Twenty-Seven
I’M HURRIEDLY TYING MY LACES INTO A SLOPPY BOW when a throat pointedly clears.
Jolting, I cast a panicked look at the two bodies still passed out in the living room before pressing a finger to my lips, shushing the woman shuffling across my apartment.
Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Imani sighs as she takes in the athleisure wear I silently wriggled into barely ten minutes ago. ‘Going somewhere?’
Finishing with my laces, I straighten up and snag the water bottle sitting on the counter. ‘Yup.’
‘Running?’ Imani asks, as she wrenches open a cabinet at random and pouts when a whole lot of nothing greets her. ‘How fitting.’
My temper simmers, but I’m too tired for it to really flare.
I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and it had nothing to do with the fireworks and the music and the festivities that only stopped when the sun came up a little less than an hour ago.
It wasn’t even the pain of my unnaturally crooked neck or the ache in my shoulder that slowly morphed into an unbearable throb the longer it remained immobile, slung across the back of the sofa.
No, it was the heavy head and the broad shoulders practically fusing me to the cushions that kept me awake.
It was a hot cheek pressed to my thigh and a hot arm looped around my waist and hot breath tickling my skin because just using me as a cushion wasn’t enough – Heath had to wriggle his way beneath my hoodie, smush his face against my bare stomach, and torment me just a little more ruthlessly.
He held my hand. All night. Rested our twined fingers on the leg he wasn’t slobbering all over. Pressed to his chest, right where his heart thumped steadily.
No, I didn’t sleep at all. And I don’t have the energy to fight, I barely have anything at all. Just the sad, quiet truth. ‘I can’t be here when he wakes up.’
Imani’s gaze bores into me. I wince when she sighs again.
I slump with relief when shuffling footsteps take her back to the bedroom – only to snap to anxious attention again when she reappears towing a disheveled Matilda, still half-asleep and wearing a mismatched combination of my clothes and her own.
‘Fuck your run,’ Imani grumbles, her shoulder bumping mine as she edges her way outside. ‘You’re driving us to breakfast.’
‘Why would I do that?’ I grumble right back, but it isn’t an argument. In fact, I don’t put up a fight at all. I follow the girls outside, leaving the door unlocked behind me, and I don’t take off at breakneck pace in the opposite direction. Instead, I unlock my car for them.
I get in the car with them.
I roll down the fucking windows in case the sickly redhead curled up in my backseat develops the sudden urge to spew.
I click my seatbelt into place, and Imani snickers beneath her breath, claiming, ‘For the same reason you let us stay over last night.’
That makes me laugh, the noise echoed by the engine roaring to life. ‘Let is a strong word.’
‘Huh. I guess I missed the part where you really tried to fight it.’
I pretend I didn’t hear that. ‘Where do you wanna go?’
‘Barefoot Joe’s,’ Matilda groans, or at least I think that’s what she says. I hear foot and oh, and I make an educated guess, and when the diner comes into view and dual whimpers sound, I assume they’re of relief.
The full parking lot makes me cringe. An equally packed interior renders me rigid.
It’s only a slight solace that the girls seem equally put off by the crowd.
Neither of them offer a greeting to any of the people we pass as they lead the way to the only empty table – shockingly, narrowed eyes and upturned noses are the only kind of acknowledgment I get – and they both slump with their hoods yanked up over their heads as they down the black coffee a waitress plants in front of us almost the second our asses hit the seats.
Palming my own mug, I wonder how long I have to sit here before they’ll let me leave. I wonder why I’m even here, why they want me to be here. They certainly didn’t seem like they wanted to be around me last night. Or at any point in the past couple of weeks.
It’s my own fault, I know. It’s silly to be bitter that they didn’t even attempt to reach out once, I know that too.
But hurt, I know that I am. I yelled at them to leave me alone, I told them we were never really friends, they did nothing but hear me, and I’m hurt.
Holy headache.
‘So . . .’ It’s Matilda who pops our bubble of uncomfortable silence, pausing her violent inhalation of scrambled eggs long enough to probe. ‘We didn’t see you out last night.’
In turn, I pause pushing a soggy piece of pancake around my plate long enough to frown. ‘Why would you have?’
It’s Imani who answers around a kiss of her teeth. ‘We saw Ben.’
My frown persists as I try and fail to locate any correlation. ‘Okay?’
The pair exchange a look I don’t quite understand. ‘You two aren’t back together?’
Something just short of dumbfounded, I stare at them. And then, I laugh hard enough to draw more than one curious look from the surrounding tables. ‘Are you kidding? No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m pretty fucking sure.’ I laugh again, gaping at their confusion. ‘Why the hell would you think that?’
