Chapter Five #2
I nearly crumbled to the floor.
His arm had to weigh more than my entire body.
I held steady and took the shot of acid she aimed at me from
her eyes.
I shot her an acid neutralization glare and followed it up
with a laser beam stare.
She blinked (yeah, my laser beam stare rocked) then
tried to deflect by looking back to Mo.
“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” she remarked.
Her dude gave her a look.
Mo said nothing.
I said something.
“That happens when you break up, Tammy.”
“I’m sorry, you are?” she asked me.
“Lottie.” I grinned saccharine sweet. “Nice ta meet ya.”
“Well, Lottie,” she doused my sweet with some bitter, “we
only broke up a month ago.”
Bitch Translation: It hasn’t been that long for you to be
this tight with him, so I got you.
“Though you were fuckin’ him a lot longer than that, yeah,
Tammy?”
I went still under the weight of Mo’s arm as these words
came out of Mo’s mouth.
The “him” I assumed was the boyfriend since all the color
ran out of his face.
No longer distracted by my chest, Peacock was realizing who
“Mo, the ex” was.
“Let’s move on, Tam, yeah?” the boyfriend said, and I
figured he did this because he had the gift of sight and this conversation had
taken a turn he did not want within reaching distance of Mo.
Tammy’s eyes were full of regret when she looked up at Mo.
“Mo, I—”
“You honest to fuck wanna do this
in a King Soopers?” Mo asked.
“No, she doesn’t,” the boyfriend answered hurriedly.
“Well, I wanna do it in
King Soopers,” I snapped.
All eyes came to me, even, I felt, Mo’s.
“Are you high?” I demanded to know from Tammy.
“Lottie,” Mo muttered, that arm around me tightening, or
more like squeezing.
Even with the real danger of him dislocating my shoulder, I
glared at Tammy.
“You walked right up to him and said, ‘hey,’ after you
cheated on him. Who does that?” I asked.
She looked to her cart and muttered, “Maybe we should just—”
I stepped out from under Mo’s arm and stood in front of her
cart, cutting her off by ordering, “No, bitch, answer me. Who does that?”
I felt Mo’s fingers curl into the back waistband of my jeans
and he probably had to stoop real low because I also heard right in my ear,
“Lottie—”
But I had Tammy’s attention again.
And her squinty eyes.
“Did you just call me a bitch?” she asked.
“Yeah, bitch, I called you bitch,” I answered. Then I
shrieked, “You cheated on Mo!”
Yeah, I shrieked.
But what was the matter with her?
“Fucking hell,” I heard Mo murmur just as I felt my jeans
get tight at the waistband since he jerked me back by using just that.
I whipped my head around then cranked it to look up at him
and yelled, “Let go of me, Mo!”
“Lottie, cool it,” he commanded.
“Fuck cool!” I shouted. “She cheated on you then walked
right up to you at a King Soopers and said, ‘hey!’”
“I don’t care,” Mo told me.
“I care!” I yelled.
“How can you care if I don’t care?” he asked, his face
sharing genuine curiosity.
“She said ‘hey!’” I screeched.
“Is there a problem here?”
Mo turned, and since he still had his fingers in my jeans, I
was pulled around to see a woman standing there wearing a King Soopers apron
with a nametag on it that said Rhonda with the word Manager under it.
“Yes, Rhonda, there’s a problem,” I informed her. “She,”
I swung a pointed finger to Tammy, “cheated on him,” I jerked a thumb
over my shoulder to Mo, “with him.” I finished this pointing in the
direction of the boyfriend.
Rhonda looked between Mo and the boyfriend, cast her
judgment openly through her expression (that’s what I’m talkin’
about!) and was looking disbelievingly at Tammy when I carried on.
“Then she just strolled up to him. No! To us! Right
here in the aisle and said, ‘hey.’”
Rhonda’s brows shot up at me and she looked again at Tammy.
“You said, ‘hey?’” Rhonda asked.
