Hot and Bothered(83)
HAVEN TEXTED ELISA. I’m early. Send me pic so I can see if he’s here?
Haven was sitting in Charme, waiting for her date. A week or so after she’d cried herself sick on Elisa’s couch, her friend had emailed her to say she had a new match for Haven to try out. I think you’ll like this guy, Elisa had written. He’s your type.
Now Haven’s phone buzzed in her lap, and she peeked toward the entrance of Charme again to see if she could spot a man who looked like he was in search of a blind date. Nothing. She read Elisa’s text.
No pic. He has yours.
Elisa had been cagey about this guy from the start. She’d refused to show Haven his profile, saying that she thought it would cause Haven to “make assumptions” and “have expectations.” Instead of giving Haven the guy’s contact info, she’d made the plans herself—a late-ish dinner at Charme, followed by dessert at a new off-Broadway cafe that featured appetizers and sweets.
On paper, it sounded great, and Haven had dressed herself up obediently, putting up her hair, making up her face. But she had felt as if she was slogging through the process. There was no pleasure in any of it.
What she wanted to do was lounge on her couch and eat Cheetos.
If things had worked out with Mark...
Mark would sit on the couch with her and eat Cheetos. He would wear torn sweats and he would look hot as sin in them. He wouldn’t care what she wore, either. She could wear one of his T-shirts and a pair of granny underpants and he’d think it was the sexiest thing on Earth. Maybe he’d do her up against one of the big street-facing windows of her apartment.
Heat—desire—flowed sweetly into her lower belly and welled in her sex. Tears filled her eyes. She had been the biggest idiot in three counties, and here she was, sitting and waiting for another of Elisa’s dud guys to show up and bore her to death. She hated the too-tight foundation garment she wore under her uncomfortable dress, and the thong panties and the sharp pain in her scalp from where she’d pulled her hair too tight.
She removed a bobby pin, hoping to relieve the pressure, but somehow that made it worse. The weight of the twist now yanked harder on the spot that was too tight, and her head started to hurt. More tears flowed. In a moment her mascara was going to run right down her face, and when this new guy came into Charme looking for his date, he would find a crying raccoon.
Mark wouldn’t care if she looked like a raccoon. He would just want her to be comfortable, as he’d said. She wouldn’t have to worry about whether she was cheerful and put together and ready for this date. She could just come as herself.
She pulled another hairpin out. And then another. Her hair tumbled down onto her shoulders. She felt a tear slide down her face and knew it had painted a dark streak.
She crossed her arms, feeling defiant, though there was no one here to defy. She looked around the room as if daring anyone to give a shit that her hair was a collapsed, tangled heap or that her face wore twin stripes of misaligned war paint.
Then she realized who she was defying. Herself. Her own rules. She was telling that little voice in her—the one that was almost never silent, the one that constantly monitored the situation to make sure she was doing everything she could to keep everything tidy—to shut the hell up.
She didn’t want to keep everything tidy. She was done with neat.
She could just come as herself.
She wanted to be her real, messy self, the one that cried in Charme and hurt—hurt like hell—because she didn’t want to be here, she wanted to be with the one person in the world who had seen her lose control and hadn’t turned away.