‘Because he told Heath you were getting back together?’
‘What? When?’
‘The day you guys . . .’ Imani fidgets awkwardly with the tail end of one of her braids. ‘Broke up. And every time we bumped into him over the break. A lot last night.’
I lean back, another disbelieving exhale deflating my lungs. ‘I’m gonna kill him.’
‘Might wanna use something sharper than a butter knife.’
My gaze falls to my fingers, where they’re wrapped tightly around said knife.
With a sigh, I let it go and flick it out of my reach, because God knows my ex has a penchant for showing up at the most inopportune of moments, and I don’t think I would actually be able to stop myself from trying to shove the dull blade somewhere vulnerable if he dared to right now.
‘So you’re really not back together?’
‘You want me to take a polygraph or something?’
Imani holds her hands up, palms toward me, conceding. ‘We believe you.’
‘Thanks so much,’ I snark, sullen as I slump, arms crossed and appetite nowhere to be found. ‘That means a lot, considering you believed him first.’
‘We didn’t—’ Imani cuts herself off with a huff. ‘Yeah, okay. That’s our bad. But he was pretty convincing.’
‘Was he?’ I question. ‘Or did you really wanna be right about me using Heath to get him back?’
Neither of them respond. Soon, silence prevails again, only interrupted by the scrape of cutlery and the slurping of coffee.
I push around my food mindlessly, endlessly picking apart their accusations, desperate to know exactly what bullshit Ben has been spewing, but not quite willing to ask; smart enough not to because I know it’ll reach new levels of fuckery and potentially drive me to criminal activity.
I don’t even begin to wonder why he’s doing it, because I know that, his reasoning, will be nothing short of nonsense.
Only logical in his shriveled little brain, and likely to make mine freaking implode with the absurdity of it all – it’s already on the verge of that, as I think about Heath, and him thinking I lied to him.
Him believing so easily that I did. Him thinking I was with Ben, and still having me as his phone screensaver, still looking for me last night, still turning up at my apartment and saying sweet things.
‘He’s here.’
Jerking with surprise, my panicked gaze flies over my shoulder toward the front entrance.
When I find a different he than I expected, relief and disappointment rage a silent internal battle.
In the end, neither win – curiosity steals first place as, while Matilda slides out of the booth with a groan to go greet her twin, Imani goes stiff as a board.
She curls in on herself, tugging her hood further down her face, hiding, if I didn’t know any better.
When I cast another look Brendan’s way and finally notice the girl at his side – the one I guess was keeping him busy last night – I quickly realize I don’t know any better at all.
‘Sorry.’
Dark eyes narrow. ‘About?’
I discreetly gesture toward the twins.
Imani huffs, arms crossing tightly over her chest. ‘Why would I care about that?’
I tilt my head, brows high.
She huffs again. ‘Shut up.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Yeah, well, your face is pretty fucking loud.’
Stacking my forearms on the table, I lean as far across it as I can and lower my voice so there isn’t any risk of eavesdropping. ‘What’s going on there?’
‘Nothing.’
I throw her the same line she once used on me. ‘I have eyes, Imani.’
‘Congratulations. Why don’t you use them to see through your own bullshit?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Why did you do it, Dani?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Heath,’ she clarifies, and I stiffen. ‘Why did you get him to pretend to date you?’
Something like shame flushing me hot, I drop my gaze to my twisted fingers. ‘Kai told you?’
She ducks into my eyeline just to give me that duh look again. Like I’m some kind of dumbass for assuming he could ever keep that a secret. ‘You took it too far.’
‘I took it too far?’
‘You know he likes you, Dani.’
‘No, I don’t. He never told me.’
‘He had to tell you?’
‘Yeah, Imani, he did.’ Frustration brews behind my ribcage, knits my fingers together in a tight, painful ball. ‘I can’t . . . I don’t pick up on things like that, okay? I didn’t know.’
‘Dani, he’s had a crush on you since your freshman year.
He came home after that swim mixer thing and he would not shut up about this beautiful girl and her beautiful scowl and the beautiful way she walked around the room like no one there deserved to be in her presence.
Jesus, he went through a fucking mourning period when you started dating Ben. It was, like, borderline concerning.’
‘Why didn’t he tell me?’
‘Why didn’t you tell him? You told me.’
‘It was easy to tell you.’ Pulling on my fingertips, I attempt a weak smile. ‘I really liked being your friend, even if it wasn’t completely real.’