Page 14 of My Ex-Best Friends

***Logan***

The woman standing next to the hardware store caught my eye when I walked out of the diner. Even from across the street I could see she had one of the nicest asses I’d ever seen. I stopped where I stood and felt a flare of hope. It wasn’t all that often that I looked at someone and didn’t compare her to Brooke. She’d left that big of an impact on me. The woman across the street, though, she had curves that made my mouth water. She reached up and pulled something out of her hair that made it tumble down to her shoulders and I nearly bit my tongue in half.

The red hair that lightened to an almost blonde color at the bottom was like a slap in the face. I growled at myself and stomped across the street. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t mad at her. I was mad at myself for thinking I’d found someone else to steal all of my attention, when it was really the woman I was doing my best to stop thinking about.

Brooke turned when she heard me coming and the smile that lit up her face stole my breath. In the afternoon sun her eyes practically glowed green and her cheeks were red from the heat or excitement. She was barefoot in an outfit that showed too much and not enough tit all at the same time. I could almost see the inside swells of her tits through the laces and I was tempted to stare harder so I could be sure what I was looking at.

She went up on her toes and wiggled the pencil in her hand at me. “Hey! Guess what!”

I found myself grinning back at her. “What?”

“I got a job! Painting a mural for Beaumont on the side of the hardware store!” She bounced in place and then spun around to look at the big brick wall. Her hair swished around her shoulders and I breathed in a scent that was a mix of Colt and something warmer that was all Brooke.

“That’s amazing. What are you going to paint?” I wanted to ask her why she’d snuck out that morning like a thief in the night but I didn’t want to make her feel weird.

“I’m not sure yet. To be honest, I’m feeling a little nervous. This is going to be the biggest mural I’ve ever done.” She bit her lip and stepped closer so I could hear what she had to whisper. “I’ve still never finished a project. I am definitely not qualified to do this but I couldn’t turn it down. The pay is oddly good and I have to learn to finish things.”

Before I could answer her I heard her phone dinging over and over again from the ground next to her shoes. I raised my eyebrows at her as she pointedly kept her eyes away from it. “Avoiding someone?”

She winced and gripped the pencil so tight that it snapped. “Several someones.”

Feeling too curious for my own good, I bent over and scooped the phone up. It was hot from the sun and from the amount ofmessages coming through. I looked from it to her face and saw her cheeks darken. “What’s your password?”

“I don’t have one. Finn felt insecure if I had a password. I guess I should’ve made him return the favor.” She pressed the pencil ends together like that would magically repair it. “You can look. God knows I’m not going to after reading the first few.”

I shook my head and opened her phone to see hundreds of messages and missed calls from Finn, a woman named Meredith, and another woman she’d saved in her phone as Devil MIL. It would’ve made me laugh if I hadn’t caught sight of one of the vitriol filled messages.

“You never deserved my son anyway, you trashy skank?” I scowled up at Brooke. “You left a lot of fans in the dust, huh?”

She turned back to the wall and shoved the pencil in her back pocket. “Yep.”

I read through the messages from her ex and realized I was clutching her phone hard enough to break it. I forced myself to relax my grip and then grew even angrier when I read the messages from Meredith. They were all disgusting. She’d left us to surround herself with some of the nastiest people she possibly could’ve.

“I have to make this mural good. I know I only got the job because Aunt Karlene is hooking up with the tourism guy but I’m still going to take full advantage of this. His only request was that it be about Beaumont.” She was pretending like she was unbothered by the messages but I could see the stiffness in her shoulders and the way she wouldn’t look at me. “What do I paint about Beaumont, though? I’ve been gone for a decade. Things have changed, I’m sure.”

“Brooke.”

She rushed on like I hadn’t said her name. “Doing a seascape seems like a copout, right?”

I took her arm and tugged her around to face me. “How about you wait to start working on this until you’re not reeling from these nasty texts?”

She looked desperate for a moment. Then she blew out a giant breath and deflated in front of me. She looked smaller, more delicate when she was finished. “Shit.”

I turned her phone off and shoved it in my back pocket. “How about I show you around the new and not so improved Beaumont? It could help you work out what you want to paint.”

I couldn’t read Brooke’s emotions the way I’d once been able to and it bothered me. She studied me with a smile playing at her lips but then she shook her head and looked away, her entire energy off.

“I shouldn’t.”

I grabbed her shoes and knelt down to put them on her. “You should. Come on, Brooke.

13

***Brooke***

“And if you look to your left, you’ll see your mother patting Principal Day’s ass.” Logan rolled his window down and stuck his head out. “Get it, Crazy Daisy!”

I hadn’t put my seatbelt on since he was barely going five miles per hour so when he shouted, I ducked into the floorboard of the truck as fast as I could. Glaring up at him from next to his knee, I grabbed a few strands of his leg hair and tugged.

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