Now I was regretting it.
“Not a big deal! Not a big deal? You’re sleeping with Grayson Cole. Grayson! In the middle of a bar bathroom.”
I rolled my eyes. “If you don’t stop yelling, I’m locking you in the bathroom until you calm down.”
She paced around the center of her kitchen island, oscillating between calm and crazy. Every few seconds she’d reach for something on the counter—a knife, an empty bottle of wine, some chocolate—then stop mid-grab, realizing that none of those things would help our situation. Unless, of course, she wanted to stab me. Which would really put a damper on our sistership.
I met her halfway around her fifth lap of the kitchen island and gripped her shoulders so she couldn’t move.
“Okay.” I said, trying to meet her eye. “Okay. I’m really, really sorry. I really regret having sex with Grayson and will try and purge all of the sexy images from my mind.” By the end of my heartfelt apology, I had a dopy smile on my face.
She pointed at that smile and groaned. “You’re not sorry! Jeez, Cammie. That’s so reckless… and fine, yes, it’s actually quite hot, so I can’t really get mad at you about that, but still! I’m mad at you for ditching Stuart like that.”
"C'mon, did you hear him? His childhood dream was to own a laundromat for Christ's sake," I moaned.
“It doesn't matter, Cammie. You should have told me to cancel on Stuart or something.”
“I didn’t know you were even going to bring him! And don’t worry about him, he has that Clark Kent look. He’ll be fine. But dear god, he needs to get a new job. I’ve never met a sexy accountant. No one wants a guy to balance their budgets.”
The door opened at that moment and a smiling, naive Jason walked in holding two paper grocery bags.
“Cammie, they were out of that gelato stuff that you like, so I grabbed a bunch of other stuff,” he explained, dropping the bags onto the counter and rifling through the contents. He pulled out a pint of ice cream and held it up for my examination.
“Oh, that looks awes—”
“Cammie doesn’t deserve ice cream. She DEFINITELY doesn’t deserve Triple Chocolate Fudge ice cream,” Brooklyn interrupted with a snotty glance.
Jason frowned, slowly dropping the pint onto the counter.
“Brooklyn doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I replied. “She forgets that I'm an adult, and as such, I can stick my spoon in any pint of ice cream that I wish.”
I flipped my sister off—because that’s what adults do—and then walked out of her apartment with the ice cream in hand. It was one of the finest exits I’ve ever pulled off, and there was a bonus: I had a pint of ice cream to eat as I walked home.
It was a fifteen minute walk—ten if I was really stepping on it—so I dipped into the Chinese restaurant next to Brooklyn’s condo, stole some chopsticks, and ate my ice cream as best as I could using a sort of “flick it into my mouth and hope my aim is right” technique.
As if I wasn’t juggling enough things with my hands already, I dialed Grayson’s number when I was halfway home.
He answered right away.
“How’s Brooklyn’s?” he asked, skipping right past the formal hello.
“I’m not at her place. I’m walking back to mine,” I said, flicking some ice cream toward my mouth and missing by a long shot. I turned behind me to see where it landed, only to find a trail of melting ice cream on the sidewalk. Whoopsies.
“You’re walking home? It’s eleven at night.”
“Don’t worry, I have ice cream and chopsticks,” I said, only half joking.
He groaned and I could visualize him doing that thing where he tugged his hair as if exasperated by my existence in general.
“Could you come pick me up and take me to your place?” I asked, digging my chopsticks into the melting slush.
I could hear rustling clothes in the background, the buckling of a belt, and then keys sliding off of a table.
“Where are you?” he asked.
I rattled off the cross streets and then hung up so I could eat my ice cream in peace.
Brooklyn’s condo was in a very ritzy part of Los Angeles, so I wasn’t worried about sitting alone on a stoop at night, but when Grayson pulled up—looking like Batman in his dark gray sports car I might add—he didn’t seem to agree with me.
He hopped out of the car, leaving the engine quietly purring, and walked around to meet me. He had on a pair of worn jeans and a white undershirt. I’d never seen him so dressed down and one of my chopsticks drooped midway to my mouth when he stepped closer. Hello, Grayson Cole.