Chapter 21
“I think my fake boyfriend is ghosting me.”
Checking my phone for the seventeenth time in five minutes, I was growing more tempted by the second to throw it out my bedroom window.
The day had come for Elliott’s work BBQ.
“Have you tried calling him?” Khloe looked up from her laptop. Tired circles ringed her eyes and her lips seemed to be semi-permanently perched into her infamous stress pout.
Work was dragging her down.
Not that she would ever openly admit that. It wasn’t only obvious from her tired appearance, but I’d heard her on the phone in the early hours of the morning through our paper-thin bedroom walls.
Her boss put immense pressure on her to take on more clients, and Benjamin Gates had once again been photographed fighting outside a nightclub. From what I read online, he not only broke two men’s noses, but he also caused up to $750,000 worth of damage inside the nightclub.
Not exactly what Khloe needed when she was so close to being free from him.
“He’s not answering his phone.” I threw myself back onto my bed beside Khloe. “His last message said he’d pick me up at noon.”
He was over an hour late.
“Maybe he’s caught up at work?” Khloe suggested, tucking into a handful of microwave popcorn. “Stitching up wounds, saving lives, teaching sexually frustrated interns—you know all that Grey’s Anatomy shit.”
I’d already checked the work schedule he shared with me and knew for a fact he was off duty.
Rechecking my messages yet again, I locked my phone and stared at my reflection on the black screen.
Dark eyeliner swept along my eyelids, dark red lipstick stained my lips, and my hair looked fucking amazing. I’d spent nearly three hours getting ready, picking several outfits until I got it right, and ensuring that I looked perfect for the hospital BBQ.
Look, I wasn’t too proud to admit that I pictured Elliott’s reaction to my outfit while getting ready, especially after finding my long-abandoned, sworn-to-never-wear-again low-rise jeans. My stomach swooped at the thought of the pink staining his cheeks while a fire ignited in those hazel hues.
Elliott had a way of making me feel completely and utterly beautiful with one look.
In the three years we were together, Daniel never looked at me the way Elliott did.
Looking back, it was becoming clear how shitty Daniel treated me. At the beginning of our relationship, Daniel showered me with compliments, always quick to show me off to his friends and unable to keep his hands off me.
He made me feel wanted.
However, the moment I stopped punishing my body with my mother’s insane diet and was finally diagnosed with PMOS, it matched up perfectly with Daniel’s behavioral change.
My body changed.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d always been curvier compared to my sister and mother, but over the course of a year, my curves got bigger, and my stomach got softer.
While I learned to love my new shape, to become comfortable in my own skin, Daniel did the complete opposite.
No longer wanting to go out on dates, he instead wanted to stay inside all the time.
Making up excuses for not wanting to go to things with his friends and their partners.
Always wanting to have sex with the lights off and finding any reason under the sun not to go down on me.
Buying me baggy jumpers all the while telling me how much prettier I looked wearing those compared to anything tight-fitting.
I guess I was too wrapped up in work and looking after Nicholas to notice, or maybe I didn’t want to admit that the man I loved no longer felt attracted to me.
“Maybe something’s wrong.” I chewed the corner of my lip. “Maybe he’s sick. Or maybe a family emergency came up? Maybe I should be worried and not angry?”
Khloe hummed, unconvinced. “Or maybe it’s because men are fucking useless.”
“Or yeah, there’s always that.”
“I swear the second we figure out a way to reproduce without them, the fucking better.”
“Wouldn’t you miss the sex part?”
“Coming from you? Doesn’t your life rules make you a nun now?”
“Hey! Leave my rules out of this.”
“Well, at this point, I’m considering joining a convent.
” She typed on her keyboard at an insane pace, her shoulders bunching to her ears.
“It’s like men’s sole fucking purpose in life is to disappoint us.
They make you believe that they are good, that they are changing for the better, and then fucking bam! Good for nothing wastes of spaces.”
“Please tell me how you really feel.”
“Trust me, that is only the surface of the sea of shit I’m swimming in.”
I cocked a brow. “Anything you want to get off your chest?”
“Nope.” She slammed her laptop shut. “I gotta head out. I’ve got a meeting with my colossal wank stain of a boss.”
“Sounds like a fun way to spend your day off.”
“If your idea of fun is having your ass handed to you because of your client’s fuck ups, then yeah, it’s going to be a barrel of absolute laughs.”
I dared to check my phone again.
‘No matter what happens, I want you to know you can always count on me, Peaches.’
Turns out that was a load of bullshit.
I knew it was too good to be true. The second Elliott said those words to me, as much as my traitorous little heart wanted to believe him, my brain reminded me exactly what happened the last time I trusted a man.
There’s only one person in the world you can count on: yourself.
Everyone else will only let you down and hurt you.
But what if there’s something really wrong? What if he isn’t answering because he is hurt, or sick….
Standing from my bed, she pulled a couple kernels of popcorn from her blouse and popped them into her mouth. “Livi, rather than sitting here driving yourself crazy staring at that phone, why don’t you drag your sexy ass over to his place and see what’s going on for yourself?”
“Because what if he is there and he is ghosting me?”
“Then kick him in the balls.”
I barked a laugh. “Solid plan, I like it. And if he isn’t there?”
“Then fuck him,” she said bluntly. “My meeting ends in an hour. If McSteamy stands you up, come meet me and we’ll go out and get shitfaced together. Either way, we’re not letting how good you look right now go to waste.”
I forced myself up off the bed. “What would I do without you?”
“Lucky for you, my friend, you’ll never have to know.”
Banging my fist against Elliott’s apartment door, all but ready to wring my hands around his stupid, bitable neck the second I heard music blaring from inside his place.
How dare he?
After making me go along with this idiotic fake dating plan, a plan that he claimed to need as much as I did, he was just going to stand me up?
Slapping my palm on the door, I shouted over the music, “Open the door, Elliott! Or I swear to Cristo I will find a way to knock it down!”
Readying both my fists to attack the wooden obstacle before me, I all but fell face-first into a hard, bare chest as the music came to a halt and the front door swung open without warning.
Not any chest, but Elliott’s sweat-soaked and very naked chest.
“Wow, easy there,” he said roughly while his two hands settled on my elbows, keeping me upright and not falling to my freaking knees before him.
Though that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Leather, sweat, and fresh paint embraced me like an old lover.
Drawing my hands into knuckle-blanching fists, whatever it took to stop myself from reaching for him and letting my hands wander in places they had no right to be, I jerked back.
A wrong move, a very wrong move indeed.
From this angle, I saw every groove, every hardened sweat-coated muscle that Elliott normally hid underneath his shirt.
What deal with the devil did Elliott’s parents make? Because there had to be some unearthly force at work for one man to be this downright perfect.
And not being able to dance or cook was not enough to balance the cosmic scales.
I snapped my gaze up—up, damn it—forcing my attention to stay far away from the drops of sweat slipping down his sternum.
My eyes bounced to the flecks of deep green paint covering the bridge of his nose and the lens of his glasses.
But of course, the paint didn’t stop there.
Smears of paint covered his collarbone and ran down the ridge of his ribs, disappearing beneath the low-hung waistband of the paint-splattered grey sweatpants that barely hung on his hips.
One foul gust of air and those bad boys were off.
Or one tug from me…
“What the hell, Elliott?” I channeled every ounce of anger I had left. “Do you not own a clock? Or an alarm?”
He blinked twice in confusion.
“And while we are at it, where the hell is your phone?! I swear I’d have better luck getting in touch with a N.A.S.A space shuttle.”
Patting his pockets, he grimaced. “Shit, it must still be in the front of my work bag. I crashed after my shift last night. I must have forgotten to take it out.”
I threw my hands up and laughed in disbelief. “Un-fucking-believable. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
He had enough common sense to look sheepish.
“You were meant to pick me up an hour ago.”
“Oh, fuck. I didn’t realize how late it was—” He ran his paint-stained fingers through his hair, staining the dark strands green. “There’s an alarm on my phone, but with the music, I must have missed it.”
“Uh-huh. Look, Elliot, if you were having second thoughts about going to this BBQ thing, all you had to do was text me, I’d have understood.”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said firmly. “I swear I lost track of time.”
I crossed my arms. “Doing what? Wrestling with a tin of paint?”
“Unpacking.” He opened the door further and let me into the apartment. “Woke up early this morning and thought I’d finally make this place look presentable.”
Understatement of the freaking century.
Being inside, I was able to see exactly how presentable he’d made it.
When I first showed up at Elliott’s apartment, it did not match the man who lived there.
The unopened boxes. The scattered books and journals on the floor. Not to mention the empty vodka bottles—honestly, it made me sad.
Today, however, it was as if I walked into a completely different apartment.