“Nope, you don’t.”
“I’m better off without him.”
Mel laughs and nods in agreement. “You are. You don’t know him. He’s a dick.”
“Totally, he is. I don’t need him at all. I don’t…”
Mel slips off the stool and walks over next to me. She bumps into my shoulder, as she glances after Peter with me. “You think Mr. Twisted knows his brother told you all that shit?”
“No, Sean would hate that.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
I turn to her and press my fingers to my heart, laughing lightly. “What, are you serious? You think I should go after Sean? Are you crazy? I don’t want to be his mistress. Why would I go after him?” I stare at Mel like she’s lost her mind.
A cat-like smile crosses her face. I swear to God, feathers are poking out of her lips when she says it, because she knows my reaction is going to be so incredibly bad. With her arms folded over her chest, tapping her glittery black nails, she says, “To ask him to marry you.”
CHAPTER 11
I laugh. It’s not real mirth—I’m so far from happy that I can’t even describe the chronic meltdown that’s occurring inside my mind. Take a polar ice cap and stick it in the microwave with some tin foil wrapped around it. That’s what’s going on inside my head. It’s not just brains melting out of my ears that renders me speechless, it’s the arcing—the frying of brain tissue—that actually prevents me from speaking. My eyes are dinner plates as my jaw shifts between tense and slack. I open it a few times while Mel knocks back her last drink and pays.
I swear to God, if I don’t say something soon I’m going to lose my mind. The words that come out are a hodgepodge of sentences that are strung together rather incoherently. “That’s a misconceived…so idiotic…array of insanity...” I press my lips together as my hands float up like I’m going to strangle something about waist-high. My hands tense, fingers flexing over and over again like I’m mental.
“Oh shit. I broke her.” Mel laughs once and shakes her head at me. When I try to speak again and can’t, she gives me a look. “I can’t wait around for this shit, and I’m sure as hell not hanging out with you no more if you’re going to be talking all fucked up like that. You sound like one of them people wandering around South Oaks.” I scrunch up my face and glare at her – I’m not a mental patient. “Fine, be like that, but since our evening of fine conversation is obviously over, I’m heading home.”
The car ride back to the dorm is quiet. The same thought goes through my mind over and over again. I can’t ask Sean to marry me. I can’t. I’m pretty sure that I haven’t blinked for a while because my eyes sting.
Damn Peter, had to show up and say those things. It’s not like things are easy for me. It’s not like I can just stop school and skip work and go find Sean and propose. I can see the look on his face—that placid smile. He’d think I was joking and I couldn’t stand that.
At the same time that thought bounces around in my head, another counters it. It’s Peter’s voice, saying that I’ll regret it in twenty years—that I could fix this, if I tried.
Is that really what happened here? I didn’t try hard enough? That’s total shit. I did try. I never tried so hard to be with anyone in my life, and after everything that happened, it didn’t matter because we aren’t together anyway.
Sean needs randoms, a different woman to fuck every night. He doesn’t need me.
Mel finally gets me talking by mentioning work. “I heard Black has a new dude picked out for you. The word from the herd is that he’s a cowboy, decked out in all that Western shit. I bet he tries to ride you like a horse.”
I smirk and glance at her out of the corner of my eye. “That would be a good night for me. Haven’t you noticed? All my clients are insane? I’m starting to think Black is doing it on purpose. If this guy tries to brand me, I’ll cut his balls off. Then Gabe can shove me in the trunk and drop me in the East River with cement shoes.”
Mel snorts as she trudges up the stairs. “Gabe isn’t the kind of guy that takes the time to make cement shoes. He does it with a bat and pushes you off a balcony. I bet you he covers his ass pretty good. No one can tell your brains were turned to pancake batter after they get scrambled on the sidewalk. Oh man, I’d kill for a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity Stack right now.”
“Nice segue. Disturbing and delicious.”
She laughs as we stop in front of my door. I reach for the knob and flick my eyes up to hers. “Why’d you say it?” She had to know what it would do to me—how suggesting that I propose to Sean would commandeer every other thought in my head.