My phone vibrated again. I didn’t dare look at it while Carson was in the room. As he dug through the closet, looking for my duffel bag, my phone went off again and again. “Fuck, man, are you going to get that?” He stopped, turning to look at me.
“It’s just one of the guys at work.”
Then my phone rang. I lay there ignoring it, knowing exactly who was calling. “What the fuck, Carter, are you going to answer that?”
I peeked at my phone, Felice’s name and picture covering my screen. “It’s the wrong number.”
He stopped what he was doing, turned to me, and held out his hand. “Give me the phone. You know how I love those wrong numbers.”
“Na, never mind, man, you’ll be late.” I took my phone and buried it deep in my pocket. If he saw who was on the phone, I would be a dead man. Carson had been after our neighbor Felice for the past year, but lately she was more interested in me. She had just suffered a bad breakup and, like me, wasn’t looking for anything too serious. She just wanted to have fun, but I’d been down the Felice road already and wasn’t too keen on doing it again. “It’s all good, man, they’ll stop calling.”
“You’re acting strange. Are you having a bad day or what?”
“No, man, just tired and stressed.” Carson shrugged and finally went back to searching for my bag, which he finally found at the bottom of my closet.
“Okay, I just have to pack this, and we can be on our way to the airport.”
I nodded. “I’m just going to rest. Let me know when you are ready.”
As soon as he was out of the room, I picked up my phone again, this time opening up the chat window. Three more pictures lay across my screen—Felice in all her glory. I looked over the pictures once again, taking in the round curve of her ass and her perky, full breasts. I adjusted myself, and then another message came through.
FELICE: I SAW HER LEAVE THIS MORNING. WAS SHE FUN AT LEAST?
ME: SUCKED DICK LIKE A CHAMP.
FELICE: DID SHE NOW?
ME: YEP, FELT DAMN GOOD TOO. IT’S BEEN A WHILE.
FELICE: THAT’S TOO BAD. YOU KNOW THERE IS A WILLING GIRL RIGHT ACROSS THE HALL. NO NEED TO GO SO LONG. YOU HAVEN’T HAD ME SUCK YOU OFF IN A WHILE.
ME: WON’T HAPPEN. AS ATTRACTIVE AS YOU ARE, I REFUSE TO MIX THAT WITH OUR FRIENDSHIP AGAIN.
I had made up my mind after the last time I had made that mistake, for the second time. The first time was right after I moved here, after seeing Hope when I returned home with the infamous Trent King. The girl who ultimately took my heart and broke it into a million pieces in only a few weeks’ time. The second time with Felice, well that had just been a lonely night and a drunken mistake. I knew she was just seeking comfort because she had just broken up with the man she had been seeing. I shut my phone off and closed my eyes. I guess she wasn’t going to respond to me, which was a good thing; these types of conversations with her had to stop.
“I’m ready, man,” Carson yelled.
I got up off the bed, quickly changed into dark blue jeans and a white button-down shirt, shoved my phone in my pocket, and left to take Carson to the airport.
Chapter Eleven
Carter
Iwalked into Joe’s place,the smell of stale beer and fried foods hitting me hard. I grabbed a seat at the bar, while waiting for my brother Hunter and a couple other guys from school. I should have been studying, but I needed to unwind, and I was hungry. I looked up from the menu and saw my buddy Mike approach from the far end of the bar.
“Hey, man! What can I get you?”
“Hey, Mike! Grab me a pint of whatever you have on tap tonight.” Joe’s Bar and Grill was a small neighborhood bar and restaurant. I had spent many nights here throughout my years at school; it was my home away from home. The best thing for me was it was close enough to home that I could walk if things got out of hand.
“Here.” He slid the glass across the bar to me. “You’re in here earlier than usual tonight.”
“Yeah, I just got back from taking Carson to the airport. I still have about three hours of studying to do tonight when I get home.”
Mike chuckled to himself while pouring a couple beers for the two men who had just walked in. “Yeah, so you decided to come down here and drown your sorrows instead.”
“Yeah, the sorrows of having an apartment all to myself for the next three months.” I let out a deep laugh.
“Hey, how’d that chick turn out, the one you took home from the dance club last night? She was all over you.”