Is that a boil festering on the end of her hook nose? The thing was oozing pus. Damn, girl. Get a paper bag, wouldja? No one should be forced to look upon a face like that. And her body? Yowzers. She was wearing an ankle-length, stretchy gray dress, and her feet were really long, making her entire body look like an old boot.
“Who are you?” he asked the giant.
“She’s Gola, my friend,” said Tula. “And who the hell are you?”
Strange. Tula never used to swear. She’d also never mentioned this Gola.
“I am, uh, Hilbert, a friend of Zac’s,” he replied.
Gola charged like a bull. “You’re friends with Zac? Have you seen him?”
He backed up, not wanting to be run over, but she followed.
“Tell me!” Gola pushed him. “Where is Zac!”
“Errr…I don’t know,” Zac lied. “I live in his building, but he hasn’t been around lately. I merely came by to see if I could hire him. He said he could hook me up sometime. With a nice human woman. Since I’m human. In need of matchmaking—a shocker, I know. All this manliness in such a divine package. I bet you’re wondering how I fight off the ladies.”
Instead of laughing at his humor, Tula sneered with disgust. It was so unlike her to judge a person by their looks. Tula was everything gracious and kind. Also worth noting were her clothes. Hiking boots, faded jeans, and a tight black sweater on her short, curvy frame. She didn’t appear to be wearing a bra.
What happened to his Tula in the enormous muumuus that reached the floor? Gods, those make me so hot. They said: Hello, handsome. I am in desperate need of some sinful fun.
Zac looked Tula up and down. Even her expression seemed different. Harder somehow. Had their time apart broken her?
After everything she’d been through, he wouldn’t be surprised. Being separated had changed him, too. Only, now he felt even more attached. She had been the one thing that kept him from losing his shit while being held captive in the underworld.
“Well, dang. That’s disappointing,” Gola grumbled, swiping away a glob of drool forming on her chin. “I had reason to believe Zac might be here.”
Why would she believe that? “So you think he might show up?” Zac asked. “I mean, just so I can make a point to return later. My dating situation is urgent. I have…have…a wedding to go to next week.”
“We don’t know for certain,” Gola replied, “but if you run across him, please tell him to contact me. I mean Tula. Immediately. Tell him it’s urgent.”
Strange. Tula was letting the Unjolly Green Trollette do all the talking.
“Give me your number,” he said, “and I’ll be sure to contact you should I see him.”
Tula’s pocket began to cluck like a chicken. Bock, bock, bock… Her big blue eyes lit up. “Oh, must be my friend.”
“Friend? What friend?” barked Gola, who then proceeded to slurp up another thick string of drool dangling from the corner of her mouth.
Eesh…
“DJ Roost. He’s sooo hot,” Tula replied with a dreamy look in her baby blues. “I texted him earlier to let him know I was back in town.”
What the hell? Zac thought. He was about to tell Tula she was absolutely not allowed to have “hot” guy friends. Especially when Zac’d been chained naked to a wall in the underworld, being laughed at by nymphs. But before he could open his mouth, Gola piped up again.
“Tula—slurp!—you’re not allowed to have friends.”
“Yeah,” Zac agreed, nodding his head, which was super hard to do since he didn’t have a neck.
Tula ignored them both and began texting away, an ear-to-ear grin stretched across her pink little lips.
Gods, how I miss those lips. Zac wished he had a ladder to kiss them.
“What are you doing?” Gola tried to swipe Tula’s phone. “Stop that! I said no—slurp! Slurp!—friends!”
Tula pivoted and held the device out of reach.
Zac was genuinely confused by this new relationship of Tula’s. Gola was acting like Tula’s big sister.
“Give me that phone!” Gola kept reaching with her long, gangly arms. “I have important things to do, and I don’t have time to babysit you.”
“You do whatever you like,” Tula said to Gola, “but I’m accepting his invitation to the party tonight.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I disappear for a while, and now Tula is texting men and going to parties? How is this possible? He was supposed to be the love of her life. Her one and only. Tula didn’t seem the least bit sad.
“I’m going with you!” he and Gola replied at the same time.
Tula raised a honey-blonde brow, her eyes toggling up and down between them. “Sure. The more the merrier.”
More the merrier, my crusty demon ass! Why wasn’t Tula getting all goosebumpy in his presence, huh? Why wasn’t she questioning the morality of going to a party to meet a man who wasn’t her fiancé?