Page 9 of A Twist of Fate

“Oh my God! With who?” Ever asked excitedly.

“Um,” Gretchen hissed out quickly. “It’s no one, just, well, I don’t want to talk about it just yet.”

“Oh, okay.” Ever sounded a bit disappointed, but didn’t get to say anymore because Shelly decided I’d paid the two of them enough attention and she ran and jumped on me, slamming into my chest so hard I thought she was going to knock us both out. Instead, reflexes kicked in as I took a step back with my left foot to brace and reached around, grabbing hold of her ass. And it was her ass I was holding because her tiny little skirt had ridden up with the motion and her efforts to climb me right there in front of the other women. Mental note – Shelly is on my ‘do not call’ list from here on out. Staking a claim in my workplace was not fucking cool at all.

“Ew, gross!” Ever called out as she basically ran for the door.

“This is where we work,” Gretchen growled in my general direction. I couldn’t see her face because Shelly’s tits were blocking my view of anything beyond Shelly’s tits.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, but I don’t think she heard me since the bell over the door tinkled in the background, indicating someone else had gone out the door too. I set Shelly on her feet and glanced around. They had all left. “What the fuck was that about?”

Shelly ran her perfectly manicured, hot pink fingernails down my chest as she poked her lip out in a mock pout. “It’s been forever since you called me. I just got excited. Then, I showed up here and you’re too busy staring at those bitches to even say hello.”

“Those bitches?” The question didn’t quite roll off my tongue smoothly. The words erupted from my throat in a dangerously low growl instead. Shelly simply shrugged her shoulders. “Those bitches are women that I work with and respect.”

“So?” She questioned, popping a hip out and getting ready to unleash attitude.

“You know what?” I asked. Her eyes rounded out, hearing the seriousness in my tone. “I don’t think this was such a good idea after all.”

“What? Wait! No. I ditched my date to come running when you called tonight. You owe me a good time, Kane.”

“I don’t owe you shit, especially after acting the way you did. This is where I work. Those were my coworkers.”

She shrugged again. “You work in a fucking tattoo shop not a nunnery,” she hissed. “I’m sure they’ve seen worse.”

I would really be doing the world a favor if I strangled this bitch and dumped the body somewhere. Swear to all that is fucking holy, someone needed to save this woman from herself, but more importantly, they needed to save her from me. “Get out!”

“W-what?” She stammered.

“You insult my coworkers, have no respect for my place of work, and you think I’m still going to be interested in doing shit with you? Seriously? Maybe you need to rethink the fucking attitude. I already invited you here. I invited you, which means you had nothing to prove to anyone.”

“Sure looked like I had something to prove to you,” she hissed.

“Well, you proved it.” She grinned at me, obviously missing the point where I was still dismissing her. “You proved that I made a huge fucking mistake tonight. Now, go!” I ordered her with a finger pointing angrily to the door of the shop.

“Fine, but don’t call me next time you’re lonely,” she insisted.

“Not a problem. I already lost your number,” I told her. Normally, I wasn’t such a dick, but Gretchen had been right when she said, ‘This is where we work’. The display Shelly made had been completely inappropriate. I waited a good fifteen minutes for Shelly to clear the fuck out and away from the shop before I left for the night. Instead of going home to pound away my own issues in someone else’s body, I ended up going home alone to sulk in the dark of my apartment. Even sitting there in the dark with no one for company but my own miserable self, it started to finally dawn on me why I’d been so restless lately. This life, the one where I just called a hook up periodically, was getting old. The problem was, I think I’d kept the people who might have been interested in more with me waiting on the sidelines too long as I worked through my own shit. That left me exactly where I was, alone in the dark.

Over the next couple of weeks, Shelly was a long-forgotten memory, as was the red-head I’d hooked up with before her. Though, it was weird because I could have sworn I’d seen her around here and there when I’d never noticed her in our town before. I shrugged it off, because let’s be honest, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that every time that asshole – okay, he wasn’t really an asshole, but I was still thinking of him as one – came around to take Ever out, my gut took a hit and I ended up going to find someone to take the edge off and the hurt away. First it was Nicole, then Sandy, and Melanie, and, well, there were a couple more. I kept trying, and it never worked. Not a single one of them could take my mind off what I thought I was losing out on.

The worst part was, it wasn’t just seeing Ever ride off into the sunset on the back of her new man’s Harley that bothered me. I noticed Gretchen slinking off into the shadows out the back door of Permanent Marks more than a few times when she didn’t think Ever was around, and it was always followed by the distinct sound of a certain someone’s pickup truck or bike. Yeah, I knew them both now, because I stood watch as it happened every time.

We were three weeks into this little game that only I knew the three of us were playing when Gretchen finally called me on my shit. “You need to knock it off!” She hissed at me as I sat in the breakroom trying to talk Tammy into coming over so I could take her to my place for a little therapy session.

“Knock what off, exactly?” I asked as I hung up on Tammy, who politely declined my invitation, telling me she was seeing someone now and would no longer be available for hookups. I was removing her number from my phone when Gretchen tore it from my fingers and tossed it on the couch opposite of the one I was perched on the edge of. “What the fuck?”

“You need to knock your shit off. I know you had it bad for Ever and she never noticed, because you never manned up and told her, but bringing every floozy in Charleston to work to flaunt them in front of the rest of us before you go have your little fuck fests is getting tiresome!” Her words were shouted at me through gritted teeth as she poked her pointer finger in the air as if she were trying to bury it through my chest and inflict actual harm. “We’re tired of dealing with your messes!”

“My messes?” I asked her, not knowing what the fuck she was talking about. She huffed and rolled her eyes as her left hand perched on her hip.

“Yes, idiot! Your messes. Like Sandy, who came here crying after she realized all you wanted was sex. You kicked her out of your apartment right after you finished with her in your bed.”

“How the hell do you know that?” I had a sick feeling in my stomach as Gretchen rolled her eyes at me again and continued jabbing her right finger at the air in front of me. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t getting any closer. That finger was out for blood.

“I know that because she came here blubbering, asking me if I knew what she did wrong. Then, she gave me a play-by-play of your night that I very much did not want to hear at all before the red head came back and overheard her. No worries about Sandy anymore though, the red head made sure she’d never darken your doorstep again. She laid her claim and told her the reason you kicked her out so quick was that you came to your senses and realized she was it for you.”

“Wait, what red head? What are you even talking about?”

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