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“Please,” I say again, only because I know it would probably be inappropriate to just barrel past her. “Let me explain myself to you.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” says Rowan, trying to kick my foot out of the way with her own. “I know what you did. Everyone knows what you did. And everyone knows that Carly did what she did because of your big mouth.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume at this point that smoke should be pouring from Rowan’s ears. I don’t move my foot though; I only come closer.
“You’re right,” I tell her, lowering my voice. “I did blab to Carly, okay? But I’m not the one who had sex with her date—”
“Bu—”
I raise my hand to cut her off. “And his best friend.”
This seems to quiet her down almost at once, and I know it’s because she’s feeling just as guilty about it as I have been. For a long moment, I don’t think she’s going to say anything at all. But then, after a few moments, she sighs, dropping her chin.
“Make it fast.”
I step through the open door as Rowan stands back to let me in, then she closes the door behind her. The house is silent, eerily quiet, and I kick off my shoes and head for the couch, much to Rowan’s annoyance.
“I said we could talk, I didn’t say you could take over my house,” she says with a sneer, sitting down in the recliner across from me. I should have known she wouldn’t get too physically close.
“Are the roommates here?” I ask, trying to ignore the throbbing in my dick that seems to be growing. Rowan shakes her head.
“Jamie’s in class and we haven’t seen Carly since the night you came over.” She glares at me when she says this, and I can almost feel the daggers in my skin.
“She stopped by the apartment last night,” I tell her. “To talk to Dereck.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know. They talked in the car.”
Rowan sighs heavily, and her hands fall into her lap anxiously. “So she’s forgiven him but not me?”
I shrug. “You’d have to ask her that, Row.”
“Don’t call me Row.”
I smile, satisfied with her defense, and lean back on the couch, crossing my legs. “Why not? That’s what we used to call you, remember?”
“Only people I like can call me that,” she snaps, gritting her teeth. “And I fucking hate you.” She gets to her feet then and crosses the room, fuming, but I can see what she’s doing from where I sit: pouring a glass of wine.
“You got any beer?” I call, watching Rowan’s face scrunch up angrily. Despite her irritation, she grabs a bottle of Coors from the fridge and throws it at me. Lucky I’m a good catch, because it almost winds up all over the spotless wall on the other side of me. I pop the top off the bottle and take a sip, eyes on Rowan as she sits down again, taking a long drink out of her glass.
“So why did you come here?” she asks finally. It’s difficult for her to look at me, I can tell, and I can’t figure out how I feel about that. Smug? Annoyed?
Hurt?
“I came here to see you, obviously.” I set my beer down on the table and fold my hands across my stomach, eyes still on Rowan.
“Why? You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We’re not even friends.”
“I didn’t know you were going to school for nursing,” I say, trying to ease the tension in the room.
Rowan scowls. “And I didn’t know you were a firefighter, but here we are.”
“Would you have seen me any differently if you had known I was a firefighter?”
She looks up, meeting my eye, hesitating. “No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What difference does it make?”
