to keep others at a distance than to have to wonder if they’re only trying to fuck you over.”
How does she do that?I’ve never been able to put that feeling into words, and she did it in about ten seconds. It’s like she looked inside my brain, took all my thoughts, and organized them into one simple explanation. It’s unsettling.
“Hm.” I scoot a little farther away. “Something like that.”Exactly that.
“I thought you were simply another womanizing douchebag at first?—”
“Oh, I am.”
“Well, you better start working at it”—she scrunches up her nose—“because your nice-guy is showing.”
I blow out a breath. “Can’t have that, I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Don’t worry, you can get it back. Just make a few tweaks.”
“Such as?”
A smile grows on her face. “For one, you need to talk more shit. You want that come-at-me-bro energy. Be obnoxious but get creative with it.”
I laugh and she keeps going.
“Ooh! How do you feel about bumper stickers?”
