Page 31 of Love Not Qualified

I threw an uninterested gaze her way, even though my stupid heart thumped in my chest and my eyes barely controlled themselves from roaming all over her body.

She touched a curl in her hair, smiling at me. “If you want, we can share a table since it’s pretty crowded here,” Haelyn offered, but I shook my head.

“I’m not staying,” I said, moving my gaze away as I took a step forward to catch the line.

“Oh,” I heard her puff. She almost sounded relieved and I almost,almostchanged my mind just to spite her. “I’ll go eat so I won’t be late.”

Haelyn made herself unseen and once I got my coffee, I walked outside and watched her through the window.I sighed, touching my temples. Now I was the definition of a stalker.

No. I wasn’t stalking her. I simply enjoyed my coffee while throwing an eye inside from time to time.

It didn’t mean anything.

I was just a curious person.

With each bite she took, her throat blocked, and her hand lifted to cover her mouth. After every single one, she did the same, looking as if she was about to throw up at any given second.

If she didn’t like the food, then why did she come here?

After the first two sips of my coffee, I threw it in the trash, the taste of it leaving a sour flavor on my tongue. But I kept my eyes on Haelyn, who left more than half of her sandwich uneaten before she threw it away.

TEN

HAELYN

The first week as an employee at Graves Automobile was amazing. I was already adjusting and began to need less and less help from Sara. She still checked what I was doing and explained if I didn’t know something, but other than that I could say I was a proper employee now that I didn’t need to be monitored twenty-four-seven.

My job was going to get harder the moment I was going to be on my own, so I tried my best to learn as much as I could as fast as possible before that happened.

The good news was that I hadn’t bumped into my boss again—not at work or any other public spaces—and I successfully avoided any embarrassing situations that could put me in a bad light. Whenever I came for my shift, his glass walls had the transparency option off—every. single. morning.

My curious ass would’ve liked to know if that was how he always liked to keep it or if he did it only to avoid me. But then, what reasons would he have had to do that? I could’ve asked Sara about it. But I didn’t because she’d get me all wrong.

She always talked about how good Tristan was in bed, so I suppressed any wonders about him so I wouldn’t get her thinking I wanted to find out if it was true.

I didn’t.

The bad news was since that day when Chad convinced me to go get something to eat, he never texted back. Maybe he somehow knew I was in a swordfight with food and he didn’t want to babysit me. I didn’t blame him if that was the case, but did I give myself away that quickly?

As far as I remembered our conversation—I knew it by heart because I kept rereading it to see if I had said something wrong—I made it seem like the only reason I wasn’t eating was to prove myself worthy of the job.

“Maybe he got another match, Hae. I don’t know what to say.” Merielle looked at me over her shoulder. She was cleaning the dishes in the kitchen and her hands were covered in bubbles from the soap.

I shook my head from the bar stool, my chin in my palms. “No, that’s not how it works. He didn’t close the chat,” I explained.

She shook the water from her hands after she put the plates on the drying rack, then dabbed her palms with a towel and walked to me. Merielle released a long breath and her lips pursed in thought when she grabbed my wrists.

“Look, I don’t want us to fight again, so make me understand.” She gave me a soft smile, squeezing the spot she just gripped. “Why are you so torn up over a guy you’ve only been talking to for two weeks and never asked you to meet up?”

I dropped my head on our hands, groaning. “I don’t know.” My voice came out muffled. “Maybe because he’s the first guy I’ve talked to since Josh? Or maybe because he seemed too perfect to be real?”

When you had a two-year-old relationship where everything seemed like a dream only to find out it was all a lie, it was impossible not to get attached to the first person who gave you the tiniest bit of attention.

Josh promised me the world, and I believed him like a fool. That was until his wife walked in on us having sex, screaming from the top of her lungs about what a whore I was. When I walked out of the hotel room, their daughter was waiting in the hallway, covering her ears from her mother’s shouting.I felt like a home-wrecker.

Chad was nothing like that. He never promised something just to forget about it the next day. He didn’t ask for nudes to jerk himself off like Josh did, and I somehow knew that if I hadn’t initiated that particular conversation, he wouldn’t have been the one to do it.

My eyes shot up and Merielle’s face was covered in a frown. “Oh my god,” I whispered, then lifted a hand to touch my mouth. “I had sex with him!”

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