Neither of these men really knows me. We're not friends.
I'm not working under the assumption that either of them feels differently than I do.
“He has to at least be from Texas, right?” Hollis prods.
“No clue,” I answer, turning my eyes back to the waves.
The sun is beating down on all of us.
Summers in Texas are brutal, but for some reason this summer seems hotter than normal. I haven’t even gotten into the water, and I can feel the salt from the sweat clinging to my skin.
I’m agitated and annoyed about even being here and the heat is only acerbating my mood. The guys trying to grill me about Angel aren’t helping either.
Conversation halts, and a normal person would want to fill the silence. They would want to give more details. They would want to make excuses about why they aren’t saying more. They’d feel the need to apologize.
I'm not a normal person. They're not normal people either, so it's ignorant for them to even think that way.
“You don't have a fucking chance,” Hollis says. “She's a fucking ten.”
I look over at Nash, tracking his eyes across the sand to a gorgeous brunette.
I can see the appeal. I'm a man, after all.
She has long golden tanned legs and dark hair floating in the wind. She swipes it away instead of pulling it back despite it continuously getting in her eyes.
That woman knows exactly what she's doing. She's caught the attention of damn near every man in a thirty-foot radius.
That tiny bikini clinging to her skin would be see-through if she actually got into the water, but she's not here to swim. She's here to entice. She's here to feed her ego.
“I'm a fucking ten,” Nash argues. “Tens date tens.”
“Date?” Hollis scoffs.
I have to smile. Men like us don't date. We don't have any bonds other than fake ones.
Connections are dangerous.
Connections are how the enemies hurt you, how they control you, how they're able to bend you to their will.
I don't do connections, and I never will.
They're hazardous.
“I use the phrase date loosely,” Nash qualifies. “I don't want to date her. I want to fuck her. It's that simple.”
Hollis grumbles again, still sounding like a petulant child as he reaches down and swipes sand off the cast on his foot.
“That girl has the pick of any man on this beach, and you really think it's going to be you?” I look over at the two of them, slightly annoyed but also distracted by their banter.
“I think I have as good a shot as anybody else,” Nash says.
“I’d rather be working,” Hollis complains, and I understand the feeling.
Idle time for men like us is dangerous.
We don't do well with free time.
“How much longer do you have in the cast?” Nash asks as he lifts his chin in acknowledgment at the woman when she looks in our direction.