“Jesus fuck, Fiona.”
“I know, I know. Crazy, right?”
“You’re fuckin’ married?”
“Engaged,” she says in a bored tone.
“Well, congrats?”
She shrugs before grinning that hungry smile at me again. “So you free or not.”
“I thought you’re getting married.”
“I am.”
“Then not.”
She rolls her eyes. “C’mon Row.”
“Why the fuck are you here if you’re engaged? I thought you and Jeff were doing better.”
Doing better as in “her not skipping out four times a week to let me fuck her any way I pleased”.
Amazing what “not cheating” can do for a relationship.
“Oh, we are.”
“Then why are you here,” I mutter through gritted teeth.
“You wanna know?”
Not really.
I frown at her as she grins and leans across the bar — her tits almost falling right out of her shirt as she crooks a finger at me. I lean forward despite every voice in my head that tells me not to.
“Because he doesn’t fuck me like you do, Row,” she husks into my ear. “Because I can’t have sex with him without closing my eyes and dreaming of that big dick of yours fuckin’ me senseless.”
Fuck.
This is how the trap gets sprung.
This is what happened every time before when I’d try and walk away. I’d get hooked right back in.
Why?
Because it’s easy. Because I’m an asshole, because I think with my dick more than I should, and because Fiona has a great pair of tits and a mouth like a goddamn machine.
I close my eyes and grit my teeth as she giggles and purrs into my ear. And I’m seriously about to throw in the towel and admit she wins, when something stops me.
I can’t do this. I won’t do this.
Not again.
“I think you should probably leave, Fiona.”
She pulls back from me with a look of fury on her face. “Are you serious?”
“You’re getting married.”
Her eyes narrow to slits suddenly, her lips going tight. “Who is she?”
I frown. “What?”
“Who the fuck is she!” she hisses, eyes darting around the bar as if looking for someone.
I roll my eyes. “Jesus, there’s no she, Fiona, I’m just not getting involved in whatever train-wreck you and Jeff are headed for next.”
“I’m gonna find out who this bitch is that you think is so fuckin’ special, Row,” Fiona spits at me, shaking her head and furiously snatching her purse off the bar. “We’re not done with this.”
“Yeah, we are,” I mutter under my breath as she storms out the door.
But a few hours later, as we’re closing up for the night, I keep coming back to what she said, “Who is she?”
And I lied when I said no one. Well, half lied. Am I seeing someone else? No, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone on my fucking mind. It doesn’t mean there isn’t someone planted deep inside my head in a place she shouldn’t be, giving me ideas she shouldn’t be.
It doesn’t mean I haven’t been having daydreams all night about what sweet, innocent, prudish little Eva Ellis would look like on her knees wearing nothing but a hungry look and that silver cross around her neck.
Jesus I’m going to hell.
Jade leaves first, but I sit at the dark bar, lit only by the neon Red Sox sign in the corner I haven’t turned off yet. I let the last of the Led Zeppelin record spin out through the jukebox before I’m finally sitting in silence with an empty beer and thoughts like these about the last girl in the world I should be having them about.
Fuck it.
I get up and turn the neon sign off. I step out, locking the front door behind.
This is a bad idea.
And then I turn and walk directly up the street in the direction of the rental house.
Chapter Eleven
Evangeline
My eyes travel across the pages of the book in my hand, trailing page to page as I sit up in the bedroom of our house. I’m worn out from the first day of actual work, even if mostly just mentally.
Today was groundbreaking at the new center. Well, not literally groundbreaking, since the Center is being put up in an old factory building from a closed down garment factory. Today was the start of the work though, and my job was mostly marshaling volunteers and helping to lay out schedules for the coming week or two. Still, exhausting, and just the same, I’ve always had a hard time falling asleep without reading something.
Back when I was younger, it was bible passages, of course. Slowly, over the years, I moved past that — Dickens, Ayer, Hemingway. Some under the begrudging consent of my father, others hidden and read by flashlight.