For some reasons, it’s currently not suiting me.
I scowl at the game on my phone, which is apparently disagreeing with me over “cocksucker” being a word.
Fuck this game, I text to Silas before swapping back to the game and glaring at my letters again.
Told you. It won’t let you use swears.
I grin. My friend knows me entirely too well.
I stare at the scrabble-like game another minute before I sigh and just go with “cock”, losing “sucker” and the triple word score that goes along with it. After all, cock is a rooster — they can’t deny that one.
Lol. Silas texts. So lame.
Immediately, the app buzzes with his own word response, and I flip back to it.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter out loud.
“Cauterization”, off of the “C” in my “cock”, and nailing him a fucking triple word score and a triple letter on the goddamn “Z”.
“Fuck this game,” I mutter, closing out of it and grabbing my beer off the back bar.
“Busy place.”
Goddamnit.
I sigh before I glance up at Fiona, standing in the doorway to my empty bar.
“Yeah, it’s…” I trail off and shrug. “It’s an off night.”
“Guess this means you have to talk with me this time.”
I tighten my jaw. “Does it?”
“Well, I’m the only one in here.”
“Not really in a chatting mood, Fi.”
“We don’t have to talk.”
She let’s the words settle, both of us knowing full well what she means by them.
“What are you drinking.”
She smiles as she settles herself at the empty bar. “Vodka soda.”
“Drinking alone or should I expect your fiancé to be joining.”
“Jeff’s out of town on business.”
“Wonderful,” I say flatly as I slide the drink in front of her.
“And you know what they say about mice playing while the cat’s away, Row.”
I frown as I turn to reach for my own half-empty beer.
I have nothing against Jeff. I’ve actually never even met the guy, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t deserve the shit Fiona’s put him through. Hell, the shit I’ve put him through, at that, even if he doesn’t know it.
“Aww, what? We can’t talk now?”
“Now that you’re engaged? No, we can’t.”
“Got a problem with engaged women?”
“Yeah, Fi, I do.”
Lots of problems with engaged women, apparently. Eva’s face immediately jumps into my mind. Eva who is currently probably eating dinner or fucking praying, or, shit, I don’t even know what — quoting scripture with her new fiancé.
Not her fiancé, I want to say. But it might as fucking well be. She’s going to marry him, because however fucking insane it is in this year that a twenty-one year old woman’s father is picking her husband, that’s where we’re at with the Ellis family, apparently.
“Look at you with standards now,” Fiona laughs, sipping her drink.
I ignore her, glancing back at my phone and opening Words With Friends again.
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters dryly. “The service here sucks.”
“This isn’t fucking Applebees, Fi,” I say without looking up. “If you want a cheery fucking smile and a five-dollar appetizer menu stuck in your face, go there.”
“Got something else you could stick in my face?”
I roll my eyes. “Jesus, Fiona, have a little-”
I stop as I glance up, my eyes dropping to the light jacket Fiona’s just shrugged off and the teeny white undershirt she’s wearing underneath that clings to every curve of those very much surgically enhanced tits.
“A little what, Row?” she says with that smug look. It’s that look that says she thinks she’s got me. She thinks she’s worn down my walls like she always does and gotten me to say yes to whatever she wants like I always did.
She’s wrong this time.
Call it the new me, or maybe I’ve just found something better to think about then chasing after Fiona’s second-hand scraps.
Maybe I’ve just got a little faith now.
“Class” I say flatly.
She pouts, and I look away.
I need something to do. I can’t just sit here ignoring Fiona and trying to beat Silas at a fucking scrabble app game.
I duck under the bar and head for the office. Might as well grab last month’s account shit so I can at least make a mild effort of going over my own numbers.
“Where you going?” she calls after me.
“Work stuff,” I toss over shoulder. “I told you, I’m not here to fucking entertain you or sell you jalapeño poppers.”