“We’d really just like to move along,” the boyfriend shared
with Rhonda.
Rhonda again looked between Mo and the boyfriend before she
told the boyfriend, “I think that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, move along,” I called after them as the boyfriend
grabbed the cart, did a tight turn, and hustled down the aisle. “And you get
near Mo again, Tammy, I’ll tear your hair out.”
Tammy turned, mouthed fuck you to me…
And then it happened.
Mo was a big guy.
Normally, Mo did not move like Mikhail Baryshnikov and
definitely not like Usain Bolt.
But I learned when the man wanted to move, he moved.
I knew this when one second, he was at my back, holding onto
my jeans, and the next second, he was five feet down the aisle, in front of
Tammy, cutting off her retreat. He was also bent at the waist, hands to his
hips, right in her face.
“No,” he growled.
That was it.
Though that word rumbled down the aisle like a rock slide.
Tammy stood with her back to me, completely immobile for a
second, then she did a wide side step and practically ran down the aisle.
“Keep ahold a’ that one, sistah,”
Rhonda murmured to me. Then called to Mo, “We good, big man?”
“Yup,” he grunted, moseying back to me, again moving
cumbersomely, each step powerfully swaying his hips in a masculine cadence that
made my mouth water.
What those hips could do between my legs I could not
contemplate or I’d have an orgasm in King Soopers.
Right.
It appeared it was high time to take a moment to reflect.
I’d just acted demented in a freaking King Soopers of all
places.
I wasn’t fond of cheaters but that wasn’t about Tammy being
a cheater.
I’d staked my claim before I even knew she was a cheater.
Hell, before I even knew she was an actual ex of Mo’s.
So that was about wanting Mo, Mo not wanting me, being in
his presence twenty-four seven, sleeping with him in my room, and me letting
off some steam.
A whole lot of steam.
But it had been me that pushed it.
If I’d kept my mouth shut, that whole convo would have been
shut down by Mo at the get-go and the whole cheating scenario might not have
been outed.
Something not a lot of men took a great deal of pride in
(women either).
Rhonda wandered off after telling us to have a good day and
thanking us for shopping at King Soopers and Mo stopped in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking up at him.
“Why?” he asked.
“I lost it with Tammy,” I reminded him.
“You did that,” he agreed.
“I should have just kept my mouth shut.”
“I don’t know. Been askin’ around
about you. Heard your premiere in Denver was havin’ a
wet T-shirt catfight with your sister on the floor of Fortnum’s. Was kinda hopin’ for an encore,
though minus the sister, which would suck, but my guess is, you’d have won
against Tammy, which would have been awesome.”
He’d asked around about me?
And was he…
Wait.
Was he teasing me?
“It didn’t start as a wet T-shirt fight with Jet. It just
ended as one after Mom threw a pitcher of water on us.”
His silver eyes danced and his lips tipped slightly up.
Okay, that urge to orgasm was coming back.
“I was young then. I’m an adult now,” I babbled.
“Totally can tell. You just adulted all over the ethnic food
aisle at King Soopers.”
I sure did that.
“It would take a lot to make me get in a catfight now that
I’m all mature and, uh…everything,” I told him.
“Lottie, you were two seconds from taking her down by her
hair in a real-life GLOW move.”
I totally was.
“Fortunately, Rhonda appeared,” I remarked.
“Depends on how you look at it,” he muttered.
He was.
He was teasing me.
He might actually be flirting with me.
Damn.
“When do you have time to ask around about me?” I asked.
“When you shower. You take really long showers.”
Ah.
Why are you asking around about me?
That question was not audible.
I couldn’t go there yet.
Perhaps Mo wanted a détente, but still, he’d said some rough
things and that conversation was not for King Soopers.
However, now that we were speaking again there was one thing
I wanted to know.
No.
Two.
“I’m assuming that you all aren’t close to finding that
guy.”
Any remaining amusement went out of his face.
“No.”
Great.
“Right then, before we carry on, why did that woman cheat on
you when she practically begged you with her eyes to do her against the udon noodles?”
Mo commandeered the cart and set us in motion, doing this by
bending way over, crossing his forearms on the handle and moving forward.
I quickly grabbed some buckwheat udon
and followed him.
I suspected his movements meant he wasn’t going to answer
and I didn’t blame him. It wasn’t my business.
“She likes dick.”
After I tossed the noodles in the cart, I walked beside him
and had the unusual sensation of looking down on him.
He kept his eyes aimed forward.
“And I work a lot,” he finished.
“Ah,” I murmured.
I murmured that like I got it, but I didn’t get it.
Then again, I wasn’t a cheater.
My man wasn’t taking care of business, there’d be a chat,
never a cheat.
But that was just me.
“And she’s the kind of woman who’s always on the lookout for
the next best thing.”
I stutter stepped to a halt.
“What?”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder and down his bulk at
me.
“What, what?”
“The next best thing?” I asked.
“Can we get the shopping done?” he asked back.
I started moving again, and when Mo moved with me, I kept at
him. “What do you mean the next best thing?”
“You saw her new man.”
“Yeah.”
He said no more.
“And?” I pushed.
“Let’s not do this,” he said on a sigh.
“Do what?”
“Go there.”
“Go where?”
He stopped again and looked up at me.
“I’m a guy, Lottie, and even I can see he’s better lookin’ than me,” he stated firmly.
I stared at him.
“He also makes more money than me,” Mo continued. “He’s an
attorney.”
That explained a lot, but only about the boyfriend and his
apparel choices for a shopping expedition at King Soopers on a Sunday.
The rest was still unexplainable.
“She moved on from you to an attorney?” I
asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I busted out laughing.
And I did this so hard, I slapped him on the shoulder blade
to work some of it out.
“That’s hilarious!” I cried.
“It’s really not,” he said.
I ignored him. “Ohmigod. What an idiot. You dump her and—”
“She dumped me.”
I stopped laughing and started staring at him again.
“She traded up,” he stated conversationally. “Now can we
finish this and get back?”
“She didn’t trade up, Mo,” I told him quietly.
He sighed again but said no words through it this time.
“She totally didn’t. And she knows it.”
“Lottie—”
“She either dumped you so you wouldn’t dump her, because,
really, she’s a bitch and probably knows it and definitely knows you aren’t
stupid so you’d figure it out. Or she instigated a faulty play, thinking you’d
come to heel if she not only cheated on you, but acted like she was down with
losing you and prepared to move on, all this so you’d fight to keep her.”
“You were around her for maybe ten minutes. I lived with her
for two years. I was there, Lottie. I know what happened.”
But I wasn’t seeing straight.
I wasn’t seeing anything.
They’d been living together?
From far away (even though he was still right there), I
heard him murmur, “Oh fuck.”
I started walking.
Fast.
“Where is that bitch?” I demanded, still walking (fast).
I came to a halt when he caught me by the waistband of my
jeans again.
He used it to turn me to facing him and kept his hand there.
My breasts almost brushed his chest, we were that
close.
We’d never been that close.
I was also standing in the curve of his arm.
He was almost…
Holding me.
Whoa.
“She’s history,” he shared.
“She’s a bitch,” I returned.
“Yeah. And so she’s history. Move on. I did.”
“She didn’t trade up, Mo.”
“Okay.”
He said that just to appease me.
I was not appeased.
I was a lot of things, including laser focused on his face.
He thought that.
He honest to God thought that.
And something had to be done about it.
So I decided instead of finding Tammy and taking
her down I had bigger fish to fry.
Though I couldn’t fry them shopping in King Soopers.
“Let’s get this finished,” I mumbled.
“Thank Christ,” he said and let me go.
He went back to the cart.
I’d lost my list somewhere along the way.
Oh well.
Fuck it.
I’d wing it and if we forgot something, we’d come back.
We had to get this done.
I had fish to fry.