Once a girl pulled down her shirt to show me her bare tits and had me sign them. Another time, a woman offered to blow me in the middle of a parking lot. Chicks honk at me from their cars, roll down their windows and ask my name, pretend to be tipsy in bars as an excuse for bumping into me and latching on to me.
And that’s fine. It’s all for fun. I don’t give a shit about that, even less lately, except this girl… what is it about her that won’t let me rest?
Something about the boldness of her gaze behind those sexy glasses, and the sweetness of her mouth, the uncertainty in her voice combined with that hot body, mostly hidden under her clothes…
“You said you’d meet me later to grab a coffee at Starbucks, and you never showed up,” I mutter, forcing my thoughts back to the present. “Did something happen?”
“Fuck.” He turns around to face me, and I lift my eyes. “I said I’d meet you? Man, I totally forgot.”
“Shocker,” I mutter. Jet is often distracted. But still I worry every time he doesn’t show up when he says he will. I have valid reasons to worry, trust me. “I was picking up a book for you. About bananas.”
“Bananas.” He gapes at me. “Are you fucking high?”
“You like bananas, man. Banana cake, banana ice cream. I thought you might wanna…” I wave my hand around, then realize I left the book in my backpack. “Read about them.”
He lifts a hand to scratch his spiky hair. His towel slips lower on his hips. “I’m not the reading type.”
“Yeah, but I thought—”
“Or the cooking type.”
“Shut up, okay? It’s a gift, motherfucker. Just have a look at the damn book and tell me if there’s something you like.”
“Never look a gift horse in the nuts.” Jet turns around, drops the towel to the floor and grabs his jeans from the bed. Black of course. Jethro likes black, and that’s an understatement.
“I’m pretty damn sure it’s in the teeth.”
“Same thing.”
Right.
As he slams the closet door shut and looks up, I give him a quick once-over. He looks… stressed out. Tired. Tense. Distant.
“Today’s your day off?” I sink down on his bed and land on something hard. “Ow, dammit.”
I remove a weird object, plastic, black—the last goes without saying. But what the hell is this thing?
“Gimme that.” Something flashes through Jethro’s eyes, something like panic. He snatches it from my hand and throws it into his closet, kicks the door closed. He leans on the closet, crosses his arms.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I’m so doing a search of that fucking closet first chance I get. Need to know what got Jet so flustered. He does have his dark moods, which I have learned not to disturb, and has so many skeletons in his closet it’s like Halloween in there, but still. He rarely loses his cool.
“J?”
And why am I staring at his mouth? The fuck’s wrong with me today? “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. One hundred percent.”
But I don’t think he is. Something’s going on. “Rough week?”
He waves a hand back and forth, but not before I catch a tiny flinch. “So… about that nerdy chick. Tell me about her.”
“She’s pretty, I guess.” Her eyes were bright, her mouth lush, her body small and tight and hot in her crazy short dress and fuchsia leggings that matched her nail polish.
And she had glasses on. Did I mention the glasses?