“We’re just friends.”
He nods. “You’ve never really cared about her, except for wanting to tap that sweet ass. However, you’ve been going on and on about that girl you saw on State Street a couple of times. Did you manage to find her? Is that where you were today?”
“Fuck you and your shrink degree, Tully.” I navigate between his bed and a chair piled up with clothes to stand in front of him.
“Uh oh, someone’s in a bad mood.” He picks up a T-shirt from the chair and sniffs it. Throws it into a corner. “Girl didn’t run after you, did she? Didn’t scrawl her phone number on your hand, as per usual?”
“No, fuckwit. That’s not it.”
Fuck, he’s totally right. I’m pissed because I finally found the girl who caught my eye, found out she works in this bookstore and nope, she didn’t run after me, or scrawl her number on my hand.
Never had this problem before.
This girl at the bookstore… I saw how she stared at me. She liked what she saw. Hey, I won’t even pretend to be humble. I look good, and I keep fit. My sis, Ev, often teases me that I’m like a rock star. I get any chick I set my sights on. They come begging for it.
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 aroun
d, 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